My DSL modem was bouncing up and down repeatedly yesterday. It’s not unusual for it to reboot once in a while, but this was clearly Wrong. Called SBC’s tech support in Bangalore and got a trouble-ticket number.
A little while later, a good ol’ boy called me back. My line had already started behaving, but he did some tests while I was on the line, and we discussed the problem. Now, the service I signed up for is nominally 128 up/384 down. Apparently, my bandwidth had been automatically upgraded to 128 up/1500 down (I had noticed that my downloads were much faster than 384), and this was the cause of the problem. As he told me, I’m 15,000 feet from the central office, and my line can’t sustain that kind of bandwidth reliably (approximately 17,000 from the CO is usually as far as they’ll go). He changed my service to 384 up/768 down and said he was seeing a cleaner signal.
It’s interesting that A) SBC is upgrading service for its customers without squeezing more money out of them, and B) is apparently doing so without human intervention.
Tonight, Gwen and I are attending a Zombie Formal at the Pink Pleasure Palace. We needed to get some makeup for wounds, so we headed to the Bazaar, where a very helpful clerk showed us our options and gave us some ideas. We were going to pick up some stage blood, and he pointed out that they usually have a better selection, but with Easter coming, they’ve sold out of one variety. Apparently they sell more blood for Easter than for Halloween, and this has been exacerbated by The Passion. I never realized Christians were so lurid.