Well first let me just tell you that we’ve moved…same building…but apartment #4. It’s a two bedroom…so now we have room for baby, and (if it ever can be easy) moving was pretty easy since there was no truck involved, and the new apartment is just steps from the old one. In fact, with everyone’s help, we were able to move everything and get the old place cleaned up in just 3 Days…and I might say with no notice. So my heartfelt thanks to everyone who pitched in (Mom, Dad, Steve, Lauren, downstairs neighbor steve, Dan, Tom, Megan, and Laurence).

We also now have a bit of an outside…we have a balcony…YEAH! Its a similar layout to our last place, so organizing everything was prety easy. Empty one cabinate, fill the one next door. The rest went into the extra bedroom. But we seem to have most everything in its place now.

So the actual move went really well I thought. Even calling (most of) the utilities to have service switched over was a snap. We really were not as a loss for anything…Except the dreaded telephone.

Yes I love SBC…first they change the name of our ballpark to that “snappy” SBC Park, a phrase that rolls off your tongue like 3com stadium, but having the telephone switched over was something akin to throwing darts at me just to see if I would bleed, and if I didn’t die…they would throw some more. Now I know why Laurence didn’t want to call them.

So on April 30th when we decided to move, I called SBC and told them we would like the link switched over. No problem they told me, it should be live in 2-4 hours but the DSL ordering system was down, so I would have to call back monday to see when that would be back live again. But before I could finish the order…the phone was disconnected…as I am on the phone with them they disconnect it, I dont know if I should call that service, but it was speedy. So I call back on my cell, and complete the order. Wow I thought, that was deceptively simple…there has got to be more…and there was. So no dial tone that evening. I call back the next day between lifting boxes and they told me that they would look into it, and “have a dial tone in 2-4 hours” and I could switch the DSL over now and it would be live monday or tuesday. Cool. Still no dial tone. Again with the call and all of those lovely telephone menus that lead nowhere, just like wandering the halls of the Winchester Mystery House. I did the usual, name of the account holder, super secret last 4 digits of the social security number, quick explanation of a story…and still nothing but wasted minutes of my cell phone plan…which since they just bought my cell phone provider…I don’t understand why it shouldn’t be free…

So finally I get someone to “call a technician” who instead of comming out to see what was up and why we didn’t have a dial tone, they are able to “trace it back” from texas or someplace they were to the box at the side of the house…apparently their stuff was fine, it was the dreaded wiring inside of the house. I checked all the jacks inside, and everything looked great…it had to be the box on the side of the house…

So after a bit of deduction, we finally figured out that the previous tenant had that all in one RCN package (internet, cable, and telephone) and RCN had basically hijacked the wiring inside the house from SBC. I call RCN and they point the finger at SBC, and they point the finger at the landlord for having one working jack in the house, and that was the law. So finally I call our landlord and tell him the whole story, this was friday last week (one week after all this started), and he said just go ahead and get the work done, and he would reimburse us.

I call SBC back yet again, and get on the phone with a technician who told me I could have someone out the next week to switch the two wires for $120, or I could look under telephone in the phonebook and find a local person to do the work…so I looked, called the various dozen or so places, and found this guy who worked for PacBell for 20 years, John with z-com. He does custom wiring intallation now, but does this kind of thing here and there as it comes up. I called him friday afternoon ~ 5pm, he offered to come out Saturday and take care of it…then he calles back a half hour later and offers to do it that evening…what service…and what a nice guy. Finally a dial tone…

But it looks like as of today no DSL till the 20th…why it takes a month to get my DSL back…makes no sense to me…at least I can get on line now…