Hooray For Geek Speak!

So the plan was this: my stepdad was going to head over, bearing his telecommunications knowledge from the military, a frogsuit, suction cups for scaling the outside of the building, an armful of telephone wire, a flashlight, newspapers and boiling water, and a volt meter. 

This volt meter is the thing that confirmed that my five jacks were, in fact, dead.

After my three unsuccessful attempts to find the *&$%^ telephone box around and under the house, he located it, requiring us to climb over a rusty washing machine, under an asbestos-laden heater duct, and up onto a dirt-covered platform.   I learned that my previous experience with a phone box involved one that was newer, and that you can't count on a jack being at said box.  I learned that old wires are never taken completely away, meaning that in this 100+ year-old house, there were quite a few wires hanging around doing nothing but being confusing.   I learned that you can tell which little connections are active by using a volt meter, as the active ones are carrying 53 volts.  I also learned that if a phone is ringing, it should be carrying 120 volts.  We both learned that if you set my new, touchpad-pleasing number to ring (from a cellphone), it will ring all day long and not activate any of the connections with even one volt (a far cry from 120), meaning that no signal is being received at the box.

Back on the phone to wrestle with the automated phone system to ATT.  I'm not sure if there is anything else in the world that raises my blood pressure more than automated phone systems.  

Though they don't do service calls on Sundays, they do (eventually) have live people on the line to take repair requests.  I established my identity, and then put Tom on the phone to throw some big words at them, up to and including "point of demarcation".

Never mind my own futile attempts to get them to do something; ten seconds after hearing "inactive point of demarcation" they ran some test that took even less time than that and stopped talking about $425 service calls and instead said, "yep, the problem is on our end".  

This theoretically means that my phone will be working by this afternoon, if they follow through with their 12-4pm service window.

I've decided my very first phone call will be to the billing department, to change the date of service.

Thanks, Tom!