![\"No](\"http:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Unable-To-Connect.png\")
I went to PayPal to send my client: Phil, a request for payment. Unable to connect<\/strong><\/em>. I checked my network status: connected to LAN, no internet gateway. That usually means the modem has gone wonky and I need to reboot it. I was on my way over to do that when my cellphone rang.<\/p>\nI carry a cellphone as emergency communication between my wife, Marie, and I. No other reason. This had to be Marie \u2013 unless it was a wrong number or robo-caller, which does happen from time to time. It was Marie.<\/p>\n
She had been trying to call me on our home phone but was getting a \u201cNot available\u201d message. She wanted to let me know that their internet was down at work. That is a big deal since much of the data processing work they do is done over the internet on remote servers. She had heard that a wreck on Highway 25\/70 took out some necessary infrastructure and a large area was blacked out and without phone or cable.<\/p>\n
By this time I was in the office and could see that the modem was not receiving any signal from Comcast. My problem was external; rebooting won\u2019t help. Cable TV was out too. I am electronically MAROONED!\u00a0 <\/p>\n
I spent the rest of that afternoon and evening getting a lesson on just how dependent I have become on the internet. Most immediate: I needed to notify Phil that his tables are done and send him a PayPal invoice so I could receive payment. Then I needed to process a shipping label and schedule a pick-up with FedEx. None of which could I do.<\/p>\n
I have no phone service because our primary phone is a VOIP service.<\/p>\n
I kept catching myself going to the computer to check Facebook or Twitter. OK, well, I\u2019ll work on a web site\u2026 no, can\u2019t do that. I can write, I\u2019ll work on my current article some more. But I needed to do fact checking: that needs the internet.<\/p>\n
I grabbed my Kindle and decided to read. I finished my current book. There is a sequel, do I want to buy it? Let\u2019s check it out\u2026 no\u2026 that requires WiFi (which I had) and internet connection to Amazon.com (which I didn\u2019t).<\/p>\n
So I settled in with a paper book and my cup of coffee. I took a sip: ugh! It\u2019s tepid. I can drink coffee hot or iced, but tepid is \u2026 ugh. Fortunately we do have power, the microwave works, so I could heat it up.<\/p>\n
![\"no](\"http:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blondie-140828-No-Internet.jpg\")
When Marie got home from work she too fell into the pattern, \u201cI\u2019ll just check the news\u2026\u201d no: can\u2019t. \u201cOK, then I\u2019ll just\u2026\u201d Nope, can\u2019t do that either. Finally she settled in with the newspaper she brought home with her and read that front to back.<\/p>\n
We went to bed early.<\/p>\n
This morning we\u2019re back on line. I processed the invoice and caught up on some reading and posting. I\u2019m not feeling marooned any more. But it does make me wonder how well I\u2019d fare if the internet ever went out for a long time. News feeds talk about terrorist strikes and hacker attacks. ISIS is technologically savvy and hates western civilization.\u00a0 Russian hackers have been engaged in DNS poisoning that shuts down big blocks of ISP services for 24 hours or so. It is not beyond the realm of possibility.<\/p>\n
How many businesses could not do business? How many banks could not manage their accounts? How many people would lose a major line of communication? I do know people \u2013 no: I know ONE person \u2013 who has no internet at all. No computer and would not have one if you paid him. He gets along just fine, but he does have a cell phone and depends on it heavily. If wireless communications went down, he\u2019d be hurting too. It does give one pause for thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I spent the afternoon Thursday packaging up a set of tray tables I’d built to fill an order. It had taken me a long time to build the tables and my client had been very patient with me. It was time to request his payment and process a shipping label. I went to my computer. … Continue reading “Absent Internet and Tepid Coffee”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-7434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7434"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19733,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions\/19733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}