No Net, No Cry
Alan Levine aka CogDog barked this March 20th, 2007 3:47 pm
Today’s Office
posted 20 Mar ‘07, 4.36pm MDT PST on flickr
Right in the middle of IM-ing, checking a streaming audio connection in Second Life, my internet connection blinked out. Qwest said, "There are outages on your area" and with an estimated fix time of "a few hours", I trucked down to the Scottsdale Public Library to try and sip the free wireless here to get some work done
The speed is kind of poky at times, but its a great service they offer here. Maybe I should stop this nonsense and do something like read a book?
It really struck me how lost I was with my tether to the net severed.
I am posting this to flickr via carrier pigeon 
March 20th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
> I am posting this to flickr via carrier pigeon
Well, I’ll bet you’re posting it as a Yahoo! user.
How does that feel, to have a company turn around and jerk your identity around that way?
My days with Flickr are over. Just figuring out how to get my photos back. And what to do next.
> It really struck me how lost I was with my tether to the net severed.
That’s kind of how I feel about my photos right now…
*sigh*
March 20th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
My internet connection came down for the last time today. Last September my provider went under, and their users were picked up by another provider. All along, the original provider and then the new one had been simply a reseller of service from the cable company. Whenever the line goes down (which is increasingly common) my ISP says there is nothing they can do about it, it’s the cable company’s fault (though they happily take my $45/month) and the cable company tells me I’m not their customer, so they can’t fix it. Argghh. I finally upped and canceled my service today. My options suck - go with the cable co itself who basically blackmailed me into becoming their customer, or the telco’s inferior service (and frankly they are a sucky customer). I love the internet, I just hate internet service providers.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Wow, my situation is not nearly as bad, some fortune to be in a large metro blob. Qwest’s service has been really up for the 8 months I’ve had it– today was the worst (out for 8 hours), and bad timing given we have an online conference tomorrow. When I called after getting home from the library, the phone guy said it was some issue of a contention with the power company.
I drove to the store for an errand (Cadu was out of dog food) and I could see the guys standing looking at the box around the corner from my house.
But you do raise a point, as much as we relish user generated stuff, and so-called crowd wisdom, and we salute the flag of creative commons, it does not mean squat w/o the flow of the actual net to where we are, and that step is never ever free.
And I may be jinxing myself, but our Hughes satellite connection at our cabin has been rather reliable since the summer; sometimes a bit slow, but the uptime has improved significantly.
Do you need an extra pigeon?
March 21st, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Was gonna post something serious about this, but eeek .. make sure you are feeding cadu with safe dog food.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Thanks Beth, that’s very sweet of you to think of her. Yes, she’s getting the “right stuff”!