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August 09, 2007
Of Mice, ISPs and Mighty Men
Several weeks ago, I was standing in our empty apartment with the flooring contractor, and in a sequence befitting a calculus equation, two small mice tramped across the floor right in front of us. Within minutes, I called the Super for an exterminator, who came (apparently) the day before we moved back in.
DP and AJ were visiting last week, and we were sitting around talking about a modern dance show we had just seen, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a mouse. It ran for hiding. Then, Chis and I were sitting on the couch the other evening, and watched a mouse darting around the living room.
1pm Wednesday, I returned home from a series of meetings to discover a red light flashing on our modem. I called our ISP, and after two-and-a-half hours on the phone, the tech told me that the problem was theirs, not mine. Hmm. Our internet phone goes yellow if it doesn’t have a signal, which was the first thing I told him before we reconfigured my laptop, and re-booted several dozen times. They asked for 24 hours to fix the problem.
20 hours later, I called to get an update. “We’re still working on it” said Electric Lucy. To speak to a technician, the estimate wait time was “under 30 minutes”. Whoa! I walked over to the cable company to see what I could do with them. For the same price, I walked out with a modem, went home and hooked it up.
On my way home, I stopped by the hardware store and picked up 12 mouse traps, and while I waited for the new cable modem to warm up, I strategically set the traps where we had seen the mice.
I called our ISP to cancel. He said I would have to pay a $79 early termination fee because I had committed to a one-year contract. I asked him to provide me with the document I signed, which he couldn’t. As I was beginning a vitriolic speech about consumer rights and the FCC, he cut in to say that they had remedied the situation and I could get back online. After another hour on the phone, I was on again. Whew! I called the cable company, who let me off without a hitch.
We hopped on a train for Princeton to celebrate a 40th birthday, and returned around 11pm. Not a single mouse in the traps. Blast!
We may not have caught the dastardly mice, but we taught those ISPs a thing or two.
Posted by dave at August 9, 2007 10:17 AM