We Get to Drink from the (Almost) FIREHOSE!

So last summer, while the family was at camp, our Internet crapped out. I couldn’t connect at all and it was getting frustrating not only trying to update this fabulous blog but also get into the class I was teaching. You know, the paying gig.

Riveting stuff, I know. But it gets better.

Cable One sent out a technician and he poked around for a while at their outside box (a long while, but more on that later) and then poked around inside for a while. He asked if we had any other cable connections in the house. I showed him, and he was not impressed.

He did manage to get us connected again, but in talking with their tech support afterward (they called to follow-up on the visit) the guy said something classic:

“Looks like you might have something wrong with your wires.”

He meant the wires in our home, and suggested we contact an electrician to have at least one new connection put in so we’d have a better overall internet experience.

I chalked it up to the typical “We don’t know what’s wrong, so let’s blame the wires” talk and did nothing about it apart from look at the costs of CAT-6 cable at Home Depot.

So you know where this is going.

This weekend, in a fit of frustration trying to connect with the FAFSA website (don’t get me started) I decided I’d had enough. I grabbed the new cable we had just purchased that weekend and marched outside to the famed box on the side of the house. I remembered clearly the guy on the phone saying “When you get your house re-wired, call us and we’ll come out and get you hooked up.” So I was hopeful but not optimistic when I opened the box – to find one simple screw-in connection and a ground wire. I think I might be able to stave off a service call, I thought. I connected the wire to the box. Then strung it through the garage, through the back door of the house and to our wireless router.*

After a few sparks and a quick whiff of ozone, GLORY BE we had an internet connection that stretched for miles. Relatively. But you get the idea. We could have MULTIPLE devices connected at the SAME TIME.

I’m still wrassling with FAFSA (again, don’t get me started) but everything else has been wonderful. We were able to watch the Super Bowl this weekend, streaming it, with only a few temporary glitches.

So the question from my wife came up: Why did you wait until now to fix this, when you knew what the fix was this summer?

Answer: I’m a man. But I can change. If I have to. I guess.

This isn’t to say our connection is perfect – we still see a slowdown in the evening when lots of people are using the net – but it’s nothing like the slowdown we’d seen for months.

We’re drinking from the fire hose, folks, and it feels great. Should have found that marble in the oatmeal a long time ago.

*Naturally, once I saw the improved connection I installed the new cable properly, even digging through the insulation in the wall to get the cable to come out the proper box in the kitchen. While my wife is a patient woman and put up with lousy internet access for months, she would NOT put up with a cable snaking in through the back door for more than the necessary time to test the new connection.