November 09, 2002
Finally, after something like FIVE YEARS of waiting, someone has come through and offered high-speed internet access to my home. I still appreciate the great service I got from the folks at MyGuard, but I'm happy to no longer be restricted to dial-up speeds.Thanks to antiquated PSTN cabling in my neighborhood, I couldn't even get 56k connections before -- the best I could do was 28.8, which left me very firmly stuck in the late 1990's, rather than in the 21st century where cutting-edge public figures like myself belong. I pestered Qwest over and over and over about getting DSL, but that was in vain (even though neighbors of mine CAN get DSL -- apparently I'm just a few dozen feet past the limit of the line), and oddly enough my employer did not buy my story about how important an ISDN connection would be for my productivity when working from home. (Or if they did buy it, they bought it with currency other than the kind that would have had them picking up the $100 per month tab.)
Anyway, AT&T finally delivered, so I signed up for broadband with the corporate giant, the original information-age anti-trust behemoth, the mother of all Bells, and I'm planning to have them replace Qwest as my local phone service provider as well. Hey, they invested in the cabling out my way, and Qwest didn't, so I feel OBLIGED to hand down both reward and punishment in true capitalist form. That's ultimately a more powerful vote than the ballot-box kind in our society. Money talks.
To celebrate, I read several back-issues of my favorite CrossGen title in one "lookit-how-fast-it-loads" sitting. Ahhh... the sweet click-clickity sound of productivity swirling down the ol' broadband toilet.