Technology Woes

Yes - You might have noticed that I am barely blogging. No. Nothing is wrong. In fact I have a ton of thoughts on the Israeli constitution, the Annapolis Conference, Global Warming, and what have you. I have lots of blogs in my mind. But no time to write.

Why - you may ask? I am crazy busy. I am also barely sleeping. And I will tell you the reason. Yes Doctor, I have a problem with my bandwidth.

The story started when I agreed to give webcasts for Torah in Motion, a wonderful intelligent Torah organisation in Toronto. To use the technology,I had to upgrade my bandwidth. That's fine.

I called the phone company, and my Internet provider to upgrade. They told me that it needs requested in writing signed and faxed. "Faxed? But I don't own a fax! Can I use email?? - No! Only Fax. So fine, I used the neighbours fax. 24hrs passed. No upgrade was evident. I called them. "We didn't get it. Fax it gain!" they said. I had to fax it in 3 times.

That was 10 days ago!

I'll cut a long story short. They upgraded. My uploading is fine. My downloading is faster than the standard (yipee!) BUT there is still some problem with my video connection. It freezes and delays and is non-functional and I have spent at least 20 hours on the phone to Barak (the Internet provider), Bezek and you name it! Every evening I have been on the phone for hours (yes, hours!) with the techie people and crawling on the floor reconnecting wires and modems and what have you. It has totally absorbed all my blogging time, sleep time, class preparation time, and my sanity!!!!

At last, today they are sending a technician! Now they are saying that it may be the modem, or the phone connections in my house.

I am actually really looking forward to my webcast (this evening) but technology is driving me nuts.

And boy - do I hate those automatic call systems they are simply infuriating!

One of the frustrations of technology mess-ups is the feeling of helplessness. If my bicycle breaks, I know what is wrong even if I cannot fix it. My vacuum cleaner broke, so I opened it and I could at least diagnose where the problem was. But with computers, it is all a black box. I haven't the first clue how the Internet works, never mind how my computer could be experiencing a download/upload problem.

But let's look at the bright side.
I know what ping is.
I know how to do a trace to an address on my computer.
I have some idea about PPoE and routers and modems and bandwidth.

It is all a learning process (sigh!) I guess.

I'll be back soon!

-alex