This weekend wasn't great. About 9:00pm on Friday night my internet and cable went out. After doing all the normal things, like unplugging the modem, it didn't come back. The cable came back pretty quickly but the internet did not. Indeed, even after I called the cable company and got them to send a pulse to bring back my internet, I did not get anything back. Today I replaced the modem and now I have my internet back.
This is probably the longest time I have been without internet in a very long time. There was awhile where I didn't have a computer but I still had streaming on the TV and of course I had my phone. I technically had a phone this time as well, but more on that later.
So what did I learn from this experience, which was common when I was younger and the default existence when I was a child?
1. I really hate browsing the web and doing social media on my phone. My phone was fine once I got it back onto data and off the wifi. But other than using it to contact my ISP, I hardly used it. I just can't browse the internet without a mouse and keyboard. I'm a fast typer but a very slow texter.
2. Without the internet it's a lot harder to tell what is going on in the world. Since I didn't watch the news at all, I had no idea what was happening in the world, other than what I could gather from the limited time I was on Twitter. I had zero desire to watch cable news, so I was pretty cut off from the news.
It does explain how some people ended up voting for Joe Biden. If you only had the cable news you wouldn't have seen any information about him being a pedophile creep that was in bed with Ukraine.
3. I actually watched cable TV. I usually have the TV on for the noise, but I rarely actually watch whatever is on. With no other choices, I actually did watch my TV. I can tell you commercials are a lot more annoying if you have to actually watch them... To be fair, when I was screwing around on my phone, it was usually during commercials.
I was also shocked that infomercials are apparently still a thing. I can't imagine, in this day and age, that a person up at 4:00 in the morning would watch an advertisement for a DVD set for the Flip Wilson show, but apparently it was running.
4. It's kind of scary how reliant on the internet we actually are. I personally was cut off from blogging, which was pretty strange for me. Plus most of my options for entertainment were cut off. I kept thinking of things to do and then remembering that they required the internet. Social media? Internet. Video games? Many of my games require an internet connection to work. Streaming? Duh, of course.
5. Thankfully, I had other options for entertainment. The weather on Saturday was nice so I was able to do a little fishing. And I might be the last person on earth that still gets DVD's from Netflix (it's for when I have to work an overnight weekend shift, which happens enough to make it worthwhile) so I was able to finish Season 2 of The Wire. Plus, I have a huge collection of books and I was able to read a bit too.
Given the state of the world today, living without the internet might be something we have to deal with. With the economy starting to keel over and a real possibility of a nuclear war with Russia, we might all be doing without internet soon enough...
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