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My free AT&T WorldNet CD finally arrived this past Friday, and by Saturday afternoon I was back online. Well, more or less. The sign-up process wasn’t exactly intuitive, the first phone number I dialed was busy, and the backup number may or may not be a local call. The beauty of a cable modem, aside from its speed, is that it’s always on. You never have to watch the clock or worry that you’re online during peak hours. You pay one flat rate, receive unlimited hours, and it makes life much easier. AT&T doesn’t like making life easier. At the end of the month, I need to call them to cancel the dial-up service or they will automatically rebill my account. And yet they’ve given me no definite date when my cable modem service will be restored. They have told me practically nothing. What little I know is pieced together from reports from other disgruntled customers at the State College, PA ATTBI Forum at DSLreports. I learned more there in five minutes than I did in an entire weekend of calling AT&T’s so-called customer support.

DSL is looking better every day. That, or moving.

I spent the past weekend cleaning my apartment, although the scrub-until-it-shines-and-your-fingers-bleed clean I had at first envisioned gave way pretty early on to just getting the real problem areas covered. I washed dishes, mopped my kitchen floor, cleared tables of debris, filled plastic bags with recycling, and did seven (count ’em, seven) loads of laundry. I felt good. I did the New York Times crossword puzzle Sunday evening, sipped my instant cappuccino and watched TV, and felt like I had accomplished something. That’s really all it takes to keep me happy. If I set goals and stick to them, I feel better about myself, even when it’s something as mundane as cleaning a messy apartment.

This week, I need to finish my Christmas shopping, get a haircut, and buy my bus ticket home for the holidays. I also need to speak to someone about providing me with automobile insurance, since my parents and I will be buying a new car sometime at the end of next week. Geico has already turned me down, so I plan on phoning the local Honda dealer (I’m leaning toward buying the four-door Civic EX) and seeing if they can recommend someone. I need to get this squared away before I leave for New York on Saturday. That way, hopefully, I can actually be driving by the start of the new year. There are so many little ways my life will be easier once I own a car.

I don’t think I can express, at least not in words, how truly and terribly bored I am right now. I think, on those rare mornings when I oversleep and come in late, that my body is trying to tell me not to come in at all.

Every time I think AT&T has possibley redeemed themselves, I learn something new, something that customer support forgot to tell me, didn’t know, or lied to me about. Apparently, customers in State College and surrounding areas are not being transitioned to the new AT&T broadband network after all. Our accounts will be sold to Adelphia, a cable provider headquartered in North Central Pennsylvania, assuming of course that ongoing negotiations ever end. No one has called to tell me this—in fact, AT&T’s website still boasts that the customer transition has been successful—and I only know because I went in search of information online and found customers just as disgruntled as I am. I’m starting to think that maybe I should just swap my cable modem for DSL through Verizon. The price is comparable, it’s available, and their customer support can not be any worse.

Someone just tried to drink from the emergency eyewash fountain across the hall from my office. That I find this amusing enough to share should give you a sense of how unbelievably bored I am.