Thanks, Neighbor!

This morning while I was drinking coffee and forcing my bleary eyes open, I heard yelps of irritation and mutterings of frustration. Then one by one my breakfast companions stumbled to the table, guzzled their coffee, and announced “I can’t get my email.” Of course, I wasn’t surprised because I couldn’t get mine either. I promised all my mignons and the head honcho that I would ferret out the cause of this internet scourge whilst the mignons (French for "little ones"--I try not to name my children after various cuts of beef) did housework and the head honcho attended a meeting.

I’m sure you all know what this means. First, I unplugged and replugged the router. No change. Then I held the reset button for 15 seconds. Still, the internet flatlined. Next step, unplug, replug, and reset the modem. During this I had to wait for various lights to blink, sparkle and reset themselves. And I explained to Mignon #3 that Mom and Dad’s shower still has mildew and soap scum in the crevices and must be recleaned. Mignon #3 was unhappy.

Now that all the lights had a chance to do their thing, I tried connecting. No dice. So, I rebooted all four computers. Still nada. The frustration level has reached Techno-meltdown levels. I decided it must be time to go the store and buy my Honey a Valentine’s Day gift. So, I unplugged everything in hopes that depriving the electronic boxes of electricity would make them want to behave when I got back—it’s sort of like a “spanking” for computers.

After finding a very cool gift for my sweetheart, I returned home to my cyber-mess. I plugged in the modem. No blinky lights. Not a one. I plugged the modem into different sockets. Still, no green light of life. Time to call tech support. There was an eight minutes wait. At the end of seven, they disconnected me. Oops. I called again. In the middle of the eight minutes wait I told Mignon #3 that he could not play Wii, even with the sound turned off. After eight minutes, I talked to a guy in India who asked me if it was okay if he called me “Miss Keller.” I said, “Yes,” but I thought “you can call me Bob the builder if you can make my modem work.”

I ran through the litany of problems. After which, he said, imagine a heavy Indian/Pakistani accent, “Miss Keller, logic would dictate that you try plugging it into different outlets.” I opened my mouth to say, “As I explained, that was amongst the first things I did.” But before I did, he said, “But since you already did that, I think what you have is a complete modem hardward failure.”

Two minutes later, I found out that my modem was not under warranty. No duh—when is anything under warranty any more? After some wheeling and dealing, he promised me a free modem, which he was overnighting to me and would arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday (today’s Saturday, so over-night is clearly a euphemism).

We politely said good-bye, happy to be done with each other. Most likely, he went to help another customer, and I went and took some Aleve to deal with my techno-headache cum migraine. I told myself that at least this could be turned into a blog post, assuming I can hijack (though I prefer to think of it as “piggybacking”) a neighbor’s unsecured wireless connection. So if you’re reading this, thank my neighbor.