In case you have been wondering where ToastyFrog has been for the past couple of days, we were victimized by Verizon and friends. Again. Greystork, who generously hosts my blog because my webserver is too ancient to properly handle it and I’m too busy studying to learn to use Apache so I can build myself a new one, is switching his DSL service from Verizon to SpeakEasy. Neither of whom, apparently, can read a calendar.

First, Verizon disconnected his service a day early. So he waited patiently (which, to tell the truth, is something he’s not quite as good at as when I first knew him… maybe he’s turning into an American!) for an entire day without Internet service. And then, frustratingly enough, another one.

When he arranged all of this over a month ago he told SpeakEasy, his new provider, that his job depends on his ability to telecommute so he needed to make sure he got the connecting and disconnecting done in a timely manner. Of course, they totally understood, and they made sure to schedule it all properly, ‘way in advance, so that it would go without a hitch. “Properly,” in this case, and “without a hitch,” being apparently somewhat loosely defined as “within a month or so of when your Verizon disconnect occurs.” Because it seems they aren’t planning to turn his service on until December 1.

Everything is set up and ready to go. There’s just a little switch that needs to be moved to the proper position to activate the DSL connection that’s already in place. I guess that these highly trained little-switch-moving technicians are in great demand. A whole month in the planning, and still it’s going to take a whole ‘nother month to move the little switch that makes the electrons start tumbling down the waiting, empty pipe into Greystork’s house.

So we did some crawling around in the attic and rearranging of cables and furniture and such, totally disrupting poor Eilonwy’s bedroom in the process, and now Greystork’s server lives here too. Which doesn’t solve his telecommuting problem, but at least now his e-mail is within a couple of miles of him, instead of stuck out there in the ether somewhere with no place to land.