A windstorm Saturday night knocked down a tree branch which in turn snapped our FIOS line. No Internet, TV, or landline until it was repaired early Monday evening.
During that interval I did without the TV and landline just fine. The Internet was another matter.
I discovered that if I rolled one of our office chairs into the bedroom, piled two large cardboard boxes on top of it, put a laptop on top of the boxes, and rolled the results over to the bedroom window with a direct line-of-sight to our neighbor’s house across the street I could get a very weak signal from his wireless router that would give me an Internet connection. Not a good one, mind you - it would cut out every couple of minutes and had to be reconnected. But I was able to access the more important sites like comics.com.
I am one sick puppy.
(I got permission from my neighbor first. Since I help him with his network on occasion he didn’t mind.)
During the last major “windstorm” that hit New England (I’m reasonably sure it was a small, undocumented hurricane, or at the very least, a powerful Nor’Easter) we lost power and cable for five days, during that time, my iPhone was my “lifeline”, I was able to stay connected to the web, follow the incompetence of Central Maine Power on their website, and rant about it on my forums…
I’m addicted, but mostly because it’s the only thing that keeps me sane. I have to have something to do when I’m feeling anxious so I won’t concentrate on the bad feelings and make it worse. And the net is a nice endless source of something to do that is intellectually stimulating.
I’d like to think that in such a situation I’d shrug and just do a lot more reading. I know in reality, however, that I’d probably spend a lot more time in the local internet cafe.
