Good Intentions, and All That!

It being the beginning of a new month, I had many aspirations to get off to a "running start" in August, both with my writing as well as with my online businesses.

At shortly before noon, the Internet goes out.

Of course, that's not a totally alien concept... except it's mostly a winter issue when snow, wind, soggy ground and trees conspire to take down our feeder lines.

It is summer.
It is dry.
There is no wind.

Of course, outages do happen, for a variety of reasons (often related to nearby construction), and services are typically restored within 30 minutes or so.

I'm not too worried, and decide to take this as an invitation to do a bit of yardwork. There are some hedges that need trimming, and particularly the 15-foot thick thicket that affords an ocean view...

By 2:00pm it's getting a bit warm in the sun, so I come back in to (presumably) get started on my work.

The Internet is still out...

For good measure, I power cycle the modem and router, just in case...

The Internet is still out...

Time to call Astound Broadband (yes, that's really their name) and do the the whole "WTF, over?" thing.

A recorded message assures me that they "are aware of the outage in our region, and estimated time of service restoration is 3:30pm."

Well, if I have any online orders, I guess they will ship on Monday...

I sigh and decide to at least type up some rough drafts of blog posts for later use... and learn that voice-to-text on Microsoft Word only works when you have a live Internet connection.

I sigh, and decide to go back to yardwork, but in a shady spot. It's not as if there's a shortage of things that need to be taken care of, out there. Part of the side yard is an overgrown mess because a long wet spring caused some of it to turn into a swamp that didn't really dry out till a few weeks ago.

At 4:00pm, the Internet is still out, and the recorded message now says that service will be restored "by 7:00pm."

So much for my "productive work day!" But at least I'm getting some yardwork done... and I have a blog post written out and ready to publish when we get back online.

That's actually cilantro, in bloom...

Suffice it to say, I ended up getting quite a lot of yardwork done today!

The recorded message at the cable provider's office was subsequently updated to promise service restoration "by 9:30pm," and later to "by 1:00am," as a result of which I am now writing this post entirely on my phone... something I typically will avoid at all costs because of how slow and cumbersome it is... for me.

Hopefully there will be service by the time I wake up in the morning!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

How about you? Do you you have a backup plan for when the internet goes out? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.08.03 00:22PDT
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