Are you using Vista or XP?

There's the question again from tech support for my ISP. About two months ago, Telus blew a line running into town and since then my internet has been up and down and down and up. A couple days ago while trying to trace some co-ax in my house, I thought I knocked something lose, as half the lights were out on my cable modem. When I got back from a wedding this weekend, though, it was back up and running. Or at least, it was up and running to the point of connecting to the ISP. But I couldn't get out onto the interweb.

So I called to tell them that their door was closed. Again. And of course, every time I do, they have to walk me through the typical tech support stuff: is it plugged in? Is there a router? Are you connected.

This time, after answering that I was on 10.5, and explaining that was, yes, Mac, I was still asked to open up my command prompt. You mean terminal, right? Yeah, right. Okay. Now type in ipconfig. Well, this is UNIX not DOS, so that doesn't really work. And no, it is not a virus.

Um. Okay, we'll schedule a service technician to come and take a look.

But the problem is at YOUR END. Everything at this end is working fine. Why do I need someone here to trouble shoot YOUR PROBLEM. Grr.

But it appears to be working now. Sort of.