Sunday, July 16, 2000

9:30 p.m. The cable has now been down for a day and a half and counting. Finally, this heretofore perfect internet information delivery mechanism is acting just like: cable. The cable guys won't be out to fix it (if indeed the problem is at my end) until Tuesday sometime. Typical, typical.

Can you imagine if I had bids in for something wonderful on eBay? Or if I were making my living with my hourly sales on the web? I suppose that's why they've taken so long to answer their phone each time and I guess the sheer wonder of it all is why they have a different reason for the outage each time we call.

Sea air -- the ocean. That's the last we heard. Or, another hour, another idea: how about a huge software upgrade that mucked up the works. Amazing technology -- one minute I was zipping along, bookmarks all in place, file folders bulging and everything was as it should be and then ...

And then. And why am I always surprised and caught totally off guard? I got smart almost a year ago and now I have a handy notebook by the computer and believe you me, I write down each and every number and password and user ID that they throw at me and I'm still not prepared when I have to rebuild my fragile house of cards from the ground floor up.

Therefore ... it pains me to say that if I owe you an email, it's going to take a few more days if the cable doesn't come back. I've got to copy out addresses by hand because my machine is crashing whenever I try to get into the programs where the cable tendrils are wound.

I'm very carefully trying to build a mirror system on an old Powerbook, with an old system, and an old pokey modem. I'm tiptoeing around, trying not to type too quickly or worry too much. I'm pulling down some old email a little at a time and pulling out my hair, a little at a time.

This is the pits. The pits, I tell you. I'm sure it's got something to do with the big solar flare of a day or so ago -- or maybe it really is the sea air, corroding the junctions and shorting out the wires. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow morning I'll wake up to my old systems all nice and neat. Who knows?

I can say that this little disruption has totally eaten a hole out of the weekend. I've been stuck here, trying to fix things, and so there's not much to report. A good looking, world-class sunset today that I caught the edges of when I was crawling around under the desk and I happened to look up. And then I plugged in the device I was looking for and that was that.

Maybe tomorrow ... things will be looking up and I will make a point to do the same.