meanwhile in real life

[lucy24]

I was without internet all day Wednesday. Not just me: I think it was most of the county.

Above and beyond the usual jonesing, I was suffering from a severe earworm*, and couldn't go on YouTube** to find something to dislodge it. File under: First World Problems.

Q.: Why was the internet down?
A.: Because someone cut the cable. (Where I live, there's just one. Part of it runs under a landslide-prone stretch of highway.)

Initially it was believed to be a vandal, but it turned out to be CalTrans.

I keep looking at the above sentence, turning it around in my head, and thinking there's got to be a punch line in there somewhere.


* "Lili Marleen" is an awfully pretty song, but there are limits.
** Today, for reasons 2C2E, I watched three different productions of Penzance back-to-back. My brain is exhausted.

[engine]

Initially it was believed to be a vandal, but it turned out to be CalTrans.

That could be the words of a new earworm.

Glad to hear you're back online. :)

[ken_b]

vandal ... CalTrans.

There's a difference?

[LifeinAsia]

vandal ... CalTrans.
There's a difference?

We don't have to pay the salaries ,benefits, and retirement for vandals.

Back in the day when I was a military contractor in Korea, we frequently had simulated war games that had us setting up shop in remoter areas. It almost became predictable that everything would come to a screeching halt at least once per exercise because some farmer inadvertently cut the temporary cable laid down for the exercise.

At least that was the official version. For some reason it seemed like most of the times when it happened, the OpFor (opposing force) team had gained the tactical advantage...

[piatkow]

A.: Because someone cut the cable. (Where I live, there's just one. Part of it runs under a landslide-prone stretch of highway.)

And 50% of the people told that will still blame their ISP for the loss of service.

[lucy24]

blame their ISP

Well, here's the blameworthy part. Can you guess what's been conspicuously absent from my email inbox for the past 36 hours? A mass mailing To All Our Customers apologizing for the outage and giving an automatic credit of 1/30 on the next monthly bill.

[Hoople]

an automatic credit of 1/30 on the next monthly bill.

Only given to those that ask. The concept of 'doing the right thing' is lost on the younger CFO's solely focused on profits!

[lucy24]

Only given to those that ask.

:: wondering if it's even worth calculating {dollar amount of credit} / {complete time of phone call, including hold time and all interactions} as an hourly wage, especially since this particular ISP uses voice recognition*, meaning that by the time you get through to a human, you're already enraged, so you also need to subtract the cost of at least one bottle of beer, and I think I'm now in negative numbers without even picking up the telephone ::


* An invention whose sole conceivable purpose was to make pushbutton voice menus look good by comparison. Most of the time I just keep hitting 0 until the machine gives up and transfers me to a human.

[not2easy]

wondering if it's even worth calculating {dollar amount of credit} / {complete time of phone call, including hold time and all interactions} as an hourly wage

I have studied this on numerous occasions, it is incalculable, too subjective. How do you measure the cost/value of the degrees of irritation, frustration, anger and rage? Do subsequent minutes escalate that value? Is the escalation exponential? It is simply incalculable.

My landline is out again, at least the 6th time this year. I just got service restored a week ago after having none since Aug. 24th. They do supply me with a mobile modem, but I stopped relying on their internet service almost two years ago and only use their free basic service now, so I can download on one ISP while using the other..

[tangor]

Being without is strange.... gives you a hint of the addiction the web truly is....

When Hurricane Ike hit Houston I was without ALL POWER, much less a telephone line for 13 days. Talk about withdrawal symptoms! Fortunately having to cook all meals on an bbq three times a day gave a weird sense of holiday to the nightmare.

I don't own cell phones, thus was truly cut off.

Whew!

Oddly enough, AT&T (isp) included a two week rebate in the following bill, so I got an extra day credit beyond the 13 actual.