yet another blog

I’m not the first to observe this, and don’t doubt that I won’t be the last.
But its amazing how quickly we take certain aspects of technology for granted and how dependent we become upon them, without realising it.

I’ve had a broadband internet connection for just about a year now - maybe a little more.
Changing from dial-up to broadband made quite an impact on the way I use the ‘net, and particularly in how an “always on” connection has encouraged me to almost seamlessly integrate my online and offline computer activities.

Now I’m the first to admit that I spend rather more time at the keyboard than is probably healthy (certainly physically, and possibly mentally as well) but I truly hadn’t realised just what a large part of my life had become almost reliant on “being connected”.

Until yesterday!

On-line yesterday morning, no problem at all. Sit down at the keyboard again yesterday evening, only to discover that somehow I’d lost my connection.
Do all the usual things: reboot the computer; try different machine; check the LAN connections; reboot the router (several times in fact!); replace the router with a modem; change the microfilter… and on and on.

All to no avail.

So finally have to invoke the measure of last resort - phone my ISP’s helpline.
Negotiating the automated menus I end up talking to someone who I’m sure was the other side of the world. In any event, her voice was very faint and her accent was, um, not the easiest to decipher.
Couple that with rather rapid speech and my own dodgy hearing, and the entire conversation was not the most fluent in the world. I must have seemed like a right idiot to her, having to ask her to repeat virtually every other sentence.

Anyway, she seemed to grasp quite quickly the technical problem I was confronting and after running through what was clearly a checklist of standard questions (most of which I’d already answered in my preliminary description of the problem, but never mind) she said something about upgrading the fault report to the next level (or words to that effect) and that I could expect to receive a phone call within 24-48 hours.

Well, ok, not an entirely satisfactory resolution, but better than nothing.

So for the past day and night I’ve been wandering around quite disconsolately, running through my mind all the possible causes of the problem, each possibility seeming worse than the previous, and gloomily looking to a future with no ‘net connection.
The absence of ‘net loomed large in my mind regardless of how I occupied myself, and somehow my computers suddenly just didn’t have the appeal that they normally have.
Couldn’t check my mailbox; couldn’t do any website work; couldn’t upload any photos; couldn’t even do a bit of casual surfing or check the various news sites.

I’d been instructed to leave my machine on with the modem plugged in for at least the next 24 hours, so found myself almost hourly checking the indicator light thereon to see if my connection was live again.
Even after I’d gone to bed I woke up periodically throughout the night to check.
How sad can you get?

Then this evening, almost out of habit now, I checked the modem again - and hey! I’ve got a connection light showing!
Not quite believing it I rapidly call up my browser and see if I can access the web. Yep.
So just as rapidly whip out the modem and plug in the router.

Will it find the connection? Will it need a reboot? Will the entire event be purely ephemeral and I’ll lose the connection again?

But no. The router blinks itself slowly into wakefulness, and suddenly all’s right with the world again. I’m back online!

On reflection though, this habit we all have of becoming so dependent upon things that aren’t necessary to life and living is really rather worrying.