The Library Doesn't Open Til 10am!

and my DSL was down when I tried to check email at 7am!

The horror. I fought with it on my own, rebooting this, rebooting that, until 10am. Then I started calling the in-house tech support (my husband) at work every 20 minutes til he called me back.

"Honey, the Internet is broke."

He walked me through all the things I'd already done and a new trick or two, then told me to give up and call the ISP tech support people.

They made me re-do all the things I'd done on my own--again--then ran some line tests of their own. The line failed. Oh, no!

To top it off, their trouble ticket system was down - Could I call back in five hours and give them my case number & someone would schedule a person to come out and check the line?

I gave up hope and packed laptop and child off to the library after school. There I checked my email, did a little research, and, of course, borrowed some Dr Seuss & the animated version of "The Hobbit" that she and I were watching when dh got home from work.

I made him call tech support back.

The new tech people intimated it might be our modem and if we replaced we could be up and running tonight. Faster than you can say, "Raid Night in the World of Warcraft" he was off to the electronics store.

I'm posting this, so obviously it worked...

But still. If you work virtually, your Internet connection IS your business. What would you do if your ISP failed you? No matter how many managers you spoke to or people you were pleasantly firm with about your problem, if you faced being without connectivity for one or more days, what would you do?

I'm lucky. Austin is one of the most connected cities in the world and I pay my ISP a little extra (about $3) a month to be able to access wireless in ANY public location where they are the wi-fi provider, places like McDonald's, UPS stores. If I'm really desperate I can drive my car up to the park & ride up the street. It has wireless, too.

In fact, had dh not fixed us up I was going to do that later tonight. Put the small person to bed, reply to the emails I downloaded earlier, then pop down the road (literally about 2 miles) to send. Then I could swing by McDonald's for coffee in the morning to check for replies...

It's not a perfect plan, but it is a plan, and one that doesn't require any great outlay of cash while my ISP is down. So, for now, it works for me.

IF your ISP goes down for 2 or more days, what will you do?