As the matriarch of our house, mom was the one that made sure that we ate our vegetables, cleaned our room, and grew up to be seemingly respectable adults (the jury is still out). Oh, and on the side, she was a doctor that commuted over an hour each way, every day to put us through college. That doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies.
That makes my mom the hardest person to shop for, in our family. Her main hobby has been completely oversaturated by gifts that she really doesn't need/want anything else in that category. However, since retiring, she spends a lot of time surfing the internet. Reading stories, doing investment research, sending email to friends and family, etc.
This year, we were going to get her DSL. After being pre-qualified, they sent out an installation kit that I promptly installed. Line filters were installed on every phone, answering machine, and DirecTV receiver. NIC cards were bought and installed. Ethernet was run and hooked up. Everything was ready for January 14th, when the service was to be turned on.
Then the Grinch came and stole Christmas. After being bounced around from orders to tech support to the cancellation department, I finally received an answer to why the order was cancelled. Apparently, there is a load coil that is disallowing the installation of DSL.
This is the same company that apparently charged my parents for touch tone phone service for over a year, even though they didn't have it. While I'm not alone, this doesn't make the situation any better. What do you expect from the bastards that would lay people off, 6 days before Christmas.
Time to start looking into Cable, Satellite, and Wireless.
