When I moved back to Seattle from Kansas-- Don't ask!-- I landed a great job and so I thought I would treat myself to a big ol' DSL connection. It took US West (...now Qwest) about 10 days to set it up, and it was sheer bliss.

What I used to do over my dial-up, like say, download the entire contents of a database I was working on, would take hours. I'd start it when I left work and then after I got home, finished dinner, and put the dishes in the sink...

Get it?

Well, then I started doing everything I couldn't do before, streaming audio, streaming video, pushing files, pulling files, updating my version of Netscape because it was a point release behind.

I knew the risks, and I didn't care!

Then I moved to the suburbs, and just outside the reach of the DSL gods. For months, I tried to find a connection, pleading with customer service representatives for a taste, but they'd heard all those stories before.

After three months, just when I had almost dried out, the local pusher, GTE, gave me a call and said,

"Hey, wouldn't you like to get your broadband connection back? First hookup's always free, and we're running a special, if you just sign up for a year..."

Even though it was delicious to give in, don't do it. It's too late for me, but save yourselves. Find a nice local dialup, and don't start mainlining the bits.

Like me.

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