Surfing Fine

Last night DeeDude picked up our new Comcast modem and I began the process of installing it. From what everybody said it was a no-brainer. Well. It wasn’t exactly, but eventually the process smoothed out and we had broadband really high speed internet access with Comcast in about an hour or so.

Right out of the box I reached for the instructions which didn’t turn out to be the right thing to do. The first thing it said was, “Connect your modem”. My question was, “To What?”. I read further in the instructions and it got into a bunch of fine print stuff that nobody ever reads (nor did I) and decided I’d better call them. No phone number. So, I went to my computer at the back of the house and via dial up, called up www.comcast.net looking for a telephone number. Nothing. Nada. Zip. They evidently don’t want to talk to you a whole lot. Lots of forums, but the pages were turning so slowly I didn’t want to spend all night trying to figure it out. So, I called 411 and got directory assistance, which also took an inordinately long time to answer the phone. Maybe they’ve been cutting back too.

So, phone number in hand I called up Comcast and was on hold while I took the time to look at all the other stuff in the box. There was this CD that said on the cover, “Feed this to your computer.” I looked at it some. I remembered what people had said that it was all a real no-brainer operation and decided to put the CD into DeeDude’s computer. That’s where the REAL instructions were. So, with pictures and real simple and easy to understand steps it walked us through the hook up process. And, it was pretty easy.

Except, it didn’t work. So, I called Comcast again and this time stayed on the line long enough to talk to a really nice guy who took all of 2 minutes to fix us up. He had to do something technical from his end.

Then, the next step was to get all the computers in the house working. We have the 2 desktops and a wireless laptop. So, I unhooked the modem from DeeDude’s computer and hooked it up to the Linksys router. Then, I hooked the router up to DeeDude’s computer. Mine was still hooked up. Nothing worked. So, I called Linksys and while I waited on the phone did as the taped message suggested and went online to their website. I had to unhook the router and put the modem back on DeeDude’s computer to do this, but once I was there we downloaded some quick hook-me up no-brainer program that, once I’d unhooked the modem and we no longer had internet access, was able to still run and tell us what to do. Step by easy step.

I still wanted a cigarette and a rum and coke….but, not as bad as before.

Finally, the 2 desktops worked and it was time for DeeDude to get his laptop working. I have absolutely no experience with laptops other than I don’t want to use one (I don’t like how the keyboards are laid out or the way the mouse works. Plus, there is the fact that I don't have a lap.), so he took care of configuring that one. The Linksys security key was a gazillion letters and numbers long and you had to enter it 2 times and that was a little stressful, but at the end of it all 3 computers are working now. Very, very good.