Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Imposed Interlude

I'm back online after almost two weeks of internet trouble.

It started with an early morning thunderstorm.  The internet went out for several hours.  Then it came back intermittently.  Over a period of days I made several attempts to troubleshoot with tech support.  When I reported there was static on the phone, it was determined that a lineman should be dispatched, which took several more days.

By the time the lineman arrived Wednesday morning the internet was completely gone and the phone was all but unusable.  The good news was that everything up to the pole was in good working order.  The bad news was that something was definitely wrong in the house.  It wasn't his job to diagnose inside problems but he made phone calls to tech support to check numbers to narrow down where the problem might be.  He suggested we upgrade the underground wiring from the pole to the house.

I left for a long weekend and returned to find Ken had pulled new wire.  The good news was that the connection on the outside of the house produced a perfect signal, confirmed when Ken hooked the modem up outside.  The bad news was that there was still no internet in the house and there was still static on the phone.

We started troubleshooting inside, checking connections in phone jacks and locating where the wire comes into the house.  With the help of a mirror, we pulled the wiring up and out of the junction box downstairs.  One of the wires had broken off.  It's a wonder we had internet and phone for as long as we did.

It has been a solid day and a half with internet connectivity and static-free phone service.  Do I dare say the problem is solved?  It's good to be back.

News from the Slow Stitching Retreat coming soon ~

6 comments:

Kristen said...

That seems like the definition of hanging on by a thread - I'm so glad it's back!

Kristen said...

That seems like the definition of hanging on by a thread - I'm so glad it's back!

Deb said...

Welcome back Sharon! So glad you found the problem and were able to repair it, I'd go quite mad without internet for that long!

Yellow Shoes said...

All I can say is, very VERY Well Done...persistence pays off. Nice to see you back.

Anonymous said...

Probably wouldn't do me any harm to undergo an imposed interlude, but then, I should be careful what I wish for. So impressed that the two of you were able to track and solve the problem.

Helen said...

Great detective work! Problems that appear to have a reasonably straight forward or simple solution usually never work out that way.

My line for times like that is, "How hard can it be? Just search and replace!" Back story- I'm editing a long document and the author is standing over my shoulder waiting for the final copy. Of course, his changes wreaked havoc on the document flow so I had other issues to fix as well. He gives me the "How hard can it be?" line. And was promptly told to go to his office and wait for the copy.

Now whenever I face a "situation" I laugh out loud and say, "Well how hard can it be? Just search and replace." And then add another 30 minutes to my projected completion time estimate.