Lorelei UnPlugged

And boy, was I!

Yep. I'm back and it wasn't easy.

What happened was this. Way back in September (it was the 12th) I realized I didn't have the Internet. So, the inner dialogue went something like this.
Well, shit. I'll have to call up Peoplepc--the guys from over there in India or Pakistan... But not today. Maybe tomorrow.

See, it is never a nice experience because they have an accent. I don't understand them, and you have to explain what you see on your screen--the whole thing--to them.

Well, the next day I call. I get someone on there who must be a pup (in training). I could tell he got exasperated with me for asking him to repeat everything. Just because you speak my language doesn't mean I'm going to get it the first time around. When these people get on my bus and ask me if I go to some place I always have to have them repeat it 3 times before I can understand them!

So, at one point he says he would have to have someone call me back. Mainly because I think he didn't know what the hell was the problem. I get a call back in a few minutes. We go through the whole thing. I've now spent an excess of an hour and a half, when I get a brand new error message up after everything we've gone through, and he says "Oh. Ma'am. You have an outstanding bill."

"A what?" He repeats it. I owe them $25.10. I said, I didn't get your last bill. Which, by the way, I had to pay them an extra $3.00 for a paper bill because I will NOT pay for things on line. So, I tell him I'll send them the payment. He said in 7-10 business days I'll have service again.

I check about midweek. Nothing. I check at end of week. I also, at this point check my phone connection, just in case, because we get mice chewing on lines outside... There is no dial tone. Nothing. Silence.

Well, shit! Now I have to call up the phone people--who by the way gets $44. in addition to my bill for Internet from Peoplepc. You do the math. I've wanted to get wireless, but my phone jack is in another room from the computer. I can't move my computer into the bedroom. It can't be more than 10 feet from the jack. I wasn't going to have someone come in and do the work, as they'd charge me.

So, on Sunday I call the phone people. I get someone who's first language is Spanish and I have trouble understanding her. I thought that maybe I'd reached Donald Trump's house and got the maid. Anyway, after the difficult give and take she locates the problem, and tells me it's inside the house. Which means if a tech person comes into the house to do the work, they will charge me.

I was livid by this time. So was my husband, as he overheard the whole exchange.

Over that weekend we decide to get rid of both Peoplepc and the phone company. It was much easier to deal with the phone people (by this time it was Monday, the 21st of September), than the Peoplepc people. The guy tried to keep me. Asked if I still wanted my email, or "free" Internet for a month. NO to both things. I just wanted these jerks out of my hair forever!!!!

That was the end of my Internet, and phone. We discussed getting a couple of cell phones, but we didn't really need them right now, as we had the park phone that we used--very rarely do we need to call anyone. We are not phone people. We don't have kids (who would probably not call us but expect us to text them--bullshit on that).

So, I wrote a letter of Shelly Arkon, to let her know what was going on with me, so that people in my network didn't wonder. I want to thank her here for getting the word out that I was okay and when I could, I would be back on-line.

Believe me, if I wasn't a writer, and making some money with it, I wouldn't even have the Internet. I wouldn't even have a computer.

So, my husband and I discuss my options. I tell him if I get a laptop I could go anywhere there's free WiFi. However, living 8 to 10 miles out in the country sort of has its limitations. I'd have to go to town plop down in a coffee house and spend hours there doing this. Not exactly fun. Free, yes. Not convenient.

In the mean time while we are lobbing ideas around, I get a bill from Peoplepc. It's still on the refrigerator, by the way, and the amonunt is wrong, as I don't owe them no effing $25.10. I didn't have Internet. I told the guy I spoke to that unless they send me a corrected bill, I'm not paying it. Screw 'em. When I called them, I'll bet I wasn't even on-line as yet! So, I figure I don't owe them anything.

In the meantime of all this going on, we had a new furnace and duct work put in. That was 2 days of noise and we had to get out of the house. Also, new windows upstairs, and a brand new front door went in--which seemed to take forever, and a new ceiling fan in my office. I've had to clean and re-clean areas of the house, so I was busy. I was busy outside as well, just being me.

On October 5th, we went to Frontier (our former phone people), to look into Internet w/o having a phone connection. You can, they said. It would cost us $28/mo. Just a little bit more than Peoplepc were charging me, and no phone connection. And he said all the work inside and out would be FREE. Great! The guy said he'd get someone to our house by end of the week.

We waited for a phone call. He called and left message that he was "trying to get in touch" with his tech guy.

