Yesterday I signed up for DSL. I'm supposed to be connected on 9/28. Stay tuned for details. I've been researching DSL v. Cable Modem all summer -- knowing that my current ISP account expires at the end of this month. AT&T is currently running a promo -- and Bob and I know several people using @home -- so I asked around and decided that we'd try that.

I had a list of questions, like about adding a 2nd computer and about remote access so I visited their completely worthless webpage and realized that I had even more questions. I wrote everything down and phoned them assuming that I would sign up with them.

First I get vaulted into the AT&T standard phone tree from hell. If you have any AT&T service of any kind, you know about this tree. I patiently press 1, then 2, then 1 again, then 1 again, and so on until I get put on hold. I'm a potential new customer, shouldn't they be trying to impress me? If it's this bad signing up what's going to happen when my connection goes dead?

I finally got a sales person who was completely unable to answer my questions and at my request transferred me to a more technical person, more on hold music, then the technical person is in service and tells me they aren't supposed to deal with sales calls. She interrogates me as to why I've been transferred and somewhat begrudgingly agrees to answer my questions. She proceeds to tell me that they don't support computer networks or remote access. hm.

Of course, I'd already had enough 10 minutes earlier so I thank her and call QWest and set up DSL.