The GirlAlive Blog

The Weeks of Internetlessness

December 8, 2009 on 10:35 pm | In Computers and Web Stuff, Life In General | No Comments

Tuesday, November 24, around 8:30pm, my husband knocked a glass of water off his desk and onto the wireless router. It was somewhat inevitable, since he likes to stack everything precariously as if life is a giant game of Jenga. So, no internet.

The next morning husband called our ISP, TalkTalk. They told him they couldn’t do anything unless he was home to test the connection. He explained that that is stupid because we just need a new router cause ours is toasted. They refused to go off script and use logic, so he had to come home from work early to call them. (I couldn’t do it because the account and passwords and everything are in his name.) They spent an hour making him jump through hoops to prove that the connection from their end was fine and it wasn’t just the bad weather, and the problem was the DRIPPING ROUTER THAT SMELLS LIKE BURNING. On his fourth customer service rep, he found one that would finally order us a new router. They said we’d have it in about 5 working days.

Saturday, November 28. Spent 2 hours on the bus to get a few minutes at an internet cafe. Just enough time to read a few emails and check Facebook and reassure my family and friends that I was not dead, just disconnected.

Wednesday, December 2. A week since the last contact with TalkTalk, and there’s no router. Husband calls them back to ask what’s up and they say that the order just went through that day and would be sent out the next day. We could expect it in about 5 working days. In a complete rage, husband went to ebay and ordered a TalkTalk router from some guy.

Friday, December 4. Ebay router arrives. There is no driver software included and none of our computers will recognize it. The helpful suggestion from Windows was that we should download the device drivers from the internet. Thanks Microsoft. So helpful.

Sunday, December 6. My bed broke. No relation to the internet problems, but annoying nonetheless. I really don’t ever want another bed from Ikea. How am I supposed to sleep soundly when it is like the 4th time I’ve suddenly had no bed where there was previously bed aplenty?

Tuesday, Dedember 8. Wireless router package from TalkTalk finally arrived. Also, my dinner exploded in the microwave. I’ve never seen so much soup spread over every inch of a microwave before. After cleaning the microwave and finishing dinner, husband got the new router hooked up.

Things I learned while off the internet:

I have hundreds of computer games in my house, and nearly all of them refuse to work with Windows Vista.
We have the Food Network in the UK now! Not all of the shows from the US Food Network, but a good number of them, including Iron Chef America. *happy dance*
SimCity works on my computer.
SimCity is somewhat addictive.
Wait until you know what you’re doing in SimCity before wasting the town name “Funkytown”. Cause I totally wish I had saved that for my good city.
I go through all 5 stages of grief repeatedly when I am disconnected from the internet.
When the internet is reconnected, I am immediately happy, and my husband is immediately grumpy because as it turns out, his computer is still slow and kind of crappy, which is more noticeable when you have an internet connection.