Around 9:45 the phone rings, it’s the Bresnan dispatcher. She tells me that someone will be at my house in 15 minutes. 5 minutes later the cable guy arrives, sets up the cable (after I remind him that I signed up for HBO and Showtime AND that I should pay him up front) and leaves. All’s well so far, I just need to wait for the cable modem installer, the cable modem software installer and the Phone Company and all my stuff will be set up. I turn on the TV and surf the new channels that have been installed for me.

Around 10am my doorbell rings, a guy with a Bresnan shirt is at the door. He says, "cable modem?" I say, "yup, come with me!" We go up to the room where the computer is, and of course we hit the first problem, there is no cable jack in this room and I rent, so he can’t install a jack without approval from the land lord. No problem, "I tell him that he isn’t leaving until the cable modem is installed." He tells me to move my computer to cable jack. A little frustrated I agree and begin to unplug and move my computer. He goes out side for a bit (testing the line?) and comes back in, makes a cable, plugs it into the cable modem, turns it on and says, "four green lights… looks like your running." He then leaves.

I sit down at my computer as the receipt that he has left me has all the TCP/IP stack information. I begin to plug all the information in to my computer and I reboot. When I come back up I go to Internet Explorer and rush to MP3.COM to download an MP3, a friend of mine was getting 40kb/sec from that site so I decided to see how I would fare. I anxiously searched the page for any downloadable MP3 not caring about genre or artist; I just wanted to test the speed! I find an MP3, click the link, select the save location and 14kb/sec. 9kb/sec… 7kb/sec… 5… 5kb/sec?!!? All right, not to despair, maybe MP3.COM is having some problems. All I need to do is find something big to download, I know, I’ll go get the latest version of Netscape. I rush to Netscape’s site and find the latest version of Netscape and being the download. About 2 seconds later it’s done. I look at the properties of the file. The file size is under 1 meg. It’s an active installer just like IE5 (just a side note, but it still ticked me off the Netscape would copy Microsoft). I remember a site my friend sent me with tons of links to Star Wars parodies. I go to that site and begin clicking on links to try and download QuickTime videos. I look at the transfer speed and I’m averaging 5kb/sec on anything I download from this site. I decide that maybe all of these servers are just extremely slow. By this time a friend of mine has shown up, the same friend who has had great experience with cable modems and he tells me to go to cdrom.com and download something because he gets the fastest transfers from that site. I go to that site; still I can’t get anything better then 7kb/sec.

I decide to give up for now and remove all my settings and let the software guy come and install everything. It’s possible (not likely) that I did something wrong. The software guy shows up 10:30am and adjusts all my TCP/IP settings (exactly as I had them) and then asks if I want him to install the software for me. I sort of shrug and then he says, "It always locks on me when I install the software." "Never mind, " I say." "I’ll do it myself." With that he leaves. Dreading what experience I’m going to have now, I jump to gamesdomain.com and grab a game demo. 7kb/sec. I start getting really agitated and storm around the house. I then settle down, and install the @home CD. Now everything is slow and has the @home logo all over it.

I unplug the cable modem, I reset the modem, I take it off the t and run it straight to the well, I swap cables, I run it to my hub and then to my computer but nothing will make this thing go any faster.

I call technical support. "Here we go," I think, "mind numbing trouble shooting techniques and then a trip to second level help." I decide I can handle it so I got through almost right away to a guy (don’t remember his name) and he has me do a tracert to netscape.com. I do this and this and then e-mail him the results. He also has me run the @home Netdiag tool which allows @home to view information about your PC and run upstream and downstream tests on your system. He does that and then tells me that someone is running an FTP or WEB server in my area and I’ll just have to wait while they track it down. He then tells me that someone will call me at some point. I ask when, but he just says sometime. I let him off the phone what that answer for some reason. I sit down and relay the story to my girlfriend. As I tell the story I become more and more mad. "It’s not my problem some one is running an ftp site, and if I read the @home instructions right, they can trace that right away with a portscan." I decide that the answer I was given is not the right answer. So I call back.

I call back and get through pretty quickly to another guy (can’t remember his name either) and explain the story. He tells me my line from the house to the telephone pole needs to be replaced and someone will be out later that night or in the morning to do that. I am always satisfied with someone saying they are going to replace a part when something isn’t working. I let it go at that.