Sunday, June 26, 2005
Well, that was not so fun.
Here we were yesterday evening, sitting around innocently enjoying the sound of the rain on our metal roof, when suddenly there was a loud SNAP. And not the modern kind that is meant as enthusiastic approval of a person and/or their actions.
The computers and all their friends and accessories instantly turned into doorstops. Before I could finish voicing the first obscenity I noticed something very odd. The lights and Mike's TV were still glowing along just fine.
'Oh,' I thought. 'The battery back-up/surge protector has done its job and possibly given its life to save our dear baby computers!'
So I worked my way back through the desk debris to where it sat, and sure enough, I couldn't get it to power back up. This was annoying, because I don't know about YOUR computer desk area, but mine always looks like the safety team came too late with the stuff-alanche warning signs.
Next annoyance: Wal-mart, the only store open in town, does not carry those battery back-up thingies. So we bought the biggest surge protector they had, went home, and completely deconstructed another huge chunk of my work area.
An hour and a half later, everything was fine...but the INTERNET!!! Horrors!!! I mucked about with it a while longer, but finally gave up and decided to call CenturyTel, to see if it was somehow a system wide glitch.
Only to find it was the PHONE LINE that was out. Which retrospectively explained quite a lot.
Caro drove to town to report the outage, and got some advice about what to try before the repair people came on MONDAY. But it involved messing with the box on the outside of the house, and since it was dark now, we just dealt as best we could with our withdrawal symptoms until bedtime.
As you can probably guess, the advice was typical for Customer Support--more or less right, although lacking enough in detail to make it slightly more of a trial and error extravaganza than it really needed to be. But the important part is we are BACK ON LINE. *sobs and clutches intarnets to chest*
Oh, well, at least I made some good progress towards rearranging my work area!
The computers and all their friends and accessories instantly turned into doorstops. Before I could finish voicing the first obscenity I noticed something very odd. The lights and Mike's TV were still glowing along just fine.
'Oh,' I thought. 'The battery back-up/surge protector has done its job and possibly given its life to save our dear baby computers!'
So I worked my way back through the desk debris to where it sat, and sure enough, I couldn't get it to power back up. This was annoying, because I don't know about YOUR computer desk area, but mine always looks like the safety team came too late with the stuff-alanche warning signs.
Next annoyance: Wal-mart, the only store open in town, does not carry those battery back-up thingies. So we bought the biggest surge protector they had, went home, and completely deconstructed another huge chunk of my work area.
An hour and a half later, everything was fine...but the INTERNET!!! Horrors!!! I mucked about with it a while longer, but finally gave up and decided to call CenturyTel, to see if it was somehow a system wide glitch.
Only to find it was the PHONE LINE that was out. Which retrospectively explained quite a lot.
Caro drove to town to report the outage, and got some advice about what to try before the repair people came on MONDAY. But it involved messing with the box on the outside of the house, and since it was dark now, we just dealt as best we could with our withdrawal symptoms until bedtime.
As you can probably guess, the advice was typical for Customer Support--more or less right, although lacking enough in detail to make it slightly more of a trial and error extravaganza than it really needed to be. But the important part is we are BACK ON LINE. *sobs and clutches intarnets to chest*
Oh, well, at least I made some good progress towards rearranging my work area!
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