Love me some internet

I hope that many of you know me well enough by now to know how important the internet is to me.  It has been for a very long time.  I first got 'on-line' in 1987.  My brother talked me into checking out GEnie, which was General Electric's new idea for connecting people.  They took their intra-net, made it available in many cities around the country and with a modem, I was talking to people all over the place.  It was extraordinary and a wonderful way to meet interesting people.

There are still interesting people out there to meet and things to learn, friends to interact with and when the internet goes down in my little corner of the world, I become quite unhappy.

Several years ago, a terrible winter storm came through and knocked power out to the city.  Max packed up a laptop and me and took me to Borders.  It was safer weathering the storm out there than the storm that was me.  Fortunately our power returned much earlier than most other places in the city and we were able to be at home.

A few years later, when a summer storm took out the power, we just packed up and went to Carol's.  She still had power which meant I could get online and, oh by the way, be cool in her air conditioning. 

The last few days, here at Bell's Dell, as I've working diligently on classwork, the internet has slowed and messed around on me.  I began to think I was having trouble with the wireless router, so I talked to Max about replacing it.  Then, all of a sudden ... nothing.  NOTHING!!!

I use the internet up here for my telephone.  I use Skype.  My cell phone won't work here (except intermittently) because we are down in a valley - and there is little to no reception.  There's no need to pay for a landline to come in - Skype works fine.  But, guess what - it's an internet phone!  I'm not terribly comfortable being by myself without communication options. 

As I worried about the wireless router, I realized that Skype was still on - even when I had no internet.  I called Max.  Yup ... no problem communicating.  He told me that the internet comes in on one port, Outlook uses a different one, and Skype uses yet another.  So ... that was a problem with the service provider, not me. 

Oh ... and Diane ... pull the ethernet cable out of the wireless router and bring it to your computer - hardwire the thing.  Does it work?  Still ... no.  So, it's a provider problem. 

Up and down it went last night ... my frustration ebbed and flowed.  I was stuck reading dry Church History rather than interact on the forums in my classes and watch my Greek classroom videos, etc.  It had to be read ... but, yikes!

So that's where I was yesterday - no internet, no posting, a little frustration, but extremely grateful that I was still able to communicate with the outside world if necessary.

Do you remember when Egypt's government turned the internet off a few weeks ago?  That's what would have sent me to the streets in protest, I promise!  Immediately after that, our government began looking at ways that they could turn the internet off.  Really?  Really?  Don't EVEN think about it!  That's just crazy talk, all around!

Oh ... I'm back today.  Thank heavens!