Well, I gave them 48 1/2 hours. I proceeded to call the number the helpdesk wennie told me to call, and none of the options in the automated call routing system matched my query. So, I pressed 1 to report an outage.

I repeated the whole saga to another live person, and he says that in this repair ticket created by the last call, the guy who ended up with it didn’t show any DSL on the line, and closed the ticket without so much as a phone call. Note, I didn’t say no DSL in the account information, because it’s there. They simply didn’t turn it on, and he just was too incompetent to check and see if there SHOULD be DSL on the line.

Now I’m told I must call customer service during regular business hours and have them attempt to turn on DSL again. Maybe it’s time I start a new website. Centurytelsucks.com has a nice ring to it….

It’s been several weeks since my first two encounters with CenturyTel, and there was still no sign of a DSL modem. Friday morning I took the initiative and called them up. “Oh, it’s been active since the first day you called, we just forgot to send the modem. We’ll overnight it. Just give us a call when it arrives and we’ll modify you’re activation date so you don’t get billed for service you didn’t receive”.

Of course in CenturyTel terms, overnighting it means it shows up Tuesday of the next week. I spent most of this evening trying to get it to work. Plugged it in with and without the line filter, at every outlet in my house. Opened a few up even to verify that all 4 wires are connected to the outlets. I bit the bullet and called tech support again. 24 minutes 52 seconds on hold before I finally got a real person. 2 innings in the game missed listening to hold music. Anyway, I fed the phone jockey the answers to her scripted questions before she even finished asking them, and get put on hold again. Tier 2 support picks up after 5 minutes. “You’re all on here, I’ll have to put in a repair ticket. They’ve got a 24-48 response time on repair calls, so you may be without DSL service for another day or two.”

Slow, overpriced DSL and no competent tech support! Yes sir may I have another?

Ugh. Why, oh why can’t I pick my local phone company? (rhetorical question, you don’t have to answer. I know why, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the local govt. regulated phone monopoly.)

The day star surprised me just now. It’s been dark when I arrive at work in the A.M., and when I go home it’s been cloudy/raining for the last week. I walked out into the hall (no window in my cube) and saw sunlight on the floor. For a second I mistook it for a new streetlight outside, until I realized it was too bright to be that. I walked over the glass portal between myself and the big blue room, and saw sky. It was good.

No time to post in the blog right now, for I must continue playing with my shiny new PowerBook.

UPDATE: Okay, so I’ve got a little bit of a break right now while iTunes imports approximately 9GB of music. (what can I say? I like to rip all of my CDs at a high bit rate).

This is definitely the absolute best hardware purchase I have ever made. ever. It took about 10 minutes to learn every tiny facet in the OS X GUI with zero prior experience. Everything simply works. And it’s not like there’s nothing to tweak either. I’ve already customized the hell out of this machine. It’s just that they made it so damn simple to do. My new recommendation for anyone with a little spare cash is to go pick one up now. I put myself about $1200 into debt, but it’s worth every penny.

A few specs off the top of my head:

• 15.2" display
• 1.25 Ghz G4
• 512MB of RAM
• 80GB HDD
• 802.11g
• firewire 400, 800
• usb 2
• bluetooth
• dvd-r/-rw drive
• pccard slot
• ati radeon 9600 with 64MB RAM
• dvi and svideo out
• 10/100/1000 mbps ethernet
• and of course, the sweetest OS ever, OS X

I’ll probably post a screenshot sometime soon. The damn thing just works.