Oh. Yes.

Some months after I moved to Pittsburgh, Verizon started installing FIOS drops in all the apartments in my complex. I had heard the rumors about these things called 'fiber optics', about how the Internets were so much better with them. But you know Verizon and their early termination fees, right? 200 bucks if you cancel, and I was not quite satisfied with my job, and might be moving soon. I eventually got another job, and the commute turned out to be not bad, so I decided to stay, and this is one of the benefits of that.

First thing I noticed is that Verizon's website for ordering this state-of-the-art thing is horrible. I'm using the latest Firefox (5.0 at time of writing) and I'm getting horrendous rendering errors. I switched over to IE (9.0) and it's all good. The face they give to their automated support agent gives me the creeps, but I just tried not to look at the notices. Please mind the uncanny valley.

Worst yet, the site functionally evil. I ordered and got an install date (including an assurance that someone would come), but that came and went, nary a technician came by. I called the support line, only to find out that there wasn't even a trace of me in their systems! WTF!? I had the rep set up another install date in two days.

The actual install itself was painless, and according to the techs, pretty quick, given there was already a conduit installed. Pull through, wire up, and configure. It took about three hours for me to get my server set up with it (DNS and port forwarding), and quickly figured out that the router is a piece of crap. At least I could access my server remotely.

I just had them switch over the optical network terminal from coaxial to ethernet. Since I only have Internet, and not TV services, this is fine. I then connected my old router (which is both faster and configured the way I want), and everything is the way it used to be (except waaaay faster).

vs.

Now lets see if I get some kind of satisfaction knowing that my Internets come over a glass wire.