Lessee, where did I leave that tag? Ah, here it is...

<crc>AT&T Broadband is a bunch of goat-fucking shit-for-brains incompetent morons who couldn't tell their own asshole from an ethernet port!</crc>

Now that I've got that out of the way, we just had some new neighbors move in a couple weeks ago.

They had their cable service set up last Friday morning.

My cable modem stopped working last Friday morning.

Cause and effect, Q.E.D.

First symptom (probably during the early stages of install) - DNS stopped working. I could still ping sites that I had recently accessed, I could be pinged, but if I tried to go to a site that I hadn't accessed in, say, the last half hour, I couldn't get there, unless I had the IP number. Very strange initial symptom.

Second symptom: The modem's Power and Send light are solid, Recieve light blinks like crazy, and the Activity light doesn't come on at all. No net at all, no DHCP, no DNS, no IP, no diddly/squat.

Did I mention that AT&T's support personnel are rabid festering anal polyps infested with terminal brain rot? I explained to the L1 droid that yes, I had already done all the items on his script, and that his day and mine would be a lot easier if he just kicked it upstairs and told the guys that there was something wrong with their equipment. No, he had to go by the book, and we spent half an hour doing this:

"Have you done <this step>?"

"Yes. IT'S NOT MY BLOODY COMPUTER! YER BLOODY MODEM AIN'T EVEN GOT ALL THE DIAGNOSTIC LIGHTS ON, AND YOU STILL THINK IT'S MY COMPUTER?!?"

Okay, I was a little more polite than that. Still, after the third or so step where I had established that a) I actually knew what I was talking about and b) he was wasting both our time, I may have started to get a little testy.

Oh, and they can't get a guy out until this Saturday. Even though they were the ones who fscked up the install. Even though it was Thanksgiving weekend, and I was looking forward to busting a few caps in some T heads in CounterStrike. Even though I have a machine to reload thanks to a failed IBM 75GXP hard drive. Even though I have a ton of homework.

So I spent all weekend without an internet connection. And while that might be a pleasant experience when you plan it, when you are unexpectedly without, you start looking for that RJ-45 tap like a junkie looking for an availible vein.

I was almost looking forward to work today because I'd actually get an internet connection...