The last couple of months of the year were filled with technostress. As I noted here, I got a new router and modem from Spectrum at the end of October. But by mid-November, the Internet had become unreliable more often than not.
I followed all the instructions the bot suggested. So they dispatched a repair guy. Early on, he decided that the particular line of modems they gave me was crap. He got a new one from his truck, and lo and behold, everything seemed to be working for about a month.
On Christmas Eve, I noticed the Internet was spotty. I tried all the usual tricks (rebooting my router/modem and my computer), which worked for a New York minute. But the landline was out, too. We couldn’t use the Roku.
And I was even having trouble utilizing my cellphone, even though I set it up NOT to use the house Internet. (The phone worked fine two houses away from our home.)
This process was making me, usually a warm and fuzzy guy, cranky. I couldn’t write much for the blog or pay bills. My wife had time-sensitive info she needed to do for her mother.
Guy #2
Then a second repair guy arrived on December 27, after the nasty little snowstorm we had, and only 15 minutes late. He had looked over the previous tech’s records and determined that some old hardware downstairs was part of the problem.
He explained it as though it were a garden hose spliced to a dozen faucets. The Internet wasn’t dead, but it was overly worked. This explained why I could access Gmail but couldn’t open the links within it. He even climbed the utility pole to make sure a squirrel hadn’t compromised the equipment.
Okay, so it now works! Until the next morning! Arrgh. I rebooted the modem and router for, no exaggeration, at least the eighth time in a month. This time the fix seemed to “take,” knock wood.
Mia Birdsong is the host of 