Monday, March 05, 2018

blazing-fast internet is now MINE
(and I'm gonna get fuckin' billed)

Internet problem: solved. Whoever came into my apartment (I had contacted HR about restoring my connection) got rid of the DSL modem completely and finally—finally!—hooked me up directly to the building's internet. In modern Korea, you don't expect to find a slow-poke modem in your new place, but that's the shit I've been living with for two-plus years. I knew, early on, that my connection was slow because I went to SpeedTest.net and did the test, which uses a metric from 0 to 100 in Mbps (megabits per second). Back when I lived in Ilsan, my connection speed was 93-95 Mbps; here at Daecheong Tower, since 2015, it's been a paltry 30-40 Mbps. Now, however, thanks to the repairman's visit, I'm blazing along at a full 95 Mbps for both uploading and downloading. This means I can play Geoguessr on my laptop—something I've been unable to do up to now because the slow connection speed has kept the images from refreshing quickly. (If you haven't tried Geoguessr, try it: it's addictive. I'll write a post on it soon, but I've been playing it on and off since 2013, back when I lived near Daegu and worked at Daegu Catholic University.)

But Murphy's Law is always lurking: there's always a price to pay when forces beyond your control elect to improve your life in some way. Because I had accidentally cracked my modem's housing, I expect I'll be billed for that. A coworker today wondered whether I had been billed for my several-day stay on the 16th floor; I told her that I had only just gotten back to my own apartment, so if I'm to receive a bill, it hasn't come yet. Thanks to my coworker's question, I'm now expecting a bill.

An improved internet connection gives me one less reason to want to move out of this dump of a studio. Besides, I have only a few months left here, unless my boss can come up with a sweet deal to have me stay another year.



No comments: