In Which Nothing Worked · 15 October 2004
Monday
10:00 – France Telecom technician #1 (cranky) arrives after months of flaky France Telecom phone support billed at 0.34€ per minute, saying after a cursory prod and poke in the main phone outlet that this little adjustment to some wire or other is going to make our weeks of unreliable DSL connections go permanently away. You should have called us earlier, he chides.
10:20 – His truck pulls away and, just as it has every 20 minutes since August, the DSL connection goes down.
Tuesday
11:30 – Two motherboard replacements later, iMac starts wigging out, demanding restarts, booting into ROM, even turning random black text in Firefox bright green.
21:35 – Weimaraners dig. They tunnel. They are highly capable earth movers. They’d also rather be out than in. I admit in the face of recurring evidence and a hundred patches and fixes that the ruinously expensive fencing we had put in is about as effective at containing the dogs as an unfurled roll of paper towel. Begin researching alternate containment methods. Buy something from a supplier in Mississippi. It’s guaranteed to work with minimal fuss. Pay a fortune for UPS international, because that’s the only way they ship.
Wednesday
14:00 – TextDrive appears to be undergoing a huge DDOS attack, but it turns out to be a PHP5 bug gone massively wrong.
Thursday
11:00 – France Telecom technician #2 (affable) arrives, and begins cooking up all sorts of complicated schemes, switching lines, changing DSL pins at the main exchange. He seems determined to make it work.
14:10 – Halfway down a rabbit hole of Textpattern code, manage to dump half a cup of tea (milk, sugar) directly into keyboard.
14:40 – Aftertheuseofahairdryereverythingworksexceptthespacebar.
14:45 – Q: ‘Darling, why was it we retired this old keyboard of yours?’ A: ‘Um, I think the keys were a bit sticky’.
15:00 – After a severe wipe-down and compressed-air blast-up, the retired keyboard is put to use.
15:05 – Q: ‘Are you aware the right and left arrow keys don’t work?’ A: ‘Oh yeah, that’s it’.
15:10 – Phone.
15:15 – In the car, past the Pont du Gard, past the Remoulins on-ramp to the A9, along the via Dolomita for 20km to an Apple retailer in an industrial park in Nîmes, where I am informed that I can have a choice between azerty and qwerty keyboard layouts, but I cannot pay with a credit card.
16:05 – Finally find a goddamfucking cash machine.
16:50 – As I pull in back home, Gail comes out of the house and says that the dogs got out of the yard again, and have been missing for an hour and a half.
16:51 – Working in shifts, we drive around the backstreets and wine routes surrounding Bagnols, crossing over the same intersections again and again, calling out Huuuuuugo (out in the great outdoors, Oliver is far too full of himself to actually come when you call, but Hugo isn’t smart enough to be full of himself). Previously when the dogs had gotten out while we weren’t paying attention it was a matter of ten minutes tops until they’d come storming back wondering where all the damn biscuits were. But this is different. They are Out There, and Out There includes the beginning of hunting season (during which pastis-addled douchebags are regularly known to fire both barrels at anything that moves), and a two-lane highway about a kilometre away, up and down the lengths of which I keep driving, scanning right and left and right for evidence of the unthinkable.
19:20 – The worst thing about Out There, I decide, is that you have no choice but to place your trust in it, in something you cannot know. You have to trust that there’s no menace in that house, down that cul de sac, in those fields, in this town to which we are newcomers – to which we have no claim, in which we know virtually no one. And the dogs are nothing but trusting: they love everyone. They love Out There, the big slobbering goofs.
19:30 – Gail phones the police station and SPCA with tattoo numbers.
20:15 – It’s too dark to keep driving around – high beams are designed to show the road, nothing else.
20:45 – We eat dinner quietly. Rabbit. The front door remains unlatched. I am wobbly, Gail is not.
21:20 – I begin throwing back whiskey in gulps, trying to crush the unthinkable. Gail wobbles. My god the things that go through your head.
22:05 – Now randomly muttering phrases like just fucking come back and fucking ring.
22:45 …
23:20 – Crash comes Hugo through the front door, followed minutes later by Oliver, wholly intact, panting like wolves, looking for dinner. I’ll omit the details, but there is some measure of emotion in the house.
Friday
9:00 – Discover that we have no phone lines at all, thanks to the clever work of France Telecom.
10:45 – Dogs are still sleeping it off.
12:30 – France Telecom technician #2 (affable) arrives, saying he has a solution in mind, and we do a three-card monte of modems and wires and phones: no, that’s line two, it used to be line one. He says it’s sorted, and we’ll be back to normal this afternoon.
13:30 – UPS deliveryman phones to say that delivery of the dog containment system would have happened this morning if we’d picked up the phone (it is a given that no delivery service will ever find this house without at least two phonecalls). I explain the phone lines were down. He explains he has to go back to Montpellier, and see you Monday. I explain Monday’s no good, need it today. He explains we can meet at the Remoulins on-ramp to the A9 in twenty minutes. I explain I’m on my way.
13:55 – At the Remoulins on-ramp to the A9 I learn that along with the package comes a 75€ import tax bill, and that no, I cannot pay with a credit card.
14:10 – Finally find a goddamfucking cash machine.
14:35 – Back home, I open the package to find an order of PVC flags, floating decoys and other hunting-dog training paraphenalia invoiced to one Doug Clipp of North Columbus, Indiana, and not a trace of the dog containment system.
15:00 – Off goes the complaining email, but at least the DSL works.
19:26 – Hey neat: ‘I apologize for the confusion. We will reship your order today. We will delcare it at “no value” so you should not have to pay any additional taxes. If you do please let us know. Could you please send the incorrect items back to us via Parcel Post. We will bed glad to reemburse you for the postage. Before you ship them please remove the yellow box of launcher loads. You may keep them or dispose of them, but they cannot be sent through the mail. Please let us know any cost you incurr.’
20:00 – Halfway through downloading season 4 of Six Feet Under.
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