We waited. Had no further message about when this would happen. Then, the next week we had a message we'd have someone in on a Thursday of next week. We'd asked for a Monday or Friday--I had to be here in order for the guy who did the connection to speak with me. Dennis doesn't do computers.

Dennis called the office and talked to Brittany. He told her the problem, we had to be home when this guy came, and what we wanted. He spent all day trying to find out when/if we'd ever see anyone at the house. By this time two weeks had gone by. Brittany said we should have been connected within 10 business days. Uh, right.

So, after Dennis' 4 hours of dealing with this. He gave up. Then, on Monday, October 19, we get a call that the tech guy would be there on Tuesday (tomorrow) between 8am and 4pm. It was an automated message.

Well, Dennis said he'd stick around Tuesday. He can, since his work is near the house. He waited. He did laundry, I think he moved furniture...

It was around noon and I was driving route # 6 through the parking lot of one of our grocery stores, and there I see him walking across the lot, waiting for me. I stop the bus, put it in park and get off. He isn't smiling. Tells me the guy hasn't shown up. We needed a few things from the store, so he was going to get something for dinner, and go home.

I'm devastated. Will I never get Internet? Why is it so difficult. Are these guys even on the same planet as us?

I drive home, feeling like the world is going to end soon. I'm sitting down to eat a sandwich I couldn't eat because I was too upset. Dennis is taking off his boots and says "He's here!"

Okay, hang on, this isn't the end, gentle readers.

Tall guy, easily 6'+ some inches, name is John, comes in and while I eat he goes and reconnects an older phone jack that is in my office. Then he goes outside and puts in a brand new box on the outside, because the other one was outdated. After that, he brings in a router box. He was asking my husband why we went to the frontier store. Dennis and I got the picture that that guy we spoke to that day was a salesman. The Tech guys hate them. They put too much work on them (over heard him on phone telling his guy--who must be a go-between--that he'd do 4 jobs a day, five at the most and work through lunch, but that was it).

He is at my computer getting the router up and working. Everything is green, but my Internet won't work. He tries this and that, going into areas of the computer that I wouldn't know how he found. After forty minutes he stands there telling me my firewall or something is blocking my computer from recieving the signal. When everything looked bleak and he was telling me that their tech guys (the ones you call and they talk you through stuff), are pretty good, I'm like this isn't happening. I'll never get the Internet again.

But John stays past 4:00, until 4:30. For some reason he feels sorry for us, I don't know. Probably saw our 20 year old furniture and ancient TV set, and figures we need this free help today.

He kept getting the error message that the "proxi server" wasn't connected. Something like that. By this time Dennis has gone and taken his shower, because he could be of no help. But before he left the room he said "Those Peoplepc people are messing with you."

True enough.
John says "I don't know what that means, "proxi server".
I say to him, "Proxi means main, or primary."
Something about what I said had him go somewhere into what he'd been looking at before. Somehow he found it, pulled up this window and right there it said "Peoplepc" on my proxi server.

Oh, he did it! Suddenly I had Internet!!!

I nearly cried I was so over joyed. We did a hi-five, and I couldn't have been more happy. I said I'd hug him, but not in front of my husband. We all laughed. I shook his hand. He was happy, I could tell, that he'd found the problem. "It was something that you said," he told me. But really, he did it. I couldn't have done it.

Aside from one glitch, and another phone call I had to make to a tech guy today, I've got Internet going.

So, I'm happy to say I'm back. But I never trust this crazy technology. Eventually, I think it will be the end of us all. I really do. That was Dennis' prediction way back in the '70's to the teacher who boasted about computers and how great they were going to make our lives. Well, I don't think my life is any better, really, if anything things are more complicated. I'll have more to say on that some time later.

For now. I'm BAAAACK!

We Were Hit By Lighting! The shocking details...

First of all, I want you all to know that we're all okay. There was no fire, and we were very lucky, in many ways.

Here's the full story...

Thursday morning 5:30am
Thunderstorms in area

My husband and I were eating breakfast when we heard a loud POP! It wasn't unlike a helium balloon that pops. It startles you, and it's loud. The lights went out completely and we smelled something hot.

My husband, being next to the door that leads to the dining room had somehow zoomed out of the kitchen. 
"Get out of there," he said in a rather normal but stern voice.

Yeah. I was up, out of my chair, and when I got into the dining room where we waited to see what more would happen, I realized I still had the butter knife in my hand!

