[listening - various artists: peanut butter wolf's jukebox 45s.]

one ongoing drama in my life that recently ended was the arrival of a dialtone on my home phone last saturday, february 1, the same day the space shuttle columbia broke apart upon re-entry, making phone service a mixed blessing (long distance came a few days later).

flash back to early december, when i signed the lease for the apartment. the call placed to the electrical company to change the name on the bill hooked me up with allconnect, a service to sign up to all the necessary utilities at one go, including home phone service through at&t. considering i'd be avoiding many evils of being on hold, i ran with it.

i knew i'd be heading home for christmas, so i asked for the phone service to turn on when i came back, a day or two before new year's. my company asked if i get it hooked up sooner, but after one call, both the telco and me forgot. i did a test call to my new number on december 27, and instead of the number not in service message, it kept ringing, which was promising.

however, when i got back, there was no dialtone on my line, which proved to be the theme song for january. before new year's, i phoned at&t about the problem and they dispatched a technician from verizon, who maintain the infrastructure up to the box, at which point at&t services the box up to my flat (new yorkers know where this is going...). he would arrive in the first few days of the new year and check everything up to the box. i got a phone call in the first full week of january saying that the line came out all right, which was just the beginning.

n.b. - this goes for a long while, so watch out, skimmers.

when i still found no dialtone, i phoned back to at&t and they again sent a verizon tech to the building later in the week. same story: line worked to the box, but no sound from the phone. called again, another verizon tech was scheduled, except for a saturday, which meant he buzzed me when he was there. he asked to see the box, which i indicated was on the side of the building. he asked if i could let him in, which confused me, since the other two techs didn't have to ask me to allow them before.

meanwhile, my mom tried calling my number to see what the story was.... and someone else answered! it was a woman who didn't speak much english, so all she would say was no. "no! no, no! no no no no no no no no no no!" *click* i tried it, but no one answered, then i phoned at&t up to see what was going on. they tried the number and they received a modem handshake, which confused them. however, they were adamant that the number was mine and left it at that.

there's an empty lot beside my building, where a locked gate allows access to the nether regions of my building. since my key didn't work there, i went next door to ask the neighbour's if they had the super's phone numbers, since i had left my copy of them at work. through the doorway, i was given both his home and mobile number, then i rang the super on both numbers to see if he could let the tech in. a few attempts were made, but i couldn't reach him and i didn't know where he lived, since he is responsible for about 6 buildings in the neighbourhood and lives in one of them instead of my building. the tech came up to my apartment to inspect the inner wiring briefly and look with disbelief when i told him about the possibility that someone else had my number, but since he couldn't do much, he left.

called again to at&t, on monday, telling the story, and this time, they would send their own tech to inspect my internal connectivity. since i didn't have the internal wiring maintenance package, and i didn't want to pay $55/hour for any work, i quickly ordered the $2/month package and scheduled for them to show up friday afternoon, so that i could arrange with work to be out for a few hours so i could be there to let the tech in. then i left a few messages with the super to arrange the gate to the side entrance to be opened.

my frustration is compounded by the fact that during this entire time, i'd have to use my corporate-sanctioned verizon wireless cell phone in my apartment, which has atrocious reception. i can occasionally get 1 or 2 bars out of 5 of coverage if i was close to a window, and my most stable reception area is by the bathroom window. this meant that anytime i had to make or answer a cal, i would step into the bathtub, which if it wasn't dry, i would teeter on the bathtub edges. if it was warm enough outside, i would open the window and stick my head and right arm out the window, leaning on the nine inch bay ledge precariously until i resigned to standing in the moist tub, leaning into the window. this would, at most, guarantee 4-5 minutes of okay quality before the call would drop, which would beat the 40 seconds or so by the living room windows i could kinda sit on.

this cell phone also doesn't alert me when i have voice mail until about 3 hours after the fact, without as much giving a ring beforehand with the poor coverage in my apartment. this coverage proved to be one big problem that friday afternoon as i got home at 1, the phone tech arrived at 3 and the gate was locked. after frantically calling the super and the property management (only to encounter either voice mail or pure digital static), i resigned to let him see if he could repair the internal wiring and after moving the fridge and stove around to trace the wire, the tech had to leave and i dragged my sorry arse back to work.

over the next few days, i decided to get the super first to arrange a time first before getting any technicians involved. meanwhile, i used my lack of dialtone to leverage myself from having to pay anything up until i actually have service or decide to disconnect. a few co-workers told me that they had to fight for a long time themselves for service, or they gave up and went with a 2nd cell phone since it was cheaper. even though i was tempted at this point, the last thing i wanted to do was start rotating between the various cellular providers to find if they had the same coverage than verizon wireless. unfortunately, in case i need to do a quick dialup to work in an emergency, a landline would provide the most stable means to connect via modem to work, so i had to tough it out.

