Downtime.

Our DSL is down at Casa de la Wong-Jenson, so our email, blogs, and spirits are down, and it seems to be due to a bureaucratic mix-up rather than a technical problem.

What happened is this: about a month ago, we had an appt for an SBC technician to come to the apartment and test the circuit at our NID. He came a few days early, and, since we were not living in the apartment yet, there was no one to let him in. He leaves a note on the door about needing access.

He does come back on our actual scheduled day, but only to tell us that he is going to be booked up all day with another job and that he'll come back the following morning. Frustrating, but we're glad he's going to show up the next day rather than 3 days later.

Meanwhile, back at the SBC ranch, our order is flagged as in Jeopardy because we, the end user, missed our appointment. This isn't true since it was the technician that canceled/re-scheduled our appointment, but, pff, what did we care since he was coming back the next day?

SBC tech comes back the next day. He installs a drop from the old NID and DSL is functional at our apartment. The peasants rejoice, the pig is slaughtered, the village has a festival for 3 whole days and nights.

Fast-forward to the present day: remember that Jeopardy flag? It was never removed by SBC. Subsequently, our order lingered in nominal Jeopardy for over 30 days, which triggers an alert that the order cannot complete. SBC un-did any work done at the CO. No DSL. Our ISP, Speakeasy, is not notified. The peasants mourn.

What kills me is the inane bureaucratic logic of this procedure. It would've (should've!) taken the same amount of effort to contact Speakeasy to get an update on the order (does the end user still want DSL?) than to issue a work order to an SBC tech to go to the CO and undo what's been done. It stinks.