If you've been unable to access this website at any time over the past 2 or 3 weeks, it is because I'm in DSL Hell again. My ISP, Internet Navigator, has been unable to keep my DSL line working for more than 48 continuous hours. Lately the line has been dropping out for 5 to 10 minutes every 12 hours. I've complained to my ISP so frequently that they're now ignoring my problems, and blaming them on QWest, which I guarantee is not responsible for this fiasco. QWest's lines check out 100% reliable, all the problems are at Internet Navigator.
There really is no excuse for this level of service, nor is there any excuse for INAV techs giving me a response like "you're the only one with this problem, we aren't hearing this complaint from our hundreds of other DSL users."
The irony of all this is that I switched to DSL because I was fed up with the unreliability of my old cable modem provider. I decided tha it would be better to have a more expensive, slower connection but with more reliability. Unfortunately, the new DSL line is more expensive, slower, AND less reliable. Three strikes, you're out.
I'm continuing to work on the problem, but at this point, it looks like I'll have to switch to a different ISP. The only way I can get the same level of service (well, the same as I'm supposed to be getting now) will be at QWest's own ISP, at a price increase of about 30%. This DSL line is already exceeding my budget, now it's going to break the bank. I'm screwed.
I'm looking at the world through rose colored sunglasses, and it's horribly depressing. I had a new prescription for my eyeglasses, and I noticed my clip-on sunglasses got scratched, so I had the sunglasses lenses replaced too. The new lenses have a severe magenta tint, instead of the perfectly neutral gray in the original lenses. The optician said there's nothing they could do about it, but they'd give me a discount on my next pair of prescription lenses. Sorry, that was the last time I spend $250 at their establishment.
This probably wouldn't be a problem for the average eyeglass customer, but I am an artist and often work in prepress as a color separator, people use my services because of my accurate color vision. If I wear heavily tinted lenses for a prolonged period, it can ruin my sense of color balance. So I hardly ever wear my rose colored sunglasses.
The difference in what I see through the tinted lenses is dramatic. The sky is always a dark, brooding color, and full of fluffy pink clouds. This was kind of amusing during the summer, but now that it's fall, things look incredibly different. The grass and trees look brown and dead. If any foliage shows the slightest autumnal color change, it looks completely brown. The tree in front of my house is dropping leaves, they're still bright green as they lay on the grass, but they look brown to me. This is horribly depressing, I feel like I'm walking through a dead world.
But at least I have a few moments of amusement. I can spot artificial hair color a mile away. If anyone has dyed hair, even the most natural color, I see it as bright purple.