towards the end of january, work had become much busier, heading towards our year-end, so i had to focus more on the efforts at the office, which ironically enough, was going to have a phone upgrade of their own soon, meaning that i'd be not only battling service at home, but dealing with the headaches of co-ordinating the upgrade of our existing PBX and voicemail service along with the switch of long distance providers. the last thing i needed was to induce further stress, so i aimed to focus on one thing at a time.

up until this point, i was bemused and low key with the entire affair, but after one call from home with me out by the brooklyn heights promenade making the call, i had had enough. the next morning, i called the super again and this time, he answered, saying he was available at anytime. called at&t with the full story up until this point and they said friday afternoon, which was all right with the super. of course, friday was fiscal year close, meaning i had to negotiate my absence since nothing could really go wrong at work that day that could cost any last minute deals.

friday morning presented a scary omen: my email pager went for a swim in the toilet after falling off my belt. after mild debate about retrieving it from the unused bowl, i fished it out and found out it had shorted out completely. at the time, i took this to be potential karma, whereby the loss of one service would be the dawn of a new service. after arranging whatever it would normally receive to my regular email, i scampered home, where two definite brooklynites awaited. within the first minute, they had completely dissected my apartment as being wired totally wrong, any previous tech had no idea what they were doing and they threatened to leave if they couldn't get immediate access to the box. hiding my astonishment, i attempted to call the super whilst they fiddled with what they could inside but with no luck, i shrugged and suggested we try the gate in case it was already open.

it wasn't, but the super showed up at that time, and let us all downstairs, where i saw the old grey box with a smaller one dangled right by it. the basement was like a farmhouse basement, with exposed stone, little light and various tools and abandoned furniture propped against the walls. a handful of phonewires came from the pole behind the yard, with the rest tunneling from underground. the techs, who were upfront good guys, traced the cabling down and one of them was constantly on the phone with their supervisor, who was apparently driving around closeby with their paycheques, which was another distraction. however, they couldn't solve the problem, explicitly demonstrating the fact that the interior wiring was intact, but the verizon had completely fucked over the box, mislabelling wires and leaving contacts exposed to the humidity. the super and the techs recommended to me (at the same time) to drop at&t altogether and switch purely to verizon, even though they were screwing up and provide horrible customer service. at this point, i had to think it over, so i let everyone go, although not without a bit of excitement after all the paperwork was left in the basement after the super had left, meaning the two guys were running around trying to find him before they decided to rewrite everything. meanwhile, i trudged back to work, deciding how to play the endgame.

i decided to give at&t one last chance, since i didn't want to get a new number altogether (although i still didn't know if the no lady had that number) and i didn't want to start the process all over again. fortunately, the techs had given an oral report about the entire situation up the chain, so when i called, they had the full history. i stated point blank that this was at&t's thing to lose without any payment, so a rush order was sent to verizon to get their act together for saturday. another call to the super was placed and he was all ready to hang around in the morning and leave the gate keys with me for the afternoon. no problems had happened in the office and one last sale creeped in, meaning that the year could be closed and everyone hit a nearby bar, where i sucked back about 4 beers in one hour, requiring good quality pizza to soak up the booze before i lost my rudder.

saturday morning, quarter to nine and i'm buzzed awake to let the tech in. the super answers the phone and he's in quickly, allowing the tech downstairs (where he gave the usual "i don't know what the previous guys did, but they messed up..." act) and allowing me to stare blankly at my computer when marko messages me to tell me the news about the space shuttle. at around half past eleven, the tech comes back up and says that the wires weren't tagged properly (like the at&'t guys said) and he rewired it, so it was up to the programming station to change something at their end, stating i should have a dialtone by 5pm.

....and by noon, the phone rang, with verizon confirming that everything was kosher like a pickle. after ringing back and forth between the celly, i was relieved, although considering the horrible news over texas, my happiness was muted.

so's the sound quality since both me and anyone at the other end have to speak up to make proper convo, so maybe this affair ain't quite over yet. meanwhile, habits are hard to drop since when my mom made the inaugural call, i end up sitting by the bathtub whilst talking. i briefly thought about getting a new phone to see if that would help, but since i had brought a test phone from work to try it at home in case my actual phone died and the test phone had the same problems, i didn't think it'd help that much.

maybe in the future, i'll do a proper switch over so that i don't have telco versus telco versus me when problems arise, but for now, i just want to deal and allow me to not worry about hanging half outside the building to barely hear a word when i order food. i will not die to starve, but i do like having people reach me since i'm still on my own, sorta, down here and the human voice relays much that can be seen in mere words.

meanwhile, i have to find a new pager, preferrably the blackberry since that's the one i can sync my contacts with ease and i don't have to worry about deleting messages by accident, like those P.O.S. motorolas. it'll be a while before i am permitted to get ahead in life.

...and the moral of this story is never diss bell canada for crappy service again, since it's nowhere near as factitious as the baby bells down here are. yikes