New modem installed!

Had a sleep-in this morning but as soon as I switched on my beloved very old telephone (without internet connection) it rang. First I didn't hear anything since the coffee machine was doing its grinding noise, and I also had two cats swirling around my legs waiting impatiently for their breakfast. Yes, we have our routines.

First step was to connect the phone to electricity, since it has a battery time equal to...well...my patience with technology.

Second step was to realize it was the person from the internet provider who called and asked how it went with the new modem. Ha, I hadn't unpacked it and the old one was disconnected. Disaster! I need my morning coffee and a cig while reading up on news and stuff on the net. I'm afraid I was a bit rude to her.

So we agreed she would call back in 15 minutes. She called back in about 3 hours, hmmm. But in the meantime I connected the new modem all by myself, tap on shoulder. Both computers connected without much problem, but the tiny little new telephone didn't cooperate. Tiny telephone, and no thick fingers, but a password as long as my arm, switching between capital letters, numbers and whatsit. But after almost having thrown out the telephone from the window (not really, I'm too cheap for that) I managed to get it right.

Then she called back again from the provider, asking if I wanted to switch to glass fiber, that thing I didn't know about before but now had found and sent the number through. The thing is, that if things work, why change it? I was told that they needed to send some gadget, but free of charge, and then I would have to do the installation again. This is when I halted and after she checked how much bandwidth I have with the current new modem, we agreed on that it's fine and more than enough for my usage. I also apologized for my rudeness this morning.

The last thing that I needed to do was to send back the 5-year-old modem (I so wonder what they are gonna use it for?), so I packed it up together with all the cabling, adapters and what-have-you in the carton box in which they sent the new one in, complete with tape around in, address and something called a "RMA-No" (Return of Modem Ancient?) and went to the post office. I was surprised to learn it only cost 7 francs. I was expecting to see some of the rebate I negotiated vanish into thin air, but for a new modem and apparently better connection, I was happy to pay.

All is well that ends well.