I went as far as going out to one of the local metro offices for my ISP in the city, to demonstrate some bizarre problem that I was experiencing with my combo router / modem.

I was actually able to demonstrate the issue in person, and everyone was scratching their heads trying to figure out what was going on.

I decided to try factory resetting it as a hail mary... and instantaneously I got a perfectly functioning ADSL connection.

It would have been far less embarrassing for me to have thought to try that and make the effort at home. lol