Tech woes

I’ll be posting this entry some time after I write it because, once again, AT&T’s Miserable DSL Service is down, and I can’t go online.  This would be less of a problem (albeit still wildly irritating) at an earlier point in the semester, but as it happens, some of my class records (for online discussion sessions, for example) are, well, online, and I can’t access them to incorporate the data into my grade sheets.

Apparently there’s “a fault in the line” and AT&T had ordered service by the time that I’d called to report a problem but – get this -- no one will be able to come out until Monday afternoon.

Um, it’s only Saturday, kids.

That strikes me as perhaps not a long time to wait for some things, but in sunny, high-tech Silicon Valley, CA, it’s a long damn time for such a problem to go unaddressed if you ask me.  And I don’t care that it’s the weekend. Anyone ever heard of a global economy in which time zones are not so relevant as they once were?  This fucks up my work schedule a little, and it could fuck up someone else’s work schedule quite a lot.

I said as much. To no effect.

I swear to god I’m going to change carriers this summer when I can afford to be offline for several days.

Now, yes, it’s true, I could head to my office and hope things are up and running there (don’t get me started on the servers at the university: they’re often on the fritz), but the idea of spending a minute more than I have to there at this point in the semester makes my skin itch.  I’m going to have to be there Monday already for three meetings at least, and I’m already dreading that.

So my other option is probably Starbucks, where I’ll go tomorrow anyway to get a chunk of grading done (at least I’m on schedule with the grading of papers and such, if not with grabbing my online data). At that point I can take my laptop, sign on, check email, and get the data I need.

Heavy, long-suffering sigh.