Internetlessness
I am not unreasonable. I work in technology.
For the past few days my DSL has been going up and down like a whacked-out, crack-fueled kangaroo on an exceptionally well-strung, city-sized trampoline (complete with bloodshot eyes and twitching, manic facial expressions).
There is a light in the middle of three lights on my wireless DSL router (represented at right) that signifies the existence of a broadband connection. It is solid green when it is on and connected, blinks green on and off when there are "connection troubles," and turns a solid, angry amber when there is absolutely no connection to be found. Needless to say, it was stuck in a sickening oscillation between blinking green and angry amber.
I called SBC (my ISP) many times. Each time, after wading through 10 minutes of phone trees and oft-repeated cheerily recorded sound clips about how I could now log my troubles with SBC via email (each time I forgot to record the buttons I pushed to get where I wanted to be, which meant I had to listen to the email notice repeatedly, and being without email capabilities only rubbed salt in the wound), I was greeted with a recorded message from a network technician rushing through his lines:
"Some customers in the Chico area may not be able to log on to their DSL service. We are aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve it. Additionally... blah, blah, blah ..."
This is good. This is known as "setting customer expectations." I am not unreasonable. I work in technology. I know technology can fail; miserably and mysteriously, abruptly and unexpectedly. I will forgive them for their technological redundancy shortcomings; this time.
More to the point. I was sans-Internet. Cut off. Without connectivity. Like an addict fiending for his fix I paced about, lost in conspiracy theories involving SBC and grandiose government agencies, cloaked in secrecy. I fixated on what I would do when it came back. What it was I was missing. The dozens of imagined emails I could not send and/or receive. The hundreds of thousands of articles and websites I couldn't access. The website formatting bugs I could not fix. The friends I could not IM with.
Like my friend Fred, I began to realize how much of what I do on a day-to-day basis relies on an inverted pyramid of complex devices and technologies, where any one of which can fail and render my occupation relatively useless. Unlike Fred however, who is a professor and can still teach sans-network/computer/insert other prominent technology here, if my computer and/or network fails, and I can do nothing to right it, I am utterly useless professionally. A "Technology Consultant" becomes superfluous when his technology has failed him.
When the middle light turned solid green again I rejoiced, rushed back to my computer, and clicked the enticing "send and receive" button only to find that my email inbox grew no larger. Then I visited my favorite sites to see if there had been any updates in my absence. There were none.
Sadly, it seems my connection restoration euphoria was unrequited.