I love my tech, as I’m sure you do, too. And I use it all the time, every day, for something or other. I rely on my computers for work, and we’re currently using YouTube for our study of World War II. I print worksheets for my younger off homeschooling sites online, and all that is just my computers. My phone enables me to keep up with social media, including posting pictures to Instagram and instantly shooting pictures to customers.
Last Wednesday morning, I followed my usual morning ritual – drinking two cups of water while checking email and my social media feeds. It wasn’t long at all before I realized my text messages on my phone weren’t going through. Then I noticed that none of my sites were coming up on my computer. Brief analysis – no internet. I went outside to find a second bar of reception and to call my provider. Joy. An area-wide outage had taken out our internet and crews were “working hard to restore service.”
Thursday morning rolls around, and at 9 a.m., my phone rings. It’s our internet provider informing me that the outage had been cleared up. Woohoo! I zip downstairs and had internet coverage for… two minutes. Another call to our provider informed me that half our neighborhood was still affected and our internet should be restored later that afternoon or by noon the next day at the latest. Yea! Hope!
Thursday night… No internet. Friday morning… No internet. Friday noon… No internet. The great service techs helped me go through all the possible steps to reboot our modem, but in the end, there was no recourse left but to wait for the cable guys on Saturday. Saturday our service was winking in and out, but the fellas came, got me back online, then discovered that there was an issue with the box by the road.
Things flowed smoothly from there. In fact, things were better, because our internet was faster. I had my website access, my social media outlets, my email, YouTube for school, math worksheets for the Wee One, everything I’d been missing.
Let me take a break from the narrative here to say, I decided last week that I needed to take some time away from Facebook, because the hatemongering; injustice-in-the-name-of-Jesus; and horrid, fearmongered comments about a segment of the population were having a very negative effect on my psyche. Truly, the comments were hurting my heart. However, with my internet down, I couldn’t log off completely as I wanted. Alright. Back to the story.
Monday morning, I followed my usual routine, but this time with a twist. I dropped a post on Facebook to let people know I was taking a break, why, and how to reach me. Then I logged off and closed down the tab. To prevent further temptation, I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone. Yet, my phone was still saying I had low memory, even after uninstalling that and deleting a bunch of pictures. Sometimes, my phone requires a hard boot to register that I’ve freed up memory. So, I disassembled my phone, let it meditate, put it back together, then pushed the power button. No. Power. I tried again. And again. Then I called T-Mobile. Shout out to them for getting me a phone to me the next day!
In the last seven days, technology has hardly been my friend. Well, it’s been perfectly friendly when it’s been working, but when it isn’t, my life nearly comes to a halt. These days have certainly tried my patience! Joy of joy, though, I have a newer model S5 that has cool, new features that weren’t on my two-year-old one, and I don’t have to go phone shopping any time soon, thank goodness!
How did your Facebook sabbatical go? I’ve considered taking one, but not sure if it’s actually helpful, or if I should just work on changing my habits with the network 🙂
It’s actually gone quite well. I popped in Sunday evening to clear out notifications and to respond to comments. I’m still able to “look” active with Instagram and Hootsuite posts; my main objective was to avoid seeing some disturbing posts/comments of a discriminatory or bigoted nature. Spending just a few minutes on Sunday alerted me to situations a couple of my friends were in, and that’s knowledge I’d have wanted to have. The main downside is not having the Indie group at my fingertips. On the plus side, I’m whipping out a bunch of soaps and dealing with website issues without distractions. I installed the Messenger and FB Pages apps on my phone, so I can maintain contact with friends there and post to my page.