Tweet tweet tweet... the bird.

Allow me to send out a rousing middle finger to Verizon DSL.

We used to have Verizon DSL back when we lived across town. It was okay, as far as DSL goes, but its frequent freezeups and refusal to work with any program other than Netscape 4.0 made me long for the days of my old cable modem in Charlotte.

Shortly after we moved into our current house, in April of `03, Verizon let us know that we could no longer have DSL because our new place was too far from the local whatchamadoochie that makes DSL possible. Whatever. I didn't like it, but I understood it. For months after that, I kept checking Verizon's site to see if our number qualified for DSL, but it never did. Then, nearly a year ago, Verizon sent me a card in the mail saying "HEY, YOU CAN HAVE DSL!" Whoo hoo! Unfortunately, this coincided with a period of time when we had very little extra money for such luxuries, so I declined to give them a call to set it up. Instead, I ordered Callwave so that I could get calls that I might have missed while online.

In the time since then, I've come to really hate Callwave. Oh, it's useful and all, but now it shows me exactly who's calling to interrupt my internet connection, allowing me the ability to know who I should be pissed at. This atop of the anger that flares up EVERY time the damn phone rings at work is just too much phone anger for one human being to have and remain healthy; I decided DSL was affordable after all.

I went to Verizon's DSL site, rechecked my phone number and was assured by their system that I could in fact have DSL. I ordered it. I even started trolling ebay for wireless modems so that I could do up a home network and let the wife use her laptop with DSL too.

Two weeks ago, my DSL modem finally arrived, though I received both an e-mail and a telephone message telling me that we still couldn't use it until its switch-on date of Feb 8.

Then, one evening we received a message on our answering machine saying, "SORRY, PEPE, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!" I'm paraphrasing, sure, but that was the gist. The message said they had tested the line and it turned out not to be compatible with DSL after all, so they were real sorry they'd gotten me all worked up about it and had sent me the modem, and all, but we still couldn't have it. Oh, and could I please send back their modem? Jankiee bastards!

A few days later, a Verizon return mailing label came in the mail, allowing me to send it back for free. I let the modem sit right where it was on the kitchen table for several more days before deciding to actually return it to them.

And what do you suppose arrived in my mailbox two days ago? Why, yes, it was yet another of Verizon's "HEY, YOU CAN HAVE DSL" cards.

I think I'll sign up for it again and then let em spend lots of postage mailing and return mailing their modem back and forth.