House Project: DSL; Water

Frontier Telephone made an appointment to install DSL between 1:00 and 5:00 PM today, assuming that it was possible. They said that if something came up that made it impossible, they would give me a call. Just to make sure that the message didn't get lost by my somewhat absent-minded son, I gave them my work number. At least voicemail would get it.

So I took the afternoon off work. I figured that there were other tasks that I could be working on up at the new house while I was waiting for them.

Well, I removed the lead filters from their fancy stainless steel and very expensive housing. Sure enough, they were clogged with silt, and the water pressure improved quite noticeably afterwards. After filling the tub a couple of times with hot water, the hot water is now coming as clear as the cold water--pretty much indistinguishable from city water.

Just to make sure, I took a water sample to be tested for lead and iron. Assuming that everything is within safe levels, this will probably be the last test that I do for several months.

About 2:30 PM, I suddenly asked myself, "Maybe I should call, and make sure that they are still supposed to be here today." So I called--and customer service informed that they had discovered that they could not give me DSL, after all, but, "They called the phone number you gave them, but no one answered, and there was no answering machine or voicemail." This is nonsense. My office phone has voicemail. The chance that my employer's voicemail was inoperative when they called is essentially zero. It is time to call BitSmart; SpeedyQuick Networks, the other wireless internet provider that believed that they could provide service, decided that they couldn't.

I will say, it is very quiet and beautiful up there. The clouds were drifting back and forth across the Sun. Big cumulus clouds like a Western movie; subtle shadows across the mountains. Very nice.