Monkeyshines

Every once-in-a-while Yr Fthfl Srvnt’s Internet goes south.
.....Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!
I noticed I’m dependent on Internet. No TV for This Kid — not interested. Hardly any reading either; although I miss it some. (Magazines are all I can spare.)
Most of what I do involves the dreaded Internet. This blog is posted by Internet; photos get uploaded via the Internet; online orders are by Internet; my banking is over the Internet; I even do a little surfing and Facebook on the Internet.
No Oprah or Dr. Phil.
Every morning as I eat breakfast my pencil comes out, I engage my legal-pad, and I start “slingin’ words:” what I call writing.
“But Dr. Zink” (my 12th-grade English-teacher), “all it is is slinging words.”
“Hughes, you do that better than most.”
My muse won’t shut up.
But writing — blogging — needs the Internet. So do all the train-pictures my brother and I take. (We’re railfans.) Pictures go to PhotoBucket over the Internet. My Shutterfly train-calendar is also via the Internet.
If my Internet tanks, I climb the walls.
Yesterday morning I started to publish a blog, and got the weepy cartoon-character that indicates “no Internet.”
NOW WHAT?
Partly it’s because I’m clueless about what goes on.
Computer lingo is rife with abbreviations I don’t know. And I don’t understand how my Internet works. I think “ISP” stands for “Internet-Service-Provider,” and apparently I have an Internet-address I don’t know.
My ISP is Spectrum, previously Time-Warner. My Internet is via cable. The cable drives a large Internet modem near this laptop. The modem is Spectrum.
I’m hard-wired, but that modem also has an internal wireless router. I can get my Internet wirelessly.
My hard-wire has its tiny plastic retaining-tab broke off at the plug, so the plug can drift out. My first “no Internet” test is to try wireless (then reinsert plug).
Still weep-boy.
I tried hitting sites I have bookmarked; weep-boy is occasionally only that specific site. That can be confusing because sometimes refreshes get generated by cache in this rig.
Yet I still was getting weep-boy.
This rig has an Internet diagnosis. I’ve never used it, but tried this time. After maybe 10-15 minutes of silent horsing, it declared I had no Internet, so I should contact my ISP. (Ya don’t say!)
I had to walk away. Off to my local YMCA to slosh around in their swimming-pool. An attempt to improve my balance, which is dreadful.
Perhaps my Internet would return while I was away, or a thought might occur while driving. They have before.
The weather was lousy: snow and dicey driving. How come my Internet always tanks in marginal weather, bad enough to suspect weather-caused failure. It has before, like in thunderstorms that knock out electrical-service.
I have a standby generator, and usually my iPhone works. Cell-towers seem to have backup, and usually my landline continues working too. This laptop can be battery powered, and the local Internet station seems to have backup too, so my Internet continues even when the power fails. Years ago it didn’t.
Returned from the YMCA pool, still weep-boy.
Call Spectrum with fear-and-loathing. I never like phonecalls. I hafta tell my contact I had a stroke, so may have difficulty communicating. It’s called aphasia, a stroke-effect, slight in my case. It can be so bad a stroke-victim can’t talk. My contacts say I sound fine, but I’m aware. Difficulty getting words out.
And usually in large corporations one’s first contact is a machine. Despite minor post-stroke brain-addle I’m forced to navigate. Occasionally I hafta start over, especially if the machine’s programmer entered garbage. Often things go into Never-Never-Land, or run you in circles.
I call “technical-help” with dread. Sometimes I get an Indonesian with no technical savvy whatsoever, and little command of English beyond “We’re deeply, deeply sorry.” (Microsoft comes to mind.)
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hughes. I’ll solve yer issue in seconds.” Okay, but he didn’t sound American.
For whatever reason this rig was trying to connect to our old “D-Link” router, which Spectrum couldn’t connect. Which was why wireless was added to their new modem.
That new wireless is locked, so wanted a password. The one I was given no longer computed. If it had, I might have had wireless Internet.
The techie gave me a new password, and with that wireless worked, I guess. My hard-wire plug had also loosened. Reinserted my hardwire Internet returned, or so it appeared. Although the techie zapped my modem.
Madness left-and-right! Try this, try that, “before you hang up.” “I guess I have it,” I told the techie. “Although I may hafta call you back.”
“Merry Christmas,” the techie said. In Indonesia?
“Make sure yer boss knows ya did well parrying a stroke-survivor,” I told him.

• RE: “Dreaded Internet....” —Because the Internet is not a reliable source. Anyone can post anything, including fatuous errors. I’ve seen different spellings of “Hillary” (as in Hillary Clinton), and “Dulles” (as in Dulles Airport). In Internet site claimed Pennsylvania Railroad’s Horseshoe Curve was first built with four tracks. WRONG! Two tracks at first, three in the 1890s, then finally four. (Since cut back to three.)