Friday the Third(eenth)

yesterday...

I had a big day, as happens in life I went from "needing a little extra work" a week ago to "Oh My everything happening at once".

So I decided to start early, and at 5.30 was tootling away at the 'puter - which was dandy until between 6.30 and 7.00 when my internet speed went to 0.

I rang Bigpond, and after an interminable conversation with a computer got to speak to a lovely young lady from the sub-continent who, after asking me about the lights on my modem advised me that it appeared the whole of the network in Queensland was out and would be until 1pm - maybe 11.

After I got off that call, my blood boiled at the 'not good enough'-ness and called Bigpond back.

My conversation with the computer was a little terser this time, and Mohammed advised me that I had told the previous lady the wrong information about my lights and therefore the problem was with my modem and me and there was nothing wrong with their network, and to be a good girl and call the manufacturer of my modem/router and get them to fix my problem.

I had to wait until 8am to call Netgear, and they took me through various tests and told me to get back to Bigpond armed with the right jargon words needed to assure Bigpond that the problem did not lay with their product.

The good news was that the computer in Bigpond now recognised my phone number and put me directly through to the person line.

The lovely Rosetta, a supervisor, advised me there might be a problem with my modem that those jargon words would not cover, and so I should test the system by turning it all off for 20 minutes and then reset it all, and if it still didn't work to call back and they would escalate my issue.

I did as I was told (because I had no alternate plan) and of course the results of the test were that I should call them back to escalate the claim.

The Bigpond automated routing service obviously REALLY knew my number by then, because twice they sent me into the purgatory of dead-phone tone before giving me lovely hold music interspersed with marketing.

I on hold music when a call waiting signal came through - as I had only waited 7 minutes at this point, I was willing to throw it away if someone wanted to call me. It was my mother - and I had a "short" conversation with her.

I then got hold music and marketing for 27 more minutes - one of the lovely messages was "have you spoken to your mother lately? How long since the last time? I bet she knows. Why not call her?" - can you believe it...

Finally, I got a warm body at the end of the phone - and Justin had an Aussie accent.

It was the only comforting thing in the phone call, as after telling me that it wasn't them and I wasn't told that and it couldn't be, he suddenly noticed that there was another query from my area and maybe that could be interesting and - oh, would you look at that, it seems that the whole region has a problem!

I agreed that was quaint and perhaps had a slightly heightened tone when he advised he would escalate the problem to one that actually had a technician looking at it, and there should be some answer by the close of business...

That was just my morning - the afternoon I spent in a beautiful heritage listed building formatting documents and fixing databases and then I had a 3.5 hour drive in the dark over country roads - it was only 200km, but when your high beam = 20 metres visibility and nice nature has a habit of hovering in the middle of roads oblivious your approach (so do the toads) and the roads have a habit of becoming bulldust without warning.

Ah - nothing like a whinge to purge it from your system.

So - how do you deal with life when it throws you lemons? (Besides blog, that is!!)