It took a day or two for me to realize the caller id stopped working on our phones at home. We've gotten used to this handy way of weeding out solicitations and other unwanted calls.
It took another couple of days before I called ACS. They'd get someone on it. That's all they said. This morning - several days later - the doorbell rings. It's ACS.
"What's the easiest way to get around the back to check your connection to the house?" (We got a foot of snow in the last two days and I don't clear a pathway to the back.) He comes back to the front a little later saying it was working there. Sometimes the filters for internet block the caller id, but that wasn't the case. And since we got caller id when we got the internet package years ago, it didn't seem a likely solution.
He came inside to check the phones. Neither got a caller id when he called. He pulled the moden line out of the other phone jack. It didn't change things. He pulled off the inside filters. No id on our phone.
"Why not test your phone like you did outside?"
"Hmm, I don't have the right jack for that. Be right back."
When he gets back in and checks it, he gets caller id on his phone.
"So," I ask, "You're saying its our phone?"
"I'm not saying anything. Never had something quite like this before. It's always been the filters."
Finally he suggests rebooting the phone. Just unplug it, wait 20 seconds, and then plug it in again.
It works.
He seems pleased. (I like technicians who like to solve problems.) I suggest he tell the folks who take calls like mine to suggest this to people before they send out a technician.
One more little maintenance battle won. For the moment. Still working on the furnace problem, but that's another post.
Whenever one of the many magical connections to the outside world fails I always remember this Bizarro cartoon I have pinned up.
ReplyDeleteA non-plussed guy is sitting at his computer, hand on his mouse, listening to instructions (in the bubble above his head) from tech support:
"Go to Preferences File, click on the pull-down menu, find the option that says, "Nothing Works Right" and uncheck it."
My nephew is an IT whiz and he said the other day, "My [X] connection isn't working and I don't know which is worse: That it's not working?
OR
that I don't know why?"
Funny kid.