Back online

We have been offline for about 30 hours.  A fiber optic cable was accidentally cut here in Idaho Falls and thousands of local people were without service from their internet providers.  Most people had their service restored this morning.  I was one of the unlucky ones.  I finally got it back up and running about 12:40 pm today.  Turns out that the interruption of service scrambled my modem's brains.  The tech Guy had to access the modem by remote control and reset all of its settings.  It was a very unpleasant and frustrating experience.

I couldn't get through to the tech service center yesterday because "all circuits were busy."  So I tried at 2 am and was on hold 45 minutes before my cell phone battery went dead.  I got up determined to sever ties with the cable company and go back to Qwest.  The first person at Qwest I called couldn't find Idaho Falls in her database and told me Idaho Falls didn't exist.  I hung up and figured I had reached an airhead and would give them a second chance.  After the second CSR told me she, too, couldn't find Idaho Falls, I asked to speak to the Manager.  That's when the second CSR really got my dander up.  She asked for my zip code.  I told her "How do you expect me to have a Zip Code if you tell me my town doesn't exist?"  I tried to turn it into a positive with the manager by suggesting that Qwest place hard copy printed Rand McNally maps of their service areas inside each person's cubicle.  Well, the Manager couldn't find Idaho Falls either.  That's when I told then they had lost me as a customer for life, wished her a nice day and politely hung up.  I called Houn' Dawg right away and he had me laughing about it in no time.  Thanks, Jef!

In the meantime, I got various things done that I probably wouldn't have done if I had been able to hang out on the internet.  I even played the Sand Creek short course with Terry M. this morning.  He shot 27 and I shot 30.  We both had a great time for our $3.25 and agreed to do it again sometime soon.

Stasea sent some photos yesterday and I don't have time to post them up right now.  I will do that later.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Cheers, jp