Cotton and DSL Weather

Hi, Cotton here.Yes, I know the title of this post is a bit strange but it goes well with how things have been going around here. 

What a weekend. We spent much of Saturday and Sunday under either a tornado or severe thunderstorm watch. When a neighbor asked Jan yesterday if she was huddled in the hallway when the siren went off at 4 am Sunday morning, Jan had to admit she hadn't heard the siren over the all-night squawking of the weather radio. Which was probably a good thing since we don't have a hallway to huddle in should a tornado materialize.

Sunday morning brought another bad storm. And there was a lightning strike way too close for comfort just before the transformer next door got hit. A couple hours later Jan turned the computer on for us but we had no internet. She spent much of the afternoon trying to get online and calling our DSL provider. They finally said they'd send a tech out today before 5. She called a neighbor who said, yes, she had internet ... wait, let me check ... no, I can't get online ... my son-in-law is checking ... no, he can't get the internet ... we got online after he rebooted. (Rebooting didn't help our problem.)

Later Jan called another neighbor and she has the same provider. She turned on her computer. No internet. A while later Jan decided to call our provider again to tell them she isn't the only one with a problem, and since they check for a signal, she turned the computer back on. And a few minutes later, she had internet. So she called and canceled the service call.

The tech didn't get the cancellation and showed up early this morning.  Jan explained our internet was working again. The guy said he had a lot of DSL calls to make and left. A couple hours later Jan turned on the computer ... and you guessed it - no internet! She called and a guy told her the ticket was still open so he couldn't put in a new one. And, no, he couldn't call anyone to try to contact the tech to come back. Jan hung up the phone and tried one more time - and got online.

So Jan called Windstream back and during the conversation, the alert lady said, "I don't see a signal, you're not on the internet." "Yes, I am ... oh, no, I'm not." Fortunately, she knew the procedure to pass on the message to the tech, who called a short time later to say he was on his way back.

He told Jan, "When I got to the office this morning, I asked what we have and was told all the guys were sent out on 3 calls. But by that time they had 47 more in the office and they were still coming." Guess most folks either didn't know they had no internet until this morning or waited until business hours to call.

We hope we will still have internet access tomorrow but life is full of surprises, so we'll see you again tomorrow ... or we won't. There are more storms coming and it's going to be a wet week. We know some of you are still having snow and/or freezing temperatures, so we won't complain. 

Oh, and one positive from this is the tech discovered our DSL filter had gone bad. He was surprised it lasted 5 years. He was even more surprised we even get a DSL signal since we're only supposed to use a 15 foot cord from the jack to the DSL modem and we're using either a 50' or a 100' foot one. See, there is only one place to plug in the computer and only one jack. The outlet and the jack are on opposite sides of the room, so Jan compromised and put the desk in the middle of the living room, so the phone lines to the computer have to be run up over the doors, across the walls and down the closet door behind the computer. It's unorthodox and a real pain, but we work with what we have, so as long as it works ...

To cheer us all, we have a sweet video today. The cute little boy with a dog is now 5 years old and for his birthday he asked for donations to help the animals instead of presents and raised over $400.


If the video doesn't play, click here.