This afternoon, I was given quite the pleasant surprise.
When I returned from making a post office run (and trip for coffee), I sat back down in the office, and noticed something was smoking. My first instinct was “fuck! The turtle caught on fire!” as he sometimes likes to hang out underneath the desk, by some of the plugs and surge protectors.
BAM! I drop to the floor in a panic. But no, he’s just sitting there looking at me like I’m on crack...
So if it’s not the turtle’s smoking corpse, then what the hell is it? After some poking around, I discover that it’s my netopia DSL router/modem. And, at this point, it’s got a nice plume of smoke coming out the top of it. This is great.
I had smoked my router... too much pr0n, I guess.
So after unplugging it, and making sure that if it does burst into a DSL router/fireball it won’t damage any of the other equipment; I call megapath networks (my provider) for a little help. Megapath is an OK company. I’m being a little overcharged for my bandwidth rates, but so it goes. Better they get some of my money, than giving it directly to SBC/PacBell (I hate you, SBC). After being on hold for 30 minutes, and being treated to music from both Mr. and Mrs. Michael and Janet Jackson (I still think they should get married, incest be damned), I was laughed at by the tech support folk when I explained what had/was happening. He found my fireball joke most amusing, and started treating me as if I were a prank call. Once I assured him that in fact, I was a real person, with a real router that over 30 minutes ago had smoke coming out of it, he put me back on hold.
It turns out, that my warranty on the router was dangerously close to being over with (i.e. 2 days left. Whew!) and they had to make sure they could honor it. It only took 1 f-bomb to convince my tech support guy that he should. The only problem now was that I had missed the shipping for today; they could ship it tomorrow, so that means I wouldn’t be getting the new router until Friday afternoon, at best.
uh... no.
I asked him if I could just go pick the damned thing up. Turns out I could; their office was located on Owens Dr. in Pleasanton. So, that’s exactly what I did. Quick trip to Pleasanton, and we’re back online.
