Firstly I’d like to say thanks to Alex Dawson for inspiring me to create this thread. In the thread What does the Internet mean to you? Alex said that “Last time the Internet went out, I practically went catatonic!” Which had me thinking about what my reaction is when my Internet connection breaks-out!
You happily start up your PC wondering what E-Mails you have in your inbox, you think about what new blog posts Craig Buckler or Alyssa Gregory have posted up, the newest threads and replies on the SitePoint Forums (obviously!) and of course know that you’ll undoubtedly need the Internet for other uses as well as your work. You do this thinking whilst logging in and …What…The…Hell?! That tiny, but powerful icon in the bottom right hand corner of your desktop tells you that you have no Internet connection! You desperately try to re-connect, restart your PC, disconnect and re-connect your adaptor, reset the router (give it a few bashings as well!) and still no dice. You call up your ISP and they may or may not be able to help you out.
What is your reaction when such an incident happens? How angry, frustrated, and cheesed off do you get when you have an Internet connection outage? Or maybe you sit away from the PC for a few hours and read?
I’m young and attitude-y so I’ll go into a sulk first, moaning about how rubbish the Internet is (obviously I’m in a mood at this point!) and then rant on to myself name-calling the inventors such as Vint Cerf! (Bless the old man but you don’t want to know the names I use to vent my anger!) and I’ll march around my bedroom throwing my hands up in the air and throwing myself on the bed in a huff moaning about how stupid my ISP are (currently BT). Then I’ll go have a conversation with my parents (that will last around 2 - 3 hours depending on how angry I am and how long the Internet connection outage is for) about how we should move to another ISP (mine and my brothers suggestion is always Virgin Media Broadband). The conversation is always useless as we’re still with BT. I calm down eventually and will either listen to music or play on the xBox 360. I can’t stand to read magazines or books about the Internet when I don’t have access to it as it only increases my frustration! :mad:
I have over 1K books too. Except for the bookcase in the front room and a bookcase on the porch and a bookcase in the dining room and a couple of good sized stacks in 2 of the bedrooms, most are in my “library” - an extra bedroom with 8 bookcases (and a couple of shelves) and my computer. Heck, who am I kidding, they’re all over the house like the fur from my cats
I usually have a couple of books (diifferent genre) going at the same time.
Reference books (computer, physics, science, medical …), fiction, sci-fi, nature, philosophy, bios, etc. etc. you name it, I can pretty much read whatever I’m in the mood to read.
-Ahem- I’m 19! Besides, I only ever usually get sulky and in a mood when the Internet goes out (which is rare for me, thank god), I’d like to think I’m pretty mature so I’m allowed to act childish when the Internet connection goes out Besides…It shouldn’t go out in the first place!
I knitted together a small SitePoint Community Members ball of pain so if anyone annoys me I can stab it and then BOOM! Your Internet goes I’m kidding. It is weird how some peoples Internet connections have gone out after reading this thread though! Spooky!
Panicing and going a bit crazy, that made me lol. I really go crazy when it’s out for more than a few hours. Slow / Unresponsive computer technology shouldn’t happen, it really gets on my nerves. I was having a think about this thread actually and reading what other members do when their Internet connection goes out and I have a solution for myself now I can just practice my Front-End Web Development skills! (Hell, and server-side if I want to) Or maybe I’ll just get annoyed again and whinge!
Wow. You do a lot of reading over 1,000 books in your home? Is that like a whole side of a room or a little mini-library ;)? I’d love my own little mini-library!
Obviously some of us can’t stand it when our Internet connection goes out on us and we go temporarily crazy until it’s fixed, and some of us manage to shrug it all off and do something else worth while! Still, it shouldn’t happen
Everytime I read this thread title in my subscription list I still feel the need to respond with “we’re all going to die! the zombies must have taken control!”
What, you mean you were born with access to the Internet?
I’ve been without it for almost 20 years.
