Musing on the Century Link Net Outage

One of the things a net outage, or at least a long one, serves to do is to remind you how much you’ve become dependent upon the Internet.

At the time I’m writing this (on Word) Century Link has being doing something (who knows what, and they’re not saying) for over 24 hours.  Obviously the Louisiana based company has a major Internet disaster going on, but it feels that it makes its customers happy if it doesn’t tell them squat.

Good thinking, Century Link.

This may be the first lesson here.  In terms of customer support, not letting a customer know what is going on is not the proper course to take.  Most people are tolerant of mistakes, errors, and breakdowns.  Not everyone is, but most people are.  Letting them know what is going on is a good idea. 

When I called Century Link to find out what the deal was, I got no help at all.  Indeed, there was an element of absurdity to the entire experience as the help person with the Indian accent at first simply pretended that it must be my machine until finally admitting it was a national outage (international actually) and that he had no idea when things were going to be fixed, and among the questions he'd asked the "technician", that wasn't one of them.

Be that as it may, it also means that I’m frustrated by something which, most of the time, is just a toy for me.

Or maybe it isn't.

I wake up really early most days.  Often around 4:00 A.M. but never later than 5:00 A.M. That’s when I type these blog entries out.  I’m an extremely fast typist and it really doesn’t take me long to do them, so that’s what I do after I let the dog out and fix myself coffee, and before the Tribune appears at my door. 

So  not having the net disrupts my routine.

But it wasn’t always my routine.

At one time, when papers arrived early, my routine was to thoroughly read them over coffee and then get ready fro my day.  I’d often also read a book, after I was married, as I didn’t want to wake up my spouse too early (which remains one of the reasons that I mess around on the net early in the morning).  I wouldn’t’ have written as there would have been no audience for most of what I write, even though I’m my own primary audience and I know that.  I’ve never kept a “journal” or diary, as a habit, although I can sure see why people do.

After I was married I often turned on the television with very low sound and watched whatever was on really early, such as the farm report, or perhaps the very early news.  Occasionally a movie if a good one was on really early.

Now I’m acclimated to this.

Good thing?

Well, maybe not bad.  It’s probably better than watching television.  And I do like to write.  But it has its downsides as well.