Our internet connection has been flaky for a couple of months now, and in the past week it’s really gone downhill to the point where we only have good connectivity for a couple of hours a day. The rest of the time it comes up and down at will (but mostly down). Sir Monkeypants is doing a great job pinpointing the problem but we are both finding the on-again off-again nature of the problem to be really frustrating.
I was thinking this morning about how much more stressed I am about being without the internet than I would be without other major things like the TV, or a car, or even power. I’ve come to take the internet for granted in my everyday life and when it’s gone, I really notice the loss. We can’t play music as we use our computer as our MP3 server; I can’t check LiveJournal (which I do like, 10 times a day, so post stuff, dudes); I can’t check my email or Yahoo Messenger with Sir Monkeypants at work; I can’t catch up on my daily entertainment news while the kids are napping. Turning on the TV to check the weather seems so archaic now, and I can’t remember how to use the phone book.
Last night we watched Wedding Crashers on DVD, and this morning the internet was down, and not being able to go to the IMDB to see the names of the cast and what else they’ve been in recently almost killed me. At this moment it’s been more than 24 hours since I checked my mail and I think my head might explode if I think about all the potentially unanswered messages sitting there for me for one more minute. Gack!
I guess it’s because I’m a stay-at-home mom — the internet is my contact with the outside world. I don’t like talking on the phone and if the weather is bad, it’s too hard to leave the house with the kids, so the computer is my way of escaping. These last few days, however, have made it feel more like an addiction — if I can’t have my internet, I’m as jumpy as a gal who quit smoking and drinking coffee on the same day. I don’t know how my mom survived all those years with only a radio for company!
TurtleHead 
Totally agree. When our connection is down it really throws off my “game”. It doesn’t happen that often, but I’d say in the last year it’s probably been down for a day or two at three different times. It’s definitely one of those things that, even though it hasn’t been around that long, you just can’t imagine how you ever lived without it. Life with the internet is so different…
… if your connection is down, how did you post? And do you need your internet connection to play MP3s?
Well, one annoying thing is that when our internet connection is “down”, our main computer and XBox (which has an internet connection) are down, but our laptop (which uses a wireless connection to connect to our router) is up. So, I posted using the laptop, and I can still surf there most of the time (at least 70% of the time, compared to about 10% of the time that we have a functioning link on our main system). The laptop is Neel’s work machine, though, so I don’t have it set up to check my mail or run Messenger or any of my other usual internet things.
We can’t play music because our main computer houses all our MP3s, and then our XBox accesses them over our router to feed them into our stereo. When our internet connection is down, for some reason, the xBox and main computer can’t talk to each other anymore, so no music. We could still play the MP3s directly on our main system through our little tinny speakers but now that seems so uncivilised.
thinks that the problem is our router so we’re in the market now for a good sale on a new one…and hopefully that will be the end of it.