If it's 4pm, it must be...

[serinde]

MORON TIME!

Situation: The customer's aDSL is not working. She has already hung up on dariodevil in ire for "making it too hard" when he asked her to turn her DSL router off and back on.

Your humble correspondent: "OK, first I need you to look at the front of your Netopia router, and tell me which lights are lit."

User: *time passes.* "None of them are!"

YHC: "...None? Every one of them is dark?"

U: "Yes!"

YHC: "Well, generally that means that the router doesn't have any power. So the first thing to do is check the power cable--start by unplugging it from the wall and plugging it back in."

U: "What will *that* do?"

YHC: "...?"

U: "Will that hurt my computer?!?"

YHC: "No. No it won't. If all you do is unplug the ROUTER, it will have no effect whatsoever on your COMPUTER."

U: "Um okay. ... It's impossible to see anything back here! I can't tell where this is plugged in! There's all these cables!"

YHC: *wait*

U: "OK, I think I've unplugged it... Oh crap! I unplugged my computer! Shit! What do I do now?"

YHC: *pause to see if this is a rhetorical question*

U: "HELLO?!?"

YHC: *...apparently not.* "Well, I'd start with plugging the computer back in."

U: "WHAT WILL IT DO?"

YHC: "Reboot, most likely. "

U: "Oh."

YHC: "Then find the ROUTER power cord, and unplug IT."

U: "I can't figure this out! I give up! This is such a mess! I just want my email!!"

YHC: "Ma'am, I can't help you with the wiring in your home. But your router does not seem to have power, and until that's sorted, there's nothing we can do to troubleshoot your connection any further."

*lightbulb. Perhaps she's looking at her firewall appliance, or fax machine, or possibly refrigerator*

"Could you please take a look at the *back* of the Netopia and tell me how many ports you see there, for things to plug in?"

U: "There's nothing that looks like a power cable! There's a yellow cable going to the computer, and a grey one going to the wall, and a white one going to another computer, but no power cable! ... Oh. it's sitting here on the desk, just behind the box."

YHC: "Perhaps that would be the cause of your problem."