Success! I've Got Phone - The Saga Resolves

Hello my readers - friends met in person and on-line. The biggest news is ... WE HAVE PHONE! Astonishing, I know, and of course not without a few quirks and a bit of trauma, but we have phone. The tech came out yesterday around 11:00 am and it took until almost 2:00 pm until the wiring was complete and the phones rang with a test run. Apparently our copper wiring was too corroded to fix, so the company determined that switching us to a fiber optic cable would be better all around. 

We now have fiber optic cable from the pole in our back 
yard to the house and then into the "black box". I actually 
own some fiber optic cable myself for a beading/sculptural 
project I started almost two decades ago. I'd still love to 
get that project completed and powered. It would and 
will be outstanding once the structure and lighting 
is complete. 

That was still up in the air a bit, however, because the tech needed to fine out how to get the cable into the house and where it needed to hook up. That took more than 45 minutes of exploration, trial and error, but eventually we discovered the place where the wire would enter the house, as well as where it could be connected to the routing box (which needed an electrical plug). It was a tight squeeze for the wire in a couple of places, but it managed to get where it needed to. Then the new box got powered up and remotely programmed, and the tech tried several test calls. All of them rang phones in the house, so success! 

Fiber optic cable is super kewl stuff. With a power 
source, it carries that power through the cable to the 
terminal point without heat, so faster delivery without 
the need for a ton of insulation. It's also much more 
durable than the old copper wiring, and more flexible. 

Except ... nothing really comes easy in this house. I decided, shortly before 5:00 pm, that I wanted to try the phones once again and make sure that everything was working properly. I also wanted to check our security alarm and see if that was something that I could reset on my own (of course it's not - it requires a tech to come out and reset it so I'll be dealing with a different scheduling issue next week *sigh*). 

For my non-USA friends, the "sound of crickets" is a 
saying meaning there isn't any sound at all, that things 
are so quiet you could hear a cricket chirp. That certainly 
wasn't what I wanted when I was testing out the phones 
yesterday. 

But, I called home from my cell phone, and crickets ... no ringing. I checked the various phones, no dial tone. I looked at the newly installed box, and there were lights, so, not knowing what else to do, I once again called CentiryLink. I called the Fiber division, which were the ones who had scheduled my tech from earlier. They shifted me over to someone who checked the lines remotely, and apparently the lines were working fine. But I had no phone. GRRRR. Then we got disconnected I wasn't fond of the person I was speaking to anyway, so I called them again. 

My life does seem to be one large "Hurry Up and Wait" 
event, but eventually we get there. So much depends on 
the person on the other end of the phone call. In this case, 
the first person was a bit of a PITA but the second person 
was marvelous. 

This time I got a lovely woman who was actually helpful  when I explained the situation. It was another 20 minutes on the phone, but eventually they sent me down to the box and asked me to unplug it. I did, and waited for a full minute before plugging it back in, then we waited while it restarted its' programming. Finally all three lights were illuminated. I tried phoning my land line again, and success! I had ringing phones. I thanked the nice lady and started trying to figure out why our portable phone wasn't ringing when the stationary phones were. After some trials and error (and checking the manual on-line) I realized that DH had removed the phone connection from the base station. Plugging that cable back in did the trick, and all phones are now operational. 

I like our Attorney General. I think he's done a good job 
for the state. I'll be submitting documents to him regarding 
a different phone issue I'm having at the shop. I scanned all 
of the documents into my computer yesterday, and I'll get 
everything put together and submitted to him ASAP. 

Now to get my security system to join the pack - LOL. But ... one step forward. In my "spare" time while waiting for appointments and between this and that, I was working on my complaint to the Attorney General for my shop's AT&T account. I got the multitude of documents scanned, and I was almost ready to send their form along with those multitude of documents, when I hit the wrong key on my keyboard and lost the whole thing to cyberspace trash hell. CRAP. So, I get to recreate that whole form, then attach the photographs, and send it onward. I should move the photos to my dropbox so that I can do this on the laptop at the shop if I end up with time today. I'll try to do that when I'm finished with this. It's a LOT of photos - lots of bills that I'm disputing. 

I've Got a Phone again! Yippee!!! LOL

Never any rest - LOL. But, hell. I've got phone! Things could be worse, right? We'll be at the garden center on the far south side of town tomorrow morning when they open. DH always has multitudes of ideas and lists of plants he wants to check out. I'll be spending more time outside than I want, so I've learned over the years - dress warmly. The garden is starting to green up, though, and I'm sure it'll be a lovely year. My Lantanas this year will be in a different bed, one that will get more light, so we should get some good bloom from them. At least, that's the goal. So, have an excellent weekend and I'll be back on Monday. Slava Ukraini.