Experts recommend becoming paralyzed and staring out a window
I’m not going to lie. Last night was rough.
After spending the whole day at work on the internet, I finally arrived home and was ready to get right back on the internet. That is where the shit hit the fan and my world was suddenly turned inside out.
I walked into my home and the gerbil came up to me and casually said, “The internet has been down for a while.”
It was like getting kicked in the gut. I dropped my shit and sprinted to the office. Yep, the lights on the modem looked all funny and weird. “Lights not look normal,” I gasped.
Just like the world’s biggest idiot, however, I still turned the computer on. Maybe it would somehow work. I mean, it had to. I needed it. Oh the arrogant hubris of a mind in despair.
Of course, just the act of turning on the computer didn’t magically fix anything. I mulled over my options. I could call the magnificent bastards at Charter Communications. But they’d probably ask to record my call to ensure they were screwing me hard and besides, that would take actual effort. Since I only had about an hour before I had to head downtown (which I had originally planned to use to post on my blog) I decided to organize the files on my hard drive instead.
Later that night when we finally got back home after a night on the town, my wife did the unthinkable. She called. She has fierce and amazing powers. She’s not even afraid of the phone. Charter was as concerned as ever that we were unable to use the service that we pay them for. They first tried to sell her the fucking bundle. Um, did we mention that our internet is down? Nurse, we need a lactate drip with ringers, KMG 365 – stat!!! But no, they wanted to chit chat about their bundle. Bastards.
After forcing my wife to jump through a bunch of hoops that didn’t fix anything, the Charter tech finally decided to check things on their end. He rebooted something and the problem was fixed. Heh. They must be running Microsoft Windows over there. Don’t they know that you reboot before attempting anything else?
And there you have it. The trauma and drama of my one-hour without internet. Hollywood, if you want first dibs on the rights for the trilogy – call me!
Shouts from the Abyss 
Reboot! Classic!
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Wait…if you knew KMG 365 off the top of your head you are now officially the king of such things.
Speaking of that show, there was one woman, one. One woman in a nurse outfit and 12,000 paramedics and doctors. Yet not one even dared approach her. I think Dixie had a gun.
Congrats on surviving the ordeal, or actually, to Mrs. A for saving your life.
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Ah. Julie London. I was listening to some of her music recently.
And yes, I watched Emergency. To this day I use the phrase “KMG 365” that they used to say whenever they rolled out. That is an active radio sign still in use.
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I feel your pain. I’m grateful you are back online. I can never just accept that the system is down, I must turn on, try to re connect, stare at the computer, curse, swoon with frustration and more. In between trying to save the world by emailing friends links to essential political information, I actually do some work on the computer and feel helpless when I can’t connect. Did I mention helpless?
It’s been especially bad lately since we’ve been having internet connectivity problems for weeks. My son talked us into buying a turbo charged version (so he can download monstrously huge amounts of useless data and play online bandwidth sucking games), but our internet connection only got worse. I wanted to blame it on Son, but the connection was bad even when Son was gone and apparently not downloading anything (one can never be too sure that he hasn’t rigged the system to grab data even while he is working). Finally, I broke down and called Time-Warner. (My husband wouldn’t do it, either…) The tech guy said that our connection outside (bad cable, I guess) was so bad he wasn’t sure how we’d ever received anything! He waved his magic wand, and our connection was restored, but at a slow connection rate. Later, someone came by and laid a cable on the grass. Ten days later, some Spanish-speaking guys came by to dig in the cable, whom I met when Loki (crazy dog) shot out the door like a bullet to greet them. Anyway, everything seems to be fine now! I’m so happy, although I did get a lot done in the real world when my cable was down.
Shakespeare said that brevity is the soul of wit, so I’ve just proved that I’m witless — to which you are a witness!
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I know – isn’t living without internet just plain scary?!
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I think Mr. A forgot a few details in his rantings. Let me first say that Tom never ever calls me on the cell. Especially if I’m at work. He would NEVER call. Even if I’m not at work, he won’t call. I recently spent about 10 hours at a girlfriends house working on a project and he didn’t even call it see if I was alive, in a ditch dying or even dead. Yesterday at about 4:48pm, I get a call on thee ole cell. “HOLY SHIT BATMAN, I say to my boss. Mr. A’s calling. Something bad has happened.”
