Oops - killing the internet by trying to remove the landline.

Ok, so maybe I was a bit excited to clean this place up and remove unnecessary things attached to walls. I like open walls and when there's a bunch of unused hardware it bothers me.

That was the case with the land line phone jack in the kitchen area. It was a a little square plastic that had yellowed with time and nobody has used a land line in this house in ages. I figured, why not remove it and patch up any hole the wires came through?

If you're in IT or work at an internet company you're probably laughing at me right now.

I unscrewed the thing, took an knife to the wires in the back (I know!) and shoved the wires in the wall, trashed the ugly yellowed plastic plate and threw a drywall patch over the hole. I did not know the internet was down until after it dried, sanded it and dried again.

At first we didn't even think it was my fault. The internet was down - so what? It's likely an outage in the area or the router needs reset. Well, after about 1 hour with customer service they say it's not on their end and they'll send someone out in 4 days! In addition, he repeats several times that if the technician needs to come into the house and has to fix something it will be an $80 charge! This is after I tell him that I cut out the land line and he said it shouldn't affect the internet - that guy was wrong.

So, after talking with my very smart roommate we decide to open the hole in the wall, despite my beautiful patch job, and fetch the plastic plate out of the garbage. We browse some blogs about IT and DSL connections and attempt to twist wires together. I'm starting to feel like it's hopeless when voila! Andy the roommate happened to get the right wires together and the internet is back! SWEET!

I still didn't want that ugly jack on the wall so we opened the hole big enough to fit the whole thing in the wall and patched right over it. If there's ever a problem in the future we'll have to pay to get a dedicated DSL line - which seems like an unneeded additional cost at this point.

Internet is really the only "unnecessary" bill we have at this house. There's no cable package or any of that jazz. In fact, once I get a ladder I'm removing the ugly satellite on the south side of the house! It's right in the way of my future solar collector!