I’ve been online part time only for about 2 years, and full time for the last 3. The lever is still on the off side, so I guess I would survive - just gotta remember how I got around during those 20 years. :agree:
It only really gets on my nerves when I have to access Uni email/network. Which means I have to trail into Uni just to find out class has been cancelled… someone died that day
@ Steve - jeeeze @ the dialup download - I didn’t have the luxury of leaving it to download all night, our ISP was a pain for constantly dropping the connection, I had to use one of those resume download programs years ago which were quite handy! I can’t imagine having no Internet and then no TV aswell, I guess that’s the nuisance with those bundle packages, everything in the one place, when it goes…everything goes!
Nuria, that makes me ponder just how long I’ve been without Internet - 1.5 yrs for you? wow…I think the longest time I’ve been without the Internet would be perhaps 5 months but that’s only at home, obviously at work I would have access but I would never use it for personal use
Reading. Reading. And some more reading. I read at least one book a week so, if there’d be outage, I’d read a bit more. I have over 1k books here, so it’ll be a while until I run out.
I didn’t have much to say on this when first posted, but after a storm took out our cable which carries both our TV and Internet from 6pm to midnight on Monday - I now have a new appreciation for how good life is when everything’s working and how weird it is when I lose both internet and tv.
Of course I had ebay auctions ending that night and was waiting for directions to my nieces HS graduation to arrive by email so I was more agitated than I probably would’ve been on any other night - thankfully all was restored and working well again the next morning.
I feel bad complaining though after hearing talk about “dial-up” here - reminds me of the good old days of starting a download before bed in hopes it would be finished when I got up.
yikes Allan - I couldnt bear to watch how long I’m online for, it’s like going back to the old dial-up days - nightmare! Looks like you need a new package or Andrew needs to put away that voodoo doll he has!
They shut off a session after 4 hours - they figure I must have walked away or dozed off. That can be bad enough especially if in the middle of a long download, but I can click “reconnect” easy enough. But the monthly limit is 200 hours. “That’s over 6 hours a day” you might say (that’s what the ISP says). And it sounds reasonable enough. Yet …
wow Allan - this thread is definitely jinxed! :confused2
You’re in the US - I always thought you guys had great Internet packages over there, capped…jeeze it’s worse than here! That would annoy the hell out of me, just cut off with no notification? Not good at atll! Just how long were you on for
Atleast you spent your time wisely Glad to have you back!
After I read this thread the other day, what happens? My ISP cuts me off for over-usage!
My host is $cheap and although it supposedly has “unlimited” monthly online time, in reality it’s capped at what they feel is a “reasonable” amount of time.
So there I was trying to dial-up and I get an alert message box saying “invalid username/password”. This happened once before a couple of years ago and I was so confused at the time that I called them. They said it was invalid because they cut me of for the rest of the month not because it was wrong. So I knew what was up this time.
So what to do for the 2 days until the next month begins? I got caught up on my plugin work, did some scripting I’ve been working on (thank goodness for localhost ), did some gardening and a (very) little housework.
But bet your bottom dollar soon as the calendar rolled around I was clocking more time!
so there’s an internet outage, so what? the world will keep on turning, and i just find other things to do. I have a lot of things to do outside the internet, and this would be a perfect excuse to do these things.
I lived without internet for 1,5 years … only on Thurdays I would go to the local library to read my mail and just for 1 hour… and I don’t want to repeat that experience again!
When that happens, I normally have a cubetimer page up (cubetimer.com) and then I simply do some solving for an hour and then if it’s still not back on then I just start watching Dragon Ball z (I have teh entire series downloaded, DB/DBZ/DBGT/all the movies
If that gets boring then it’s off to read Harry Potter or workout at the gym
Worst comes to worse I’ll go hookup with some friends and socialize
…What…The…Hell?! That tiny, but powerful icon in the bottom right hand corner of your desktop tells you that you have no Internet connection! You desperately try to re-connect, restart your PC, disconnect and re-connect your adaptor, reset the router (give it a few bashings as well!) and still no dice. You call up your ISP and they may or may not be able to help you out.
:mad:
Besides…It shouldn’t go out in the first place! 
I can just practice my Front-End Web Development skills! (Hell, and server-side if I want to) 
Or maybe I’ll just get annoyed again and whinge!
