Stu News and Photos

My name is Stu and I am here to share what I can.

We were in the living room, playing Cranium Turbo when it happened.

Well, let me start again: It was late afternoon and while Nich was doing homework, Leslie, Noelle, and I were playing Cranium Turbo. As it was just the three of us available for the game, I was on both teams. It was great fun and we were all hard at play, when suddenly...

...the power went out.

Interesting for us, as it had an unusual cause - 34 mile-per-hour gusts of wind, being blown in from the ocean.

The power came on a few minutes later, but as we were still in mid-game, we barely paused to acknowledge the announcement of new power by our microwave, which beeped when it came back on.

Then, about five minutes later, we lost power again. We continued to play, barely noticing the loss of electricity. And after about ten minutes, it came back on.

About five minutes later, power went out a third time. This time it stayed off for about an hour. Fortunately, there was still plenty of light, so we played out the rest of the game, then fetched some flashlights, just in case.

After about an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half, power came back on, for good.

So we had dinner and hung out and talked and enjoyed the time... until I noticed that we didn't have internet.

Hmmm...

I looked at our router, a D-Link product that had served us in good stead from the moment it was installed by the Verizon FIOS team. The router was dark - no lights. So I unplugged it and paused and plugged it back in. No lights. So I took it to another outlet in another room, plugged it in, no lights. Bummer - dead router, an ex-router, a router that has ceased to be.

I called Verizon tech support and, despite it being early evening on a Sunday, they not only were available, but were polite, friendly, caring, knowledgeable, and, after I explained the situation, surprisingly generous. I was just calling to ask what router would be best for me to buy, but they insisted on replacing it, free-of-charge. Amazing.

So now I sit in the food court of our local mall, eating a chicken burrito, sipping on some water, and trying to catch up on email via the courtesy of the mall's free wireless internet. I'll have to do this for the next few days, as I'm not sure exactly when the new router arrives (probably Wednesday, but no promises). And as these seats are made of metal, with no cushioning, I shan't be doing this that often.

To those of you who have working routers, hug them tight and tell them you love them.

3 Comments:

Dave Mark said...

Router hugged. :)

-- Dave

Suldog said...

Ah, the joys of ignorance! No internet at home, so all of these things are handled by the fairies (no derogatory intent) at work.

By the way, what is Turbo Cranium? It sounds like something I might like.

Anonymous said...

I'm using a 5 year old Linksys. Been through a few power outages with no problems. I'll give it a few chocolate-covered bits tonight as a treat :)

I did loose my cable internet access a few months ago. Turned out that the cable from outside pedestal to house failed (it's not buried very deeply, and we get a lot of freeze/thaw cycles here). Called Comcast and they fixed problem same day. Amazing how dependent we are on the net.

---allen

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