Quirky connection blues
Following the trend of general breakage, my ADSL-connection flatlined on me this morning. You really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, I tell you. Oh, the withdrawals!
Anyway, I phoned my provider’s support hotline, and got through within 15 seconds. (Honestly, I love these guys’ service. 
No immediate resolution presented itself, but the techie promised to look into the matter. Some 15 minutes later, the line came up-ish, but with about 55% packet loss. After waiting a bit, I called them back to inform them of the new status, and the techie could see a lot of line noise, which would explain the symptoms. After having convinced me to check all my cables (which I knew were OK, but I had this odd feeling he could tell if I only pretended to unplug and check them), he marked the line as faulty, and I was told to expect a call from a local techie within today or tomorrow. Nice and prompt.
What’s even nicer, though, is that the connection seems to have healed itself some time this afternoon, and all appears to be peachy again. Whee!
This is actually the first time I’ve had problems with my feed, in several years. OK, I’ve had some minor glitches before, but those hardly count. And every time I’ve talked to them, the Catch techies know what to do. And you gotta love a company whose first-line support staff all seem to know what an ARP packet is!