In the next five or so minutes Dennis located his flashlight, and went down into the musky basement to see if the circuit breaker had done its job. It had. He turned it back on and lights were working--except for the ones above the table where we had been sitting. This is a fan light. Odd thing about lightning and electricity--it is very selective as to how it travels and where to. The fan part was working. The lights were not. 

"That's weird," I said.

Upon checking the light bulbs, we found they had been fried--blackened! Then, I noticed the digital clock on the stove wasn't working. We checked the range. It was working. The oven was not.

What else had it done to the house? We were worried about a possible fire, of course, so that had to be checked out. We, living in the country, have lightning rods on this 1906 farm house that stands three stories tall. As far as we could tell, there was no fire.

My computer was plugged into a surge protector. But I had done one thing the night before, that I sometimes do when I know that there are bad storms in the area--I unplugged the phone cord from the modem. 

I went to work with the story about our oven and lights getting fried. I later learned that day that one digital fan was also fried. And when I went to check my computer (I had unplugged it for the day, worried about it being fried.) It came back to life, slowly. I kept looking at a black screen and the little boxes at the bottom where my files were. Eventually, the computer came back on. OMG! 

But when I tried to get on line--nothing. The phone was dead! I called the phone company and put in an order.
FRIDAY:
The phone technician had been out on Friday, zooming back and forth from our box to the neighbor's. I think we have three people on the same line. No dial tone on the phone by Friday night.
SATURDAY;
We went about our morning, and I wound up planting almost all of the rest of my annuals in mud. We'd gotten so much rain, even one and a half days of no rain and some sun did not dry us out. While I was out in the swamp, I heard someone driving back and forth. My husband came out to tell me that the phone guy was out there working on the phone again. Good. I was worried, since I never got a message saying my problem lie inside the house not inside.
1:50PM
I had taken a shower to get the grime off me from planting in the mud. A knock came to the door. We knew it would be the technician. It was and I went to speak with him. He asked me to check for a dial tone.
I did. Oh, I was so happy to hear it!!!
I went back to the young man at the door with a tan shirt that had Frontier embroidered over his heart. His face was flushed from the heat. I told him it was back up.

He said good, that the people just down the way (the Hunts), and the lady up the street, had both lost their computers. And the Hunts had a surge protector. I told him, I had unplugged that phone from the computer the night before we had those storms.

He went on to say that the lines under ground had been fried. "I don't know where it hit, but-"
"Here!" I said. And I told him what all we lost. I was taking in the fact that everyone else had lost their computer. I hadn't even known they were on dial up, but then they probably can't use anything else. I don't know.

I was prepared to call both the phone people and my Internet people to cancel, if the problem was inside the house--because they'd charge us for it. I would then write a letter to Shelly Arkon and tell her the news and ask her to keep me in her thoughts. I was prepared for the worse.

I've been living by a shoe string with this Internet thing, and so forth. If it or my computer goes I'm up the creek. The oven and light will be replaced (courtesy of the forest preserve who owns the house). My computer might have been fried, but wasn't. We might have been fried, but weren't.

Yeah, you just have to be grateful for all that you have, the bumps you get through in life, and also for being so damned lucky!

Offically on Vacation (stay-at-home)

Hello, my pretties. It's warm this morning. I believe it's around 69, maybe at this early hour of 5a.m. I woke at my normal hour of 4 - simply can't get out of that habit, but it might get better as my two weeks off kick into my sub-conscious.

I've got a number of things going. First of all, fifth book wants to come out of me. I realize that last summer I wrote the first draft of 4th book, and did so in 3 months, including all the research for it as well. I believe that's a record for me. I don't intend on trying that again, but if it happens, then it happens.

I'm also going to get a short story self-published, and as I mentioned, I'm still working on that, with help of another author, Carole Gill. *waves*

I've got flowers to water early, need to begin taking walks early, too. We have terrible pesky deer flies that are horrible and will draw blood from you, if you aren't vigilant. I slapped on on Dennis' arm he wasn't eve aware of biting him. Lots of blood all over. Worse than a mosquito--which are not around because of the drought.

HELP:
I'm unable to post any pictures on my blogs, and if anyone knows how to fix this I'd love to know. I think I have to go into the account upload limits and do something, but what I don't know. It's very confusing. If any of you have come to this wall (I believe it's 1,000 pictures limit), let me know if you had to fix it too, and how you did that.

And the stray cat which we began feeding is preggy. She's gonna be a momma, and we will probably inherit a bunch of kittens. Want one? *chuckle*

So, this is where I'm at. I have also been having trouble with a sluggish Internet later in the day, so, I may not be around after this.

Hope you all are having a good day!