Partially Offline
Lisa and I like the Empire Builder series of "crayon rails" board games, and I've been a fan of it ever since the designer of the game, the late Darwin Bromley, demonstrated the game to me and talked me into buying a copy (which I still have, and which I've played more than 100 times, which is not bad for a $20 investment) from him personally at a San Diego Comic-Con back when it was only 30,000 people. (That being the last time I attended.) So last night Lisa and I played Australian Rails. Kuma Bear sat on the table and wanted to help.
He held on to the Fine Japanese Railway Watch that Lisa gave me and acted as timekeeper. We didn't have the heart to tell him that, except in tournament settings, there is no time limit to this game.
Sometime while we were playing, our DSL connection went out. We tried all of the usual troubleshooting such as rebooting the DSL router (unplugging it for at least one minute before plugging it back in), and I tried unsuccessfully to use my mobile phone to access AT&T's troubleshooting and outage status information. Our telephone line works, though, and Lisa unplugged the filter and reported no static on the line, indicating that we're not getting the DSL service. She plugged the filter back in and got on the line to AT&T, where it took at least ten minutes of arguing with the computer to get us to a human being. The computer suggested that we hadn't paid our phone bill. (We had, and besides, how were we getting voice service on the same line if they'd disconnected us?) After a while, it finally routed her to an agent, who confirmed that our account was current and then transferred us to tech support.
After roughly 45 minutes, we finally got someone from tech support, who had us go through all of the troubleshooting steps we'd already done before eventually agreeing to check for local outages. Surprise! Despite me being unable to see anything on my mobile phone about it, there is a DSL outage in my area, and they said it would take 24-48 hours before it's fixed.
I was able to cobble together a connection on one of my computers through my smartphone (which uses Verizon), but it's not my work computer, which steadfastly refuses to connect to my company-issued smartphone. Isn't Security wonderful! I hope the DSL comes back before Monday morning at 4:30 AM.
I guess we really do need to look at getting cable internet in addition to retaining our DSL service, so that we have two separate and unrelated internet providers. For a full-time home-worker like me, it's not necessarily a luxury.
He held on to the Fine Japanese Railway Watch that Lisa gave me and acted as timekeeper. We didn't have the heart to tell him that, except in tournament settings, there is no time limit to this game.
Sometime while we were playing, our DSL connection went out. We tried all of the usual troubleshooting such as rebooting the DSL router (unplugging it for at least one minute before plugging it back in), and I tried unsuccessfully to use my mobile phone to access AT&T's troubleshooting and outage status information. Our telephone line works, though, and Lisa unplugged the filter and reported no static on the line, indicating that we're not getting the DSL service. She plugged the filter back in and got on the line to AT&T, where it took at least ten minutes of arguing with the computer to get us to a human being. The computer suggested that we hadn't paid our phone bill. (We had, and besides, how were we getting voice service on the same line if they'd disconnected us?) After a while, it finally routed her to an agent, who confirmed that our account was current and then transferred us to tech support.
After roughly 45 minutes, we finally got someone from tech support, who had us go through all of the troubleshooting steps we'd already done before eventually agreeing to check for local outages. Surprise! Despite me being unable to see anything on my mobile phone about it, there is a DSL outage in my area, and they said it would take 24-48 hours before it's fixed.
I was able to cobble together a connection on one of my computers through my smartphone (which uses Verizon), but it's not my work computer, which steadfastly refuses to connect to my company-issued smartphone. Isn't Security wonderful! I hope the DSL comes back before Monday morning at 4:30 AM.
I guess we really do need to look at getting cable internet in addition to retaining our DSL service, so that we have two separate and unrelated internet providers. For a full-time home-worker like me, it's not necessarily a luxury.