Caltrops - Tansin A. Darcos's Alter Ego





	[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos"]This morning at around 9AM I'm watching video over the Internet of a show only available on line from Amazon video, <i>Alpha House</i> starring John Goodman, when my Internet connection went out. First thing: unplug the cable modem, wait 30 seconds to 2 minutes, plug back in. Still doesn't work; when it's hot it has all 4 lights (Power, On-Line, Send and Receive) lit solid. This only has the first two, the third blinking and the fourth dark. So I call Comcast and they have a problem with expected fix by 1PM. So I try doing some video editing and I check at 10:45 and we're hot again. So I decide to resume watching the video on Amazon Prime while the free month is in effect. Around 1 the video "stalls" and a spinner comes up, an indication that the Internet is down. Sure enough, I only have "2 bars" on my cable modem. I call Comcast and they tell me that they can't even reset the modem because it's somehow disconnected or unreachable. They, of course, are claiming the problem is probably on my side of the DMARC (which, of course, becomes our problem unless we pay for a service call.) What's interesting is that the term "DMARC" is the name for the gray box the phone company puts either on the outside of your house or in the basement, it's the last point where the phone company connects to you that they are responsible for, after that, it provides the place where your internal wiring connects to their fuse box and if it breaks or does not work after the DMARC it's your problem unless you pay for monthly maintenance, and that the cable company uses the same term to refer to their end of the line point too. Since the Internet is on the same account as the Cable TV I call the Landlord to tell him that the TV is fine but the Internet is out. Comcast can't do anything for me since it's his account, so he needs to talk to them. So, I'm out in the living room resuming a 550-year-old practice (since Gutenberg invented movable type in 1432), reading printed materials, basically catching up on old magazines like Wired and Computer World that I get in the mail and have set aside for just such emergencies. I'm used to multi-hundred year-old practices, I'm a Notary Public and what we do hasn't changed much in 400 years. Provide cross-check of identification and take affidavits of people. There are a few differences from place-to-place. In Virginia, Notaries can certify documents; in Ohio they can issue subpoenas. In Utah, a Notary's seal must be in purple ink; in California, you have to actually take a test to get your commission, but it's <i>open book</i> so you can have the Notary handbook to refer to when taking the test. And in Louisiana, a notary is essentially the close equivalent of a lawyer, it's apparently <i>very</i> hard to get a commission there. But anyway, I realize how terrible this blackout is. The horrors! Me, of all people, reduced to reading <i>words on paper</i> like we used to do back in the stone age of the 1970s and 1980s. I come by around 3:00 to check, and whether the Landlord spoke to them or they just fixed it, we're hot again so I called the Landlord to let him know, then went back to watching my Internet TV program. [/quote]