I've been having all kinds of problems with my ISP lately. This time, DNS names aren't resolving, as if they've misconfigured a router and big chunks of the backbone are no longer accessable. Unfortunately, my upstream DNS servers are in one of those chunks, so I couldn't even get to the ISP's support website or Google.

("So, how are you blogging this now?" I hear you ask. I phoned a coworker in the Washington DC area, got the IP addresses for some DNS servers from him, and hacked them into my local DNS server config.)

("So, why aren't you using your ISP's DNS servers?" Full of questions today, aren't you? :-) I'd like to, but nowhere on their website do they give the IP addresses for those. I can't pick them up from the DHCP lease, because I've got a firewall between my computer and the ISP, and it has the DHCP lease.)

Add to this the fact that the activity lights on my cable modem are going nuts even when the firewall is powered down, and I'm starting to think that I need to start shopping for a new ISP.