Summer Fridays 2013: Waiting for Godot

Not really, but Waiting for the Cable Guy doesn't have the same oomph.

My second Summer Friday for the year was not nearly as exciting or adventuresome or altruistic as last week. I spent it cleaning, waiting for the cable guy, paying bills, waiting for the cable guy, and then taking a nap, because ... waiting for the cable guy was exhausting. (Actually the last week of work and the weather was exhausting.)

For months, I've been dealing with some equipment issues that kept my at-home Internet activities limited to my patience levels (which, to be honest, varied on how crappy the connection speeds were). I managed to work around them for a while, but it was painfully slow - even when I was using the back-up wifi connections. I knew I needed a day for a service call, so was waiting for summer Fridays so I could I just have a day.

Here's a hint. Your modem connections are supposed to show more green lights than just this. The "send/receives" should be steady.

It's also very handy to have a tech brother on stand-by to walk you through terminology and sites to do testing of your stuff BEFORE the cable guy comes. Thanks J. That speedtest.net site (left) is handy. Also it's also super handy to know that your download speeds shouldn't be .09 , or below 1.0 anything!

I will grab my validation where ever I can get it. To wit: the first thing(!) the tech said when he saw my set-up was: "We don't even USE that equipment anymore." Hello! No wonder it wasn't working. I knew I wasn't going crazy the last (mumble amount) of months. Basically the modem was toast. I have a new one now - and it's like night and day! From .02 or .09 Mbps downloads to 18+. AH, streaming video and sounds, how I have missed you. Oh dear. Skype ... that means I have no excuses anymore.

The only real problem is that now that the connections are fast and secure again, I'm totally distracted from reading. I am not kidding when I say that I'm in the middle of those five books up there, the bottom one which I started in JANUARY and can't seem to finish.

Thank Goodness I have the next two Mondays off, in addition to a series of other Summer Fridays. Maybe I can finish them. I also do want to get back to my plan of Island Hopping, but there are other little projects like Waiting for the Cable Guy I need to finish this summer, like retroblogging, and oh, this....

THE BANE OF MY CRAFTING EXISTENCE.