Daily News: Changing Modems Can Be Nasty

Dear readers,

We often hear in the news that some organization or other has had a total system crash due to changing modems. Well, despite this happening this very week in the news causing global disruptions, we decided to...change our modem! Heh.

So it came in via UPS and I was at the bottom of the mountain, excavating out old oak tree trunks when it came. Now, the only thing nastier than an old oak tree stump is a modem. So I stopped chopping away at this huge pit surrounding a huge old oak tree stump and brought it up to the house via the excavator.

My husband set it all up and turned everything on and all hell broke loose. Talking on the phone with the guys who sent us this pixie machine did no good. After tangling and untangling wires and getting panic attacks and drinking some beer, we got the new system OUT and the old system back IN.

So much for progress.

Then we had a smart idea: call the kid. Namely, tech support who happened to come to me one day in a hospital after a lot of labor. Like Zeus birthing Athena only the tech support was very big for a baby and to install him, we had to feed him, educate him, buy him new shoes every other week as he kept on growing bigger and bigger and then the real pain: buying him video games as bribes.

Still, it was cheaper than hiring someone else's kid who did all that stuff. And my son (and others in the family) make money off of people without kid tech support! Ha!

But he is gaming today. Rats. So I have to bribe him with food later. And other goodies. Oh well, at least I am back online again.

Comments

M&M's are a good bribe.

Posted by: arthur corgi | April 22, 2007 at 10:52 PM

Indeed, yes. And gas money.

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 22, 2007 at 11:19 PM

Well... you were able to follow the techie's Prime Directive:

Always be able to back out any change you make to a system.

What kind of modem is that, anyway? (I'm professionally curious - once upon a time, I did... yep. Modem support.)

Posted by: JSmith | April 23, 2007 at 12:18 PM

My tech support showed up today and fixed everything as I expected. He also ate a lot of food and watched anime and played a video game. Did you do this while fixing modems, Smith? Heh.

The modem was made in China. The instructions were in RUSSIAN AND CHINESE.

HAHAHA. My son had a big laugh over that. He also cussed.

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 23, 2007 at 11:56 PM

"Did you do this while fixing modems, Smith? Heh."

No. Data centers do not generally feature well-stocked refrigerators. But I remember one center where some guys got Space Invaders running on a VAX cluster.

(Does anyone else remember VAX clusters?)

Posted by: JSmith | April 24, 2007 at 08:29 AM

"The modem was made in China. The instructions were in RUSSIAN AND CHINESE."

But you saved a few bucks, right? I'd have probably advised you to spend just a few dollars more for English-language docs: http://www.usr.com/home.asp

Posted by: JSmith | April 24, 2007 at 08:33 AM