For the third time this month, and the second time in 2 days, I presently have no home telephone line. Which, for whatever reason, has no effect whatsoever on my DSL service. My overall pissedness with the ISP side of my phone company is already well documented, but I’ve yet to actually make mention to the problems I have with the phone company side of it. Which makes sense, really–until this month, I’ve had none. But, as it stands right now, I currently have no dial tone. I’ve had no dial tone since I’m not sure when this morning. I had no dial tone until the technician showed up yesterday at about noonish to replace the phone line. We know it’s a problem with the actual building. Meaning, the line going from building to main box a couple streets over. Which means at least it didn’t cost me anything to replace it. However, it *should* also mean that once the technician replaced it, it should be fixed. Not so much. Granted, it worked yesterday afternoon. And last night, until I’m not sure when. But she no worky now. And it’s not sitting well with me. fortunately, after outage number 1 I got smart and had my home phone number forwarded to my cell, so at least now any incoming calls I should be expecting won’t be missed. But I purchased home phone service through these fools for two reasons. It makes teh interwebs cheaper, and I still need to call folks long distance. Not doing that on my cell, thankyaverymuch. So now I’m paying for a phone line I’m only using for internets, and a long distance service I can’t use until the internets people start doing their phone company job, too. And all of this comes wrapped in a neat little what the fuck package. Tempted am I to ditch Bell/Sympatico entirely. Except I’m not a big fan of VOIP, and the only real alternative to them for the internet is Rogers. Um, can we say no thank you please? Suggestions are welcome. If the 1.25 of you who actually read this thing have any. Until then, mother Bell can kiss my ass.