Settling In… Sort Of.

It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed up through an entire night without any sleep—usually I just end up crawling into bed exhausted between three and five in the morning, like it’s routine—but I did it last night, and managed it all without getting anything done.

Haha.

There are still boxes, and I still have to move some things around to make them fit better/look nicer, but at least everything is here. I have plants, too… although that one looks kind of wilted.

Over the past week, we had what I like to call the Big Effing Problem of Doom. Our breaker blew for the apartment, only I wouldn’t have known it so soon if I hadn’t called the power company. But when I looked outside and saw that all of the lights in the hallway were still on, I knew something was up, and I’m glad I didn’t wait for it to come on and waste who knows how long of a time.

So, guy on phone tells me to locate the electric room, which just so happens to be next door (I like living in a corner apartment with no one to my left). He tells me to trip the breaker, which I do. The power comes on.

For about five minutes.

I do it again. The power dies again, and I call him back. I get a different guy this time, one who tells me that if I keep tripping the breaker and the breaker is bad, that it will catch fire. I live on the third floor and don’t want to be caught in a fire with an infant, so I listen to him. He tells me that the breaker is probably bad and that our maintenance guy should take care of it. I thank him and hang up the phone, then I call the maintenance guy.

I explain to him exactly what happened, and he says he’ll get right on it in a couple minutes when he’s finished with what he’s doing. Cool, I think. His wife calls me not two minutes later to tell me that they can’t do it, it’s not something they take care of, they can call a guy first thing Monday morning (it’s Saturday), and they’ll make an appointment—like anyone else it could be for that day or four days from then.

I’m just… gah! How am I supposed to go from Saturday to Thursday with a one-year old in the Florida heat with no air conditioning, no stove, no refrigerator, no lights? I tell Joe and he says he’s going to call her back.

Finally we get them up here, show them that our switch is indeed very hot in comparison to all the others, and they say that even if they could replace it, that’s not the room they would do it from, and they don’t have access to the main room. They come inside, she calls the power company, he takes a look at our air and remembers something.

There may or may not be a problem with our wiring for the AC-unit, based on the fact that someone muttered something about it once before the last tenants were there. He has a book downstairs that he can read up on. Lovely.

Well, we figured out that if we turned off our air, the breaker wouldn’t blow again. It was still ridiculously hot, though. This meant that either it was the breaker, and turning off the air just kept that much energy from zapping it, or else it was the air, and the breaker was fine. Or both. So really, nothing got resolved, but we did have our stove, microwave and refrigerator.

The guy on the phone said he was sorry for telling me the wrong thing, yadda-yadda, an electrician would come out and look at it. We lived with two fans for a while, and then someone did come out, figured out with his handy-dandy tools that there was nothing wrong with the AC-wiring, and replaced that breaker.

Right in the room next door.

Okay, whatever. So he replaces the breaker and I can use my air, but he says he’ll come back in a couple days to do it again, because the warehouse (read: Home Depot) didn’t have the part he needed. So he comes back, and all is peachy.

But wait! Joe’s phone broke the other day. Had to get that replaced and activated, and stupid information transferred because Verizon’s online tech support is USELESS.

Since my Internet has also been acting up ever since I started using the service a week or two ago, I can provide you with an example.

My modem only lasts so long. If I leave it on overnight, even if my computer is off, when I go to turn on the Internet, it won’t boot up correctly. I have to reset it nearly every time I want to turn my computer back on, since I probably use it in twelve-hour cycles (or more, like last night. Whoops). Sometimes my connection goes in the middle of something I’m doing, and I lose information. This makes me want to strangle people things.

I call the service number, and here’s something funny: when they ask me to input my land-line (don’t have one) or data number (goody), and I don’t enter it, I have to follow a series of prompts in order to determine who I am. If I do know where the number is and I put it in, the automated machine… hangs up on me.

I figure this out and do the prompts instead, and they really should have the option of using the keypad OR voice prompts AT LEAST, because the damned thing didn’t register what I was saying half the time, kept interrupting me so of course it didn’t, and I KNOW how to enunciate properly like the good Canadian I most certainly am not. XD

When I finally get to the end of the line and am put on hold, the machine comes back on to tell me that due to the large volume of calls, they can’t handle my request at this time, and I can hang up and try back later. Not, “remain holding,” no! IT HUNG UP ON ME AGAIN.

I decide, “Fuck it!” And lo and behold, my Internet is working again. For a bit.

The ‘net goes down again, so I call back. This guy walks me through the basics even though I am speaking to him in technical terms, and even I have trouble understanding him, and I speak perfect gibberish, ask anyone. He tells me—get this—to switch the ends of my phone cable. To take the same cord, in the same ports, but switch it around.

Tch.

I do that, and still nothing. Since that is apparently all he could hand me, he sends my “ticket number” to the central office, where they will run some very important, all-knowing tests. Sometimes they can fix the problem from the main office (since his diagnostics told him I was having a problem with my connection), and sometimes if they really have to, they’ll send a tech support guy out by appointment. If that happens, they’ll call me, but in the meantime I have this nifty little number should I wish to call back.

“How long should I wait before I call back?” I ask.

“Oh… forty-eight hours.”

…

Okay, what the hell is wrong with this picture? If I were going to wait that long, I DON’T NEED THE DAMNED NUMBER! If they can’t run tests in two days, there is something clearly wrong! I am paying for this service, dammit. I am under contract. I paid for this shitty equipment.

I hang up and fight with my modem, because now the stupid wire and its stupid clip are stuck. Finally after much tugging, I find the Magic Spot of Applied Pressure, and it’s out. I realize that dumb thing Joe brought home for me from my dad’s place is just a router. So I put the wires back into the modem.

Lo and behold, it worked!

You know what this means, don’t you? It means no one is going to bother with my ticket now. Which sucks, because it went out again this morning, and has been going out like this EVER SINCE I GOT IT!!

…

On a brighter side, Johnny is toddling around now. I’m going to call him Johnny Walker.