Poop And Porn Today I did what I do every Saturday and Sunday: I moderated the KFE chatroom for radio host, Leon Leponte. About a half hour into the show, I got disconnected from the chatroom. At first, I suspected it was a problem with my MacBook. However, one glance at my cable modem, and I realized that my Internet connection was down altogether. Not even my trusty old Dell could get me out of this jam!

It's bad enough that the same thing happened only a month ago, but now it happened during Leon's show. I was afraid that without me there to moderate the chatroom, there would be complete anarchy. People would be using CAPS left and right. People would be saying things like "poop" and "porn."

My God! People would be discussing politics!

Furthermore, one of my responsibilies is to keep a log of the chatroom and post it to Leon's site after the show. With my Internet connection down, there was no way for me to capture the logs, and a piece of Internet history would be lost forever. Not only that, but I do not like to let Leon down.

I was furious. I picked up the phone and called my cable company immediately. I had them on speed dial just for an event like this.

After waiting on hold for fourteen minutes, a service rep answered. I'll spare you the gory details, but the service rep confirmed that there was a cable outtage in my area, and that technicians had been dispatched to look into the problem.

I yelled, "I need my connection back now! I was in the middle of working on something very important!"

She assured me that my service would be restored "as soon as humanly possible." I told her that I expected to be compensated for my downtime. She told me that they would be happy to reimburse me for my downtime, and asked me to call back once my service is restored to ask for a credit.

I told her that I didn't want to wait on hold and demanded that she give me her phone number so I could call her directly. She claimed that she was not allowed to give out that information, and told me that any service rep would be able to process a credit for me, but that I would have to call their main number. I told her that I was seriously considering switching to another ISP and I hung up the phone.

Then I cried my eyes out.

Why does this stuff always happen to me? Why did it have to happen now? Why does God hate me so much? Why?! Why?!

I sat there drying my eyes out and staring at my cable modem for the next hour and a half. Finally, the indicator lights on my modem started flashing, letting me know that my Internet connection had been restored. I got back into the chatroom immediately, with an hour of the radio show left to go. There was nothing I could do about the chat logs. I had missed half the show, and saw little point in posting incomplete logs. I felt like a complete failure.

Once the show was over, I delivered the bad news to Leon, letting him know that there would be no chat logs for today's show. He said "no prob." Then one of the regular chatters, who goes by the name of "Dustbin," said he was keeping the log for the show, and offered to send it to me. I was so grateful you have no idea. I was so happy I almost started crying again.

Dustbin: I could kiss you!

While I waited for Dustbin to send me the chat log, I called my cable company to get my credit for the downtime. After waiting on hold for ten minutes, I got a service rep on the phone. Of course, it wasn't the same service rep that I spoke to earlier, so I had to explain the whole situation from the beginning. The service rep verified that there was an outtage in my area, and said that he had submitted a request to have my account credited. I asked him if he could tell me how much the credit would be.

He said, "Sure, let's see. The downtime was one hour and twenty-seven minutes, so your credit comes to, ummmmmmm, ten cents."

I said, "Ten cents! This call is costing me more than ten cents!"

The service rep said, "Unfortunately, things sometimes work out that way."

Why did I even bother calling them back?

If this happens again tomorrow, I swear that I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.
- Bernie  ¶ 6:26 PM