After a long weekend spent with my daughter and visiting parents (the crazy Cuban kind), my wife away on business, and no internet connection to speak of, I decided to start today with a  retreat to my nearest wi-fi hot spot, a local Panera franchise (I highly recommend the bread).

I'd been sans-Internet since Wednesday afternoon when download speeds dropped to an anti-blazing 47k/sec as opposed to the usual 6Mb/s. If you're not familiar with this kind of jargon, suffice it to say that it would be more efficient to receive web site pages via fax. 

After calling in my complaint, Comcast set up an appointment for Friday. Fortunately for me, a Comcast technician who was in the area Thursday night managed to stop in around 6:30pm. He tested the line and confirmed my suspicion — something was definitely not right. He actually said, "Your upload and download speeds are out of whack."

"Well," I said, "can you get them back into whack?" 

He cocked his head — that sad, confused puppy look. After briefly introducing his tiny computer-sized tools to my computer, he admitted he couldn't fix the problem. He then said that his supervisor had my name and address and would contact me Friday. He apologized, and I bid him adieu.

Had I any supervisorial power whatsoever, I would have demoted him to plain ol' "nician" right then and there, as he did nothing "tech" that I could gather other than wear a belt with little screwdrivers, tiny wirecutters and of course, that chirping Nextel phone that transmitted helpless cries to his supervisor.

Minutes later, download speeds had deteriorated to nil. My umbilical cord to the world was in danger of becoming as useful to me as the dead parrot to John Cleese.

I should say that this had been about the tenth time my household had suffered such extraneous downtimes due to Comcast.

So I called Embarq on Thursday afternoon and asked them how quickly they could have me switched to DSL. They set a service start date for Monday, 6pm. On Friday afternoon, my Embarq modem was at my doorstep. On Monday morning, an Embarq technician arrived to hook up the DSL, beating their own setup time by about nine hours.

That same afternoon, Comcast called to see if I was still having trouble with my service. I asked if they'd had a technician come out to my house. They said no, not to their knowledge, to which I responded, "Then what do you think?"

They couldn't have been more indifferent when I broke the news about Embarq. They responded with concern — concern about getting their modem back so that I wouldn't be charged the monthly rental fee (a fee which is non-existent at Embarq).

So I'm up and running again. Not spinting, running. Yes it's true that DSL is slower, but after six hours of uninterrupted service, I'd say my parrot is alive and well.