I know computers are Wonderful. That progress is Wonderful, and that I should approve computers and progress. There are times however, when I’m not sure not sure if computers and progress are Wonderful, and not sure if I do approve them. Such a time arrived on Monday two weeks or so back. I connected up the Compaq, (I’m way way out in the country and on dailup.) And instead of the cheerful tweedle tweedle of a connection being made, I got a click, then a tick tick tick and the information that my modem was improperly configured or something like that. I cursed, fiddled about and finally got a connection which promptly shut off again about an hour later. I said something more vehement, managed yet again to get it working, got all the work done that I wanted, and on Tuesday decided to do something else since I was finding this problem stressful. It was a lot more stressful on Wednesday morning when no matter what I did I couldn’t get the internet connection to establish because – or so the gadget said – I had no dial tone. Really? Funny that the phone worked. So I used that, wailed at the computer shop in town who said send the connection bit in and they’d check it out. The mail car arrived, collected the gadget and departed for the computer shop to drop it off there. The shop would phone to tell me their conclusions once they’d had a chance to check it out. They did. The modem was fine and being returned with a section replaced since it was pretty ancient anyhow and replacement would cost peanuts. I was happy with that. It got back, I plugged in, checked again and found, nope. same result, so it hadn’t been that item…
Okay, go via phone to ISP and find a very pleasant helpful chap called Terry. Patiently he worked through every possibility with me as to why I was getting this problem and after about two hours of meticulous hard work, he came to the conclusion that whatever the problem was, it wasn’t the computer or his ISP either. Sigh. Which left one possibility. It had to be my wiring. Hmmm. At which point it occured to me that my landline phone jacks in to a larger control panel thing. If I hauled the computer over, plugged it in there and it worked… I did and and – wheeee – I was on line again. very uncomfortably however and it was a nuisance doing it there. So I went on line, discarded or answered 90 emails that had accrued, logged out and phoned my phone people for someone to come and fix the wiring fault. It took several days because they’re busy, and, as stated, I’m out in the wop wops. However a nice chap arrived, greeted Thunder who was making desperate overtures, and started in on the wiring. Apart from being somewhat hampered by Thunder who was anxious to assist – and who at one stage was head down in the technician’s tool kit – we were back up and running very quickly. Fortunately I while I hadn’t been on line at this point for around 10-11 days, I’d been continuing to write in a blog file and had only to drop those into my blog once I was on line again. The really interesting thing I noticed was that I’m not addicted to the internet. It was mildly irritating to be off-line when I knew emails would be coming in. It would have been very irritating not to be able to submit on-line if I’d had work I wanted to get out urgently. But really, it didn’t bother me that much. I did even more reading that usual, filed a fair bit of writing and made a submissions list for when I was back on-line. But 10-11 days without a connection didn’t worry me that much. In which I suspect I may be unique…