Sweet, Sweet DSL

One of the biggest drawbacks (for me) living in the country is the internet. I love being on the computer, love blogging, facebooking, uploading pictures, playing games...you name it. It has been a frustrating adjustment having to depend on a Sprint data card for "dial-up" access. The signal out here is not the best and it has caused me much stress...I know...I have a really hard life. Last week Alan called me with the best news--DSL is now available in our area! Woo hoo!!! I immediately went online to order it. Tried multiple times, each time getting the message that it was NOT available in my area. I called AT&T MANY times, and each person had a different explanation, but no solution. I plugged in the phone numbers of neighbors to the north, south, east and west of me, all of which either had already placed an order, or were eligible to place an order. So on Saturday I spent all morning with a representative, vowing that I would not hang up the phone until I had DSL ordered. She was finally able to discern that the problem was the new E911 address that had been assigned to our phone number. Hmmm. Available at 5610 but not available at 5578. I convinced her that it was the SAME HOUSE! Wednesday (yesterday), a new phone jack was installed in my office. I had a very busy day yesterday and didn't have time to check it out until late in the afternoon. I was able to connect to the world wide web initially, but when I connected through my router (allowing use of my laptop) I could not connect. I'll try to make a long story short. After several phone calls and attempts, the technicians got me to a point that I could no longer connect AT ALL. Erghh!! My last call (just a few minutes ago) was to attempt getting out of "bridged" mode and at least be able to connect directly to the computer. He said that since I was already in "bridged" mode, let's try it through the router. "Whatever." He had me wire it up again, turn off the modem, restart the computer....yeah, yeah, yeah, like I haven't already tried that. But voila! Immediate connection. Magic! So now I have the desktop purring and can use my laptop as well--at lightning speed--well, at least faster than before. Life is good.