Disconnected

Welp, our phone line (landline) and internet went out on Saturday. There was no fix for it until Monday at the earliest, but we were scheduled to be in Santa Fe for the IAIA Open House, so the soonest we could get the situation resolved would be Tuesday. Harumph.

Cell phones still worked and connected to the internet – but barely. It’s always catch as catch can with them anyway. Ms. Ché was pretty put out though because not only did we have no internet at home but none of her laptops would connect to the internet anywhere else, and she had schoolwork to turn in, all of it on her laptops. Something had gone truly haywire somewhere.

I checked my machine on other networks, and sure enough, it didn’t connect either, at least not till Monday when I was able to get a connection on IAIA’s network, but I only had a few minutes to do some banking and check one or two sites before I had to shut down for the duration of the open house and building dedication (perhaps the subject of another post.)

My, we discovered how dependent we have become on the World Wide Web. We literally couldn’t do anything online, which meant schoolwork wasn’t turned in on time, we weren’t able to pay bills and check balances, we were bereft of moment-to-moment news (I’d call that a blessing!), no emails to sift through (another blessing?) and I couldn’t post anything new or respond to comments in this corner of Blogtopia (h/t Skippy).

So. The phone guy came yesterday, same guy whose been out before when static built up on the lines (he said it was due to bad fuses that were part of a Qwest purchase many years ago, but anyway… we still have a Qwest router for criminy sakes!) and he jiggled this and that in the phone box on the back of the house and as he did, he kept looking down the road where a “new” (old) mobile home has been emplaced on a vacant piece of land, and where trenches have been dug to connect said MH to various services like water and power and so forth.

I told him that I saw a plumber out there trenching on Saturday. He said he’d seen the trenches when he’d come over to our place, and one was really near the Century Link (formerly Qwest) box on the street. Hmm. He said if they cut the phone line it would cost them about $3000 to fix it because they’d have to get a crew out and splice the cable and on and on and on. He would go check presently.

Sure enough. When the phone guy came back he said they’d cut the line. He called the repair crew and he said they’d be over soon. Sigh. I asked him how long it would take to fix; he said not much longer. Once the crew was there, they should be able to take care of it in an hour or so. I would know it was done when things started working again.

And that’s what happened. It took longer than an hour, but the line was repaired and we have (landline) phone and DSL service again. (DSL?! OMG, they still have that?! Whoa!)

Most people out here don’t have landline phones (and have to stand outside in the snow and cold to make or receive cell phone calls!) and have satellite or cable internet, or rely on their smart (sic) phones.

One makes do.

As for the folks who cut the line, I don’t know… They were suppose to call 811 before they dug and they didn’t. Bad ju-ju.

Ms. Ché was able to get her laptops checked and adjusted at the IAIA IT center yesterday and they now connect to the networks at home and school and so on. 

Years ago we might have panicked if something like this had happened. Now? Oh well!

(Today is my third Rituxan infusion. We'll see how that goes... should be interesting.)