Internaught

In which our Hero rips the still pulsing wires right the fuck out of his head

I’ve always said that I could manage just fine without the internet. Power failures are annoying just because it’d be nice to dump web related activities to a list before I gave up the world, but I’ve been offline for months before, and it wasn’t much of a challenge. In the “old days,” when travelling meant a day away from a power outlet, I lived on charged batteries and a laptop, and a book on my phone. And if ever I lost all my toys, then I’d dig deeper into my bag and get my notebook, and a pen. (Actually that’s a metaphorical deeper, the paper notebook is technically easier to get to than my laptop)

But I’ve never been offline for a long period of time, not at home, not without something already disrupting my routine. I’ve never been offline while working, professionally and personally, not without a specific objective, a specific reason to be focused for a few hours or days.

And when I’ve opted to ignore my connection, it’s always been with the understanding and assumption and practice that, when I had cause, I could pop on to my computer and search and download. I still had all the rights and privileges of a first class internet citizen.

Till Sunday.

Sunday saw my WAN status indicator light go dark, and the sync light on my modem flashing vainly as it searched for a signal that would never again come down the line. I’d fired my old internet provider, and in a fit of bitterness, they need 5 days to clear off the old service so that I can start the new.

Well, my parents use voip and my job kind of needs me to be connectable, so I got a 4G router, plugged my network into that and watched the fun begin.

Things I’ve learned:

– Internet caps suck. I’ve got tiers on my plan, and the price ratchets upward. My week+ of internet outage is very likely going to blow past the monthly tiers and into that painful realm where the meter ticks by the megabyte. On the other hand, it’s still $20/Gb, which is extortionate, but also only 20 bucks. So I’ll just suck up the pain where I have to.

– My parents use Vonage. Vonage is a resource PIG. a minute of vonage is about the same as an hour of skype.

– Having internet means that I’m free to decide to use it, but the weight of that tier threshold has a huge chilling effect on my usage. I’m afraid to download software because I don’t want to waste the bandwidth. I can’t hit some of the sites I want to research because they have stupid ads and flash or video tutorials and I don’t want to burn my quota on that. I’m not stupid, but I feel the weight of a mountain of “things to know” as I struggle to try to get things done. It’s especially painful since I have personal and contract projects to work on. Can’t download at work, that’d be unprofessional. Can’t download at home, no bandwidth. Argh.

– My homebrew PVR is old and effective (MythTV but back at .21). On the other hand, it basically kind of relies on being in a particular place in my particular network and changing routers seems to have driven it catatonic. And there’s too much else going nutty for me to really bother fixing this one. So no PVR. Screw it..

– I really do a lot of digging around on the internet. I haven’t been looking at the videos of Sandy aftermath, I’m not really looking at the election stuff, I’m not following much of anything because I don’t want to get sucked into to just clicking. I’ve got hundreds of open tabs because I’m trying to manage the fact that I’m researching thing and these topics are on hold till I can get back to work and dig some more. And the firewall that blocks me from threatening sites means that… I’m stuck. Stuck stuck stuck. Gah

I was supposed to get my new service tomorrow, but the old provider did me one more favour and created another speedbump so now I’m scheduled to have installers show up on Monday. It’s going to be a loooooong weekend.

Can’t wait to get my outboard brain back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the original version of this entry that bored me so much I felt the urge to rewrite it

For the last decade or so, I’ve been receiving internet from the incumbent RBOC. That’s the technical acronym for the company that owns and operates the physical phone wires, a “Regional Bell Operating Company.” They’re honestly some decent companies, but they’re slow to evolve, in part because they have an existing customer base and a massive investment in infrastructure to realized returns on, but mostly, they never really entirely lost the feeling of being a monopoly from the days when they were.

Except now they actually have competition, offering much better plans, but I’ve always resisted changing for the simple reason that even though my plan was older and slower than what’s available now for the same price, I had unlimited internet. Whereas the new higher speed plans all have caps.

Caps mean that what they sell is kind of misleading. My plan was 7 megabits per second, no cap. In a 30 day month, that means that I could download approximately 2 Terabytes of data. The new plan was for 25 megabits per second, but a 75 gig cap. Which means that while I can go up to 25 megabits per second, I *really* can only average about .23 megabits per second a month or I break my limit.

They’re weird numbers but essentially, the data rate is how fast your car can go, and the cap is the speed limit. Sure, you can goose the car over the limit occasionally, but on the average, it doesn’t matter that your car can go 200 miles an hour because you’ll be penalized for doing that.

Which is funny because I don’t actually use all that much internet. As the lovely people trying to move me to a new plan kept telling me. ANd my response to them was always that just because i didn’t now didn’t mean I might not want to tomorrow. Having the freedom to not worry about usage is how lots of services got started, including voice over IP and webcam chats and desktop sharing, and dropbox, and all kinds of things that were never imagined or practical a long time ago when the internet was younger.

But the fact is that even if I have this ability, almost nobody else does, so then what’s the point. And having faster speeds in the moment would make my life easier. And there are other companies who take their lines from the same company but manage to offer massively greater caps.

So I switched. And discovered that my local Bell had some tricks up it’s sleeve. Even though I’m under no contract, I still have to give them 30 days notice. And even though the service would then be cancelled, they don’t let their technicians work on installing someone else’s service until five business days AFTER the cancellation.

That’s right. I would have to be without high speed internet at home for five full days.

Which isn’t entirely bad, I’ve been away from the internet for much longer than that in the past, but this is different, this isn’t a trip, this is at home. Heck my parents switched their phoneline to VOIP, they’re going to lose the home telephone over this.

So I went out and got a cellular modem, and the best plan I could find (at the time) to cover the gap. ANd on Sunday, I woke up with no web dialtone, and it’s been hilariously (or pathetically) awful ever since.

For one, you only get a small cap with mobile internet, so I’m conscious of everything I do that burns bandwidth. Anything that’s optional to me, I’ve just given up. No stupid videos, avoid even browsing in general. No software updates or downloads.