that was today...

So I'm glad most of my plans for today were to do work outside. Early this morning, my internet was out. A call to the place got a recording saying they were doing "maintenance" in my area, that was supposed to be done at 6. I grumbled a bit (it was after 6) but it came back at 7.

When I was in taking a break around 2, it just....quit. I could connect to the router but not to the internet - "No internet service" but "Logins and Messyna connected" (yes, I still call my router wifi that).

I tried my phone - nope, no service there either. (Sometimes my computer, which is older, does dumb things; the phone is a good check on that.)

So I called. And waited a LOT. Walked out and got the mail while waiting. Finally was told, "um, yeah, it looks like maybe a few other people in your area seem to be out"

Well, fine, okay. Except the modem was doing that weird light-cycle thing the last one did when it died. And there's no phone number for the LOCAL office (this is a remote answering system). So I thought: heck, I'll drive down there and ask in person, can pay my bill in person too.

Got down there, the lot was FULL. Uh oh. But then it turns out - they were working on a side lot, so people all were parked in the front. Got out, grabbed my bill and check and the modem and masked up. Waited for the area near the door to be free. Approached the door.

Was stopped by a guy: "Are you just paying your bill? You can't go in"

He looked official so I decided to play a tiny bit dumb - I held up my modem (yes I had taken it with on the slim chance the person on the phone was ill-informed - they were once before about something else, saying my cable box was broken when it actually was not) and said "My modem's not working"

"They ALL aren't working! There's an outage! We're working on it."

I didn't say anything - probably good, I didn't know at the time - but I admit, I LOOKED at him and the four other guys standing around who also appeared to be....not working.

"Okay, thanks" I said and stuck the bill and check in the envelope and shoved them in the drop box.

Someone on Twitter suggested I check Downdetector but there's a problem there: you need a fast enough connection to do that, and my cell-phone connection at home is two bars at best. So after I finished the trimming and mowing, I drove over to my campus building (wifi I can use that isn't Vyve) and checked.

Yup. Everything everywhere was down. Report was: cut fiber optic cables. (Plural. More than one).

So I grumbled a bit - this probably meant no service for a day or more - and drove back home, but first e-mailed my chair that I needed to know if there was a meeting tomorrow over Zoom so I could be sure to be in my office at work (and I'd have to haul the little webcam i have here at home with me). No response as of the last check, but it doesn't really matter now.

Anyway, I got home and garaged my car and felt very Eeyoreish - I had lost practically my only way of communicating with the world (the one where I wasn't imposing on someone's time by texting them or whatever) and I couldn't even have streaming music or the BBC or anything. And who knows for how long. And cut fiber optic cables? Holy hell, are there beginning to be "hey let's shut down utilities for whatever nefarious reason" actions, and are we going to start losing electricity and water and landline phones, and the idea is to make it so we can't live? (You can see how fast my mind goes to this when I am alone). I sadly called my mom and said "no FaceTime tonight, you'll have to call me on the landline" (because the connection on the cell phone is terrible when it can't use the WiFi - we really need some kind of booster here to make reception better, but then, most people use their wifi with their phones at home)

At about 5:15 it came back Which kind of amazes me. I wonder now if it was actually just one cut, on whatever you might call a "trunk line" for the Internet - which is much easier to explain away as "someone doing construction was an idiot" rather than "a bunch of coordinated groups cut the cable in different places" At any rate, it's back. And I'm grateful - I was feeling very down last night about "trapped in the house here for weeks and weeks more (our R0 has spiked up again, Texas' has, and I don't know if it's early re-opening or Memorial Day parties or if actually it can be accounted for by meat-packing plants, but - I am going to stay home for longer. And just a week or 10 days ago I was thinking "maybe not too long before it would be okay to brave a trip to the JoAnn's" but no, not now)

But actually: if I have the internet connection, if I can stream music while I work and listen to programs on the BBC and have contact with my friends online and be able to FaceTime my mo, that's enough, I guess.

I mean, I still would like to be able to comfortable go out for "fun" some time soon, but being able to watch streaming video and tell bad jokes on Twitter is better than NOT being able to do those things while stuck at home.

(Cable stayed on. They'd probably have had even more upset people if both internet and cable went out, though I suspect with WFH, there are more people having a hard time with "no internet" than would have a hard time with "no cable" - and of course if you have Netflix or similar, you can always find something to watch online.)

But here's hoping the internet stays on, and no more people are dumb about where they dig