Nemesis

I hate Telus, with all the nuclear malice of ten thousand suns. They are a corporate incarnation of Satanic not-goodness.

There's a problem with my DSL connection. I've tried every permutation of bizarre fixes I can think of, and all the suggestions of the network gurus that I know (even the ones I only know on the internet.) Yet whatever I try, I still cannot upload files to the internet from my web browser. It doesn't matter what sort of file: big and small, with content both subversive and compliant, Telus doesn't want it pushed through the tube.

Bittorrent works fine. Maybe Telus wants me to start running a full-time torrent host and forget about e-mailing documents altogether. Maybe they've set a trap, compiling data on all the songs I download "illegally" so that when downloading songs actually becomes a crime in the real world, they'll have all the information they need and I won't be able to e-mail any of my documented evidence to an attorney.

Did I mention that I only have this problem at home? That the computer works just fine on every other network I've ever tried?

I've re-installed windows. I've disabled and re-enabled and un-re-disabled firewall programs and port forwarding controls and logged it all. Still, nothing that helps.
And still, whenever I call Telus, they have me run the same five or six tests to make sure that I'm actually not just a moron who doesn't know what's going on with his computer.
And still, every time I tell them "yes, that's right, it won't upload the .txt file to your webmail page, though I'll note once again that I e-mailed a 7MB MP3 file this morning when I was on the network at the library" there's an awkward moment of silence before they ask me to wait for another five minutes while they talk to their network people.

What is a surprise amid this recursive nightmare of file upload tests is that the upload doesn't work when we try uploading images to the web, either... Oh, wait, that's not a surprise. That's what I've been telling them all along.

This time, after two and a half hours on the phone;
after being disconnected twice because Telus has even less of an idea about how to handle their own inter-office phone network than they do about my problem;
after going through the same tests three times with three different agents;
"Maria" finally asked me to do an FTP test.
It didn't work, and it didn't actually tell us anything useful about the problem, but at least it was something new that hadn't been tried before. Maria gets points for creativity and thinking outside the box. (I had mentioned to her an hour earlier that I've never tested the FTP upload on this connection, but even so she gets points for listening.)

Last time I tried this (in January, IIRC) the Telus agent refused to admit that there could possibly be any problem with the Telus network, and told me that the problem must be with my own computer. Then he hung up on me.

This time, I seem to have (perhaps because of my persistence through two dropped calls) caught the attention of someone higher up in the food chain, and they agreed to sent out an actual technician.

Thing is, they're making a sort of wager with me: if Telus has a problem, they'll fix it free of charge. But if the problem proves to be with my PC, and with all of the other PCs I've tried on this network that show the same problem, then I'll have to pay for the technician.

I've been living my life in an almost-normal sort of way for the last year of browsing-but-not-uploading internet at home, so I'm not sure how much real money it's worth to have the problem fixed if it really is on my computer and not Telus' fault; then again, I'm paying a lot of money for the privilage of connecting to the internet at home. How much more would it be worth to have it actually work?

In other news, I got a new phone again. And a bill. Which included items that I was promised I wouldn't see. (Aparrently my file says that I was "aware of the charges" involved in transferring the account into my name instead of cancelling it. That's a... creative... way of recording that I was on no uncertain terms adamant about refusing to pay for the transfer...)
Luckily, the rep I talked to today (Roy) was actually willing to listen to my complaints. He explained why I was charged a second time for 1/3rd of my last month's bill, too.