Internet here in the sticks

Thursday night my Internet went down. Living in the backside of beyond, that's not a terribly unusual occurrence.

What was unusual is that it was still out 15 hours later. My land line phone uses voice over Internet so that was down too. I had to drive 4 miles to the other side of the hills to get decent cell phone coverage.

There are a few advantages of dealing with a small service provider. One is that I got to speak to a real live human without having to pick from a long list of menu items first. Another is that the person is located in my state and speaks perfect English. After talking with my provider I learned that no one else complained about an outage so the problem was most likely on my end.

My plan was do a lot of business on-line. However, with no connection to the 'net that wasn't going to happen. Just as well. It was 85, windy and I had a sailboat in the water. My lovely wife packed a cooler and we zig zagged around the lake most of the day.

When we got back to the house there was a note from the service guy on my porch. He figured out that my problem might be a bad power unit so he left a replacement. It took me about two minutes to plug it in. Next thing you know I was back in business.

Once my phone booted up I called my provider to let them know everything was running perfectly again. I also had some good things to say about the service guy taking the initiative and leaving the part I might need. The lady on the phone was really happy to get positive feedback. She assured me she was going to let the service guy know I was pleased.

All in all it was a great day. The sailing did my lovely wife and I a world of good. Business can wait.

-Sixbears