I live in rural Tennessee all alone.
Can't get a cell phone signal here.
No longer have television.
One of the very few radio stations I can get is a college station from Kentucky.
I live a few miles from Kentucky.
Hello, Daniel Boone.
My every day life is one of isolation. It's no sacrifice. It's my choice. I've gone the Big City Route many times in my past. It was fun when I was a reckless kid. Lately - in my petrified and introspective years - I prefer being Hermitized.
I think I made that word up.
I admittedly rely solely on the computer as my Gateway to the World. It's where I get news and weather, watch movies, listen to music, keep in touch with humanity, and a thousand other things.
Without it, I'm lost.
Cut to the chase, Jon. You're putting people to sleep with this unnecessary crap.
My crap is never unnecessary, Kemosabee.
The "chase" started last Thursday, when I suddenly and inexplicably couldn't get an Internet connection on my computer. It's happened several previous times, but always resolved itself within a couple hours.
This time there was no resolution.
I consulted with Windows Troubleshooter.
Problem:
Can't access the Internet.
The mysterious diagnostic process lasted twenty minutes. At least.
Result:
Your computer has no access point to the Internet.
With that helpful information under my belt, I delved further (farther??) into Troubleshooter and received more useless information.
Eventually, they provided me with several bogus suggestions, such as
Consult a reliable friend for help
(I swear to God, this was one of the suggestions!).
Hell, I haven't had a reliable friend since Howdy Doody was on television....but that's beside the point.
Consult your Internet provider technician.
On Friday night I consulted my Internet provider technician.
The phone call lasted well over an hour, while he and I exhausted every possibility to resolve the issue with no positive result.
He was extremely polite and did his very best to be helpful, but we got nowhere.
Kinda like a first date.
The technician finally decided that a computer expert should be sent to my house on Monday.
Next came a barrage of personal health questions.
This initially startled me, until I remembered the grim threat of the Black Plague Coronavirus.
Was I feeling ill?
Have I been in contact with anyone who was ill?
Have I been exposed to any known virus or any possible carrier of a virus?
When I finally convinced him that me and my two cats were pure as the wind-driven snow and no threat to the world at large, I was told that I'd get a call on Monday.
I spent a long, miserable weekend severed from the Internet.......but I did manage to drive to town VERY early on Saturday to get some supplies (that's another story to soon be told).
Early Monday morning I got a call from another technician who spent another hour trying to resolve my computer issue...with no results.
Finally, an expert was dispatched to my house. He arrived just before noon - - a huge, heavy, burly guy arrayed in a surgical mask and blue plastic gloves.
To make an extremely long story short (which, at this point, is a complete impossibility)....
.....he worked for over two hours - installing new wiring, changing the mysterious "fiber optic box", installing a new router......and other things I could never figure out or comprehend.
The result:
by late afternoon I was connected to the Internet again and finally in contact with the world.
It's a good feeling.
