Happy 2011!!
Last Tuesday, our internet went out intermittently but we didn't worry about it because of the bad weather we had been experiencing and Seth had another tattoo appointment so we were already rushing to get out the door and get there on time. When we got home, we did our evening ritual... Play COD:Black Ops. Problem? No internet connectivity. Seth put his computer techy skills to work and voila! It worked... For all of 30 minutes. More techy computer mambo jambo I don't understand and out comes the swearing which I know can't be a good thing so he calls our internet provider and they tell us that it's our modem that's bad and that since it was too late to send a new one out that night, they were going to next day ship it to us the following day. This would usually not be an issue except Seth has staff duty on Wednesday and I'm going to be bored that evening with NO Facebook (unless I access it through my phone), no addictinggames.com, no Solo-Ops but most importantly, NO COD!!
Wednesday late afternoon, early evening: Seth found me a pink controller, since I wanted one so desperately but they are incredibly hard to find since Microsoft only made a limited amount for Christmas 2 years ago. I went to pick it up at the mall parking lot since it's a public place and there are those crazy Craigslist killers out there. I thought to myself, since I'm already at the mall, I might as well drop into Game Stop right?? Right across the hallway from Game Stop is our internet providers kiosk so I stop in and have a "nice" little chat with them about their awful internet connectivity hoping that they could somehow fix my internet for the evening so I can play my game. They gave me an answer but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. They told me that I could have exchanged my modem right then and there instead of going through the hassle of getting one shipped then sending the old one out. Ughhhhh!!
Wednesday night: Intermittent internet, intermittent being it's on for 30 seconds, off for about 30 minutes so I use my computer techy skills (which I have none of) and unplug the modem for 30 seconds, plug it in, connect to XBOX Live, play for 30 seconds, get disconnected, reset the modem, connect to XBOX Live, play for 30 seconds, and so on and so forth for about 2 hours. All while thinking to myself: "I doubt Seth would have this kind of patience to turn off the modem, turn it back on, turn it off, etc". Well, I spoke too soon cause I too, ran out of patience and tried the "caveman technique": bashing it until it works. Who knew?? It worked.
Thursday: Seth comes home and falls asleep while I go to work. I come home that afternoon and he's on COD. The new modem came and it's magically fixed, or so we thought. It worked for all of an hour until it went kaput on us so we decided to call tech support again and let them know what's up. They said that they were going to have to send out a technician to look at our problem and the soonest they can get one out is Sunday. Sunday?! Are you freaking kidding me?! Fine, not like there's much we can do about availability. And until then, we would have to keep unplugging and plugging the modem back in to get it to connect.
Thursday night: "I was right!" I thought to myself... Seth didn't have the patience to keep resetting the modem and ended up taking our new one that was less than 12 hours old and our old one back to the store in the mall. We told them our situation and the guy was really nice and took both back and gave us a brand new one. We got it home and plugged it in, knowing that this time it would work since it was a brand new modem. Plug it in... Wait for it... Nothing. Utter disappointment. Sunday seems like forever away at this point.
Sunday: The technician came and assessed the internet coming to the house and everything was in the clear and he came into the house and found that we were using the new modem that they gave to us, well, it's new, wouldn't you think that they made the old one better? Nope. The firmware on the new modems aren't compatible with the network is one problem. Our technician also told us to do something totally bizzare, reverse the polarization on the outlet, meaning flip the plug around. We turned it around and OMG, WTF, it works!! Seriously!? All we had to do was plug it in backwards?! *facepalm* Anyways, he gave us a new different modem cause he didn't know how long that fix was going to be for. I am still *facepalming* over the whole situation because it's such a dumb fix, who would've thought to turn the plug around?
Come today, I am sitting here, with internet, blogging to you on our 55 inch TV because my computer broke and I had to send it in. Excessive? Probably but at least I have the internet and I have learned... I am addicted to having the internet and I have taken being able to communicate to the rest of the world for granted.
Hope everyone is having a great week.
