Tech woes
I haven’t had a dial tone since last Friday. Now, I don’t miss having a phone. There are very, very few people I need to talk to. The pay-as-you-go cell phone will work for those times, in spite of living in a red brick canyon and have to go outside to get a signal. This happens every time it rains.
Except this time it’s something different. Last time the phone went out, I had them finally install a NID. I have a dial tone at the NID. Damn. That means the trouble is inside the house. The tech was here today, and found a short “somewhere between the kitchen and the bedroom.” The circuit in my place goes, cellar to living room to kitchen to bedroom to office. He replaced the jacks in the kitchen, bedroom and office and pronounced it all good. It stopped working about 1/2 hour after he left. The DSL has been dropping out about every 10 minutes. Since the work is on my side of the NID, I have to pay for it at $100 per hour.
I can do without the phone, I can’t do without the DSL. He’s coming back tomorrow morning. I don’t know what else to do. My big fear is that mice have eaten the wires inside the wall. None of the wiring is accessible in any way. Cellar to LR is good, LR to Kit is good, BR to office is good. I don’t know what else to do. Hire someone to run a new wire? I have to do something, it’s almost impossible to work this way. The line has dropped twice just while type this.
Living room is at the bottom with the bay window, the bedroom is the dot, the office is the arrow.
June 15th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
June 15th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
I don’t know what’s up. It went out twice while posting that (at about 7:00, the server is in central time so all the times are an hour off). I’ve been working here since about 7:30 and it hasn’t gone out once since, so that’s almost three solid hours of up time.
Is it going to happen again tomorrow? Will I have anything to demo to the guy when he gets here? I wish there was a way to have him call before I waste his time coming over here.
June 15th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Oh, wait. It looks like the times posted are eastern time, so I guess it’s been two hours of up time. Still, that’s about 1:50 longer than it’s been for most of the day.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:22 am
I’m almost scared to ask, but… any improvements?
June 19th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
It’s hard to say. At about 8 that night, everything was fine. Fine all day Friday. I’ve been gone all weekend, but as soon as I got home, my upstairs neighbor said that my phone had been dialing 9-1-1 all weekend.
I got home and there were 5 new messages on voice mail. I’m still trying to find out what was going on. My phones weren’t even plugged in. There was a 9-1-1 call at about 1:30 am apparently from my phone?
Ugh.
June 20th, 2006 at 8:14 am
That happened to me not too long ago. My phone dialed 911 twice in the span of about a week. Cops came to the house to check on us, and I had to have the phone company come out to fix it. What a pain.
June 20th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Yeah, but fix what? I already had them out on Thursday and again on Friday. There doesn’t seem to be anything left to fix!
June 20th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I think our problem was outside the house on the pole. I don’t know what that would mean in a building such as yours.
June 20th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Our “pole out back” is the “box on the corner”. It’s always been a mess. I’ve had crossed lines about three times now.
June 20th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Either way, smart money says it’s on their side of the NID. The undialed 911 calls should be enough put a large enough fire under their butts to finally straighten it out.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:38 am
[...] The phone is out again. Same condition as last time. DSL is intermittent, but seems to be holding tenuously. [...]