I got up this morning with a full slate of work to do, all time-sensitive. Sat down to check my email and respond to a few messages and…. no Internet. Checked all cables, rebooted the modem, router and computer after unplugging the first two for a few minutes to reset. Nothing. Nada. The stupid little ATM light (it’s an ADSL modem) wouldn’t flash for me. Picked up the phone and rather savagely punched the numbers for the Internet troubleshooty dudes (they like to be called tech support, but I don’t often find them terribly supportive). As the phone rang, the ATM light came back on. Hung up phone.

Used Internet for about half an hour. Light went off. Picked up phone, dialed random digits to some household or other in Torbay. Light came back on.

Rinse. Repeat.

My previous “discussions” with tech support have resulted in them reassuring me that there’s nothing wrong with my line or signal and that I “must be doing something wrong”. I have done everything that every one of them has suggested. I have placed the modem in a high location away from other metallic or electronic objects. I have made sure the right cords and plugs were used. I have placed the router in an equally high location, away from the modem. I have vacuumed everything regularly while topless and whistling Dixie backwards.

And still, every few weeks, the modem goes fritzy. They insist on troubleshooting every time and refuse to swap out my modem for a new one. They are mystified as to where I could have gotten it (they sold it to me) and astounded that their company ever carried that model. When I tell them that I got it about ten years ago, they respond with things like, “Cool, I was in grade five!” And they don’t replace the frigging modem.

It’s an on-going battle. I probably won’t win until I tell them I’m switching service providers, but frankly, the competition isn’t all that appealing, either.

In any even, once I got the Internet back and gave it a big hug, my hard-drive went ker-frizzle. Luckily it was only the portable hard-drive, where I store all of my images, music, downloads and documents. Smacking of self….

So the afternoon was spent trying to restore and save whatever could be saved (it appears that nothing critical was lost. I managed to transfer almost everything that mattered before the drive sputtered to a halt) which tied up the resources of my computer such that I am now finally getting to the stuff I should have been doing all afternoon.

Yeah, it’s Monday.