No Internet

5:38 AM (of Friday, October 9th 2020)

Today is Thursday, October 8th 2020 and it's been a pretty good and normal day. I started off the day all well and good, usual morning routine. I actually even went out today and walked around the neighborhood in the morning.

That walk planted a seed to walk outside every 1 hour. This is an idea I had last year, where if I somehow was able to work remotely, it would be something I would do. Of course I had this idea when I would talk 10k steps a day throughout the day, most of it during lunch hours where I'd spend 30 minutes to an hour just walking every day. Anyway the idea was excellent, but I didn't follow through.

Instead, I had some important work items to work on that morning so that's what I spent my time on. Around 3 PM my computer disconnected me from my workplace's remote desktop connection and I tried a few times to reconnect. Even the Internet on my other laptop stoppeh working too. I went over to the router and reset it, still nothing.

After trying what I could and not getting any Internet to work, I texted my boss the situation and that I would probably have to come into the office the next day. Good time as any for a change of pace I guess.

What else could I do now? I realized how much my life revolved around the Internet when I couldn't do any of my normal activities. Should I drive around and find a place to walk? That's the immediate thing I wanted to do. But my mom would be home in an hour or two and I wanted to explain the situation at least. I browsed the Internet on my phone using mobile data for like an hour, and then I worked on my homework that was due today. That's another homework assignment completed early, woohoo!

But seriously I had nothing to do. When my mom came back she gave me the number to our internet provider and I was on hold for over an hour. I called them on my phone and just left it on speaker mode as it played some music while I was queued up, every now and then interrupting with a "thank you for waiting, all our staff is currently supporting other customers. You will hear music until someone is able to assist you" or something like that. It must have played this message every minute, though to me in felt like it played it every 30 seconds with how frequently it came up.

After an hour and 30 minutes of still being on hold, I wanted to use my phone to check stuff out. I hung up and asked my mom if I could use her phone to call them. I could have just used her phone for the Internet, but there were chat rooms only I could access with my phone, and we were on separate phone bills and I didn't want mine to keep rocking up minutes on nothing. It was after 6 PM at this point too, and I was on hold for an hour and 30 minutes, so I wondered if it glitched and kept up on hold after work hours were done.

I hung up and asked my mom if I could use her phone to call them, she allowed it so that's what I did. This time I just chose the option to have them call when it was ready. Previously I chose to just be put on hold thinking it would go by faster which didn't work out.

As much as I wanted to go outside and drive or walk, it wasn't possible with me having to wait on hold. Ever since I was put on hold, I sat at home and just read a book, the Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman. I read this book first back in 2013. I remember it being one of the most "productive" (not video game related) activities of that year. I was unemployed, not in education nor training, just shortly after dropping out of school.

That book at the time had a supporting main character who had a similar name to a girl I had a crush on back in high school, and back in 2013 it was only like two years since I last "saw" her (in the same class I guess), in the highest level math course in the school. I had a crush on her because she was so pretty and was in this same math class as me while being a year younger. All that math stuff I have forgotten at this point though today, I'd have to relearn it all. Also I still look her up from time to time, just because her name was sort of in this book, and I imagined her being in it. When the main character time travelled into the future and saw a much older version of her, I imagined it being this same person I knew in real life but much older. At the time in 2013, being the teenager I was, all these ideas about being older and stuff really blew my mind. I hadn't yet experienced a lot of things.

Anyway I like the book. I spent a few hours reading it and there was a bunch of stuff I don't remember. I can't even imagine the female character being the person I had a crush on anymore, because it's been so many years since I even last saw her. I don't feel any connection anymore. I guess that happens.

What I do like is that the main character eats a bunch of meatless main course meals throughout the book. That is pretty awesome. I already stopped eating meat way back in 2013, and tonight all I had was lentils, rice, and some spices, a meal that cost maybe 30 cents to make. Despite years of not eating any meat, because it's not even necessary at all, whenever I even make the suggestion to people to you know, stop unnecessarily killing animals for even just one meal, they get offended like it's their throats being slit. But whatever, in this book the main character has several meatless main meals by choice and that's awesome.

At some point customer support called my mom's phone and I picked up, it was around 9 PM. They told me that my entire region's Internet was down and that it would be back by 12 AM tonight at the latest. I'm actually writing this 6 hours later on my phone and there's still no Internet.

I fell asleep reading the book. I only spent a few hours reading through it but got through a decent amount. It's really not bringing about any nostalgic feelings like I thought it would. It's been such a long time since I've read it that it's basically a new experience for me. There's events that I don't remember, and events that took place differently from how I remembered.

Anyway that was my day today.