First problem - Though you can't see it, at the bottom of the hole on the right there's a Time Warner cable for TV and high-speed Internet. There's nothing wrong with the cable being there, and nothing intrinsically wrong with the hole, either. However, in the digging of the hole . . . there's the rub . . . or rather the nick. A shovel hit and nicked the cable and we lost service. We didn't mind losing cable TV, but losing Internet service is another thing. Within minutes of it happening on Friday afternoon we called Time Warner service and they scheduled the repair for this (Saturday) afternoon - not bad.
Second problem - It's been raining all day. When the Time Warner service person arrived, the hole was full of water. No way, sez he, can he splice the cable under water and keep it dry.
The good thing? - You'll notice the cable on the grass just beyond the holes. The Time Warner guy ran an above ground cable as a temporary solution. Said the "putting the cable underground" crew (my words and quotation marks, not his) would be out within about 2 weeks. So until then we'll have a cable above ground. Not a big problem at all.
So now we're back on the Internet, e-mailing, tweeting, and blogging away.
Marge and I were just about to start on a busy two days of mostly Internet using tasks when the service went out, so we had to improvise.
Here's what we did:
1. I was able to keep up with my e-mail on my cell phone. In usual times this is a treat and a time-saver while traveling (not driving of course) or waiting between appointments; however, when using a cell phone for e-mail is one's only way of keeping up, it's quite tiresome.
2. We went to the office and accessed the Internet there for a couple of hours last evening.
3. We re-scheduled manual tasks (i.e. not computer-based which means these days not Internet-based) for yesterday afternoon and this morning.
4. We took naps. One could argue we needed them. One could be right. Or . . . not.