I pick up the phone and Mr. A says, “Hi, babe. Uhhhh, is there something wrong with the Charter bill?”.
I’m like “What the?”
He says, “Ya, the internet is down, I thought maybe YOU didn’t pay the bill.”
“Umm, ok well yes I did. Did you happen to check the TV to see if that’s working?” I say. “Oh ya, we have cable.”
I say, “Well why don’t you just call Charter?”
“Wellllllll, uh, I don’t know their number.”
Total silence for several seconds.
“Okay then” I say. “Well I guess you’ll have to wait until tonight when I get home.”
“Oh, okay”, in his most pouty voice.
I hang up, turn to my boss and say. “Oh boy, there is a MAJOR crisis at home.”
She says, “Oh no, what is it??? with fear in her eyes.
“THE INTERNET IS DOWN!!!”
She rolls her eyes and says “Oh yeah, I get that from my man too.”
Skip ahead several hours…..we get home from our outing and I go immediately into his office to see if the internet is back on knowing that if I didn’t get it fixed STAT, Mr. A would start having seizures from withdrawal. Nope, the damn thing was still down. I decide to call and wait…what the????? Not eight inches, I kid you not, eight WHOLE inches from his mouse, lays the FREAKING PHONE BOOK. I pointed it out and gave him the stare of death.
Very sweetly and lovingly with just a hint of fear he says, “Ummmm, hmmm, well let’s not worry about it tonight baby, you call in the morning.”
The rest of the story is totally true, I saved the day once again.
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Mrs. Abyss, do you have a blog, too? Cause you’re freakin’ awesome! LOVE getting the other side of the story. Sorry, Tom. You got busted.
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Busted? I didn’t do anything in my thoughtful post except praise the wonderful and daring Mrs. A., right? :p
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You rule, Mrs. A!
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*whew* sounds like a close call! 😉
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It was only an hour which is the part that cracks me up. The thing is, I had mentally made plans for that hour, which involved getting my Red Bull post published on the blog so there was some disappointment there. Once she told me the bill had been paid I relaxed, though. My like a junkie who hasn’t received the next hit yet but just found out its on the way. (I learned that from M*A*S*H.)
I thought I handled it well. I spend the time doing some much needed organization of the files on my computer. To which my wife said, of course, “I see you found a way to stay on the computer that hour.”
🙂
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Oh Mrs. A! That was an interesting and very good part of the post your hubby forgot to tell us. Ha! Do you have blog? I’d like to follow you too!
Mr. A — you have me giggling over here. I went 3 days without internet service and considering I work from home, it was a REAL bad thing. But service was down all over the neighborhood. The weirdest thing really was the withdrawals! I was shocked. But then, it subsided. Like you guys, my internet and cable are connected so it was….HARD! But it was good thing, and now I really limit my time on my computer and phone. I don’t ever want to feel so addicted or connected to something — so I have a schedule… oh, and it’s 8:03pm here on Saturday night. Time to close the computer and go out for the evening.. yup, got a lot of things scheduled (crazy, me!).
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That sounds too normal and well-adjusted for me. 🙂 And don’t neglect the blog. 🙂
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I know that after about 70+ straight hours on the computer Mr. A gets a kind of glassy eyed, staring into the abyss look in his eyes and becomes unresponsive. I also know that after about 1 hour of being denied access to a computer when he wants one he gets a kind of glassy eyed, staring into the abyss look in his eyes and becomes unresponsive.
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Heh! Yeah, that one hour of deprivation really burned my fry!
A really cool person I know once told me about self-induced deprivation as a method of acheiving personal control. I believe the anecdotal example used was hamburgers.
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Reblogged this on Shouts from the Abyss and commented:
I feel there may be internet outages in my future. Like restaurants without wifi and such. It’s gonna be bad.
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I’m glad you endured the horror!!
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I still have scars from the hives.
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