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No longer on the river and, again, an empty nester. Back to living on Fleming Island and making some more friends!

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Contacting you from Uverse

Things have been a bit hectic around here, especially with the comings and goings of the Uverse guys. Sounds like something from outer space, but it's actually from just down the street! It seems ATT has a shop just across Kingsley Avenue near the new entrance to Moosehaven. Good thing it is so handy for the guys to get their equipment, etc.

Because Justin 'needs' more signal strength than my existing service allows, he agreed to cover the cost of upgrading to a faster/better Internet program. We decided that U-Verse was the way to go, and a young lady from church, Erin, was able to help me get set up. Terri, also from church, was extremely instrumental in getting the ball rolling as well, making sure the supervisor for the job was ready for dealing with the likes of me!

My "VIP" status got me set for installation on Tuesday between 1:00 and 3:00. I made sure I was upstairs from the pool and had my desk plus surrounding area clear of stuff to allow the fellow ready access to my equipment. That, however, did not prove to be the work area---oh, my! 

The first order of business, once the guy, Scott, arrived closer to 4:30, after being contacted about the delay, was for him to do something at the terminal out at the street. Then, he had to come inside and locate ALL the phone jacks in the house. This meant he had to have access to them first. Oh, boy! I had to wrest furniture around the spare room, which had been moved in there rather indiscriminately to make room across the hall. Oh, heavenly days! Not only that, but there were three phone jacks mounted in there!!! The previous owners had their office back in that room, accounting for all the jacks. 

Then, in Justin's room, climbing between plastic bins which had been pulled apart in the search of my extra set of keys (he later found them in a pants pocket once he got to his father's house!!!), and move a bookcase out of the way. I don't work that hard in a month, and did it all in one day!

(As an aside: Scott had told me that his son had also requested to come back home to live, so was sympathetic to my situation of living in upset. The difference is---Scott lives in a one bedroom apartment! That is going to be tough.)

Scott got it hooked up, leaving the modem device on the bookshelf in Justin's room, which saved running cable anywhere, nearly impossible to do so without it showing. See, I have concrete block walls here, so it is difficult to add modern conveniences such as Ethernet cable or whatever it is. He got my computers connected with the new modem info, etc. and was on his way to yet another job. 
                              
BUT, as I shared with Terri, the signal strength to my little laptop was extremely low, and had trouble connecting at all. I had only two 'bars' of connection at best, more often only one. I found myself lifting my laptop up into the air, like the Lion King lifting Simba to the gods!! Good strong arms for this, or from this...Terri got hold of the supervisor who had Scott turn around and come back to my house. I sure did not expect him due to the lateness of the hour.

                     
Scott brought along a hard-wired booster for Justin to hook-up the next day. Justin had already told me he had a booster which would do the trick, and was wireless but I accepted Scott's device anyway. I felt badly that he had to come back, but while he was here, he got a phone call saying he was not to go to his next appointment. It seems that those in charge of scheduling vastly overbooked the installers and the powers that be wanted to make a point with the schedulers. At the expense of the customers, as I pointed out to Scott. 

My desktop computer worked fine though had a diminished signal and probably my little laptop, used from the bed, would have worked better in the river room or family room, but, we will never know! At least my forearms were getting stronger raising my computer to the signal gods.

More later....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're quite the smart one after all with technology!! You cracked me up when you said you were making a sacrifice!!!! Haha, who wouldn't help anyone doing that!!

Terri T.

Kim Lahaie Day said...

Thanks, Terri, for all the help! As I like to say, it's not what you know, but who you know!

Love and hugs,

Kim