Thunderstorms

And More Utility Fun

No cable in the morning, so I could not watch the Tour finale.

Instead, I followed it on the computer. Not quite the same, but the narrations are really entertaining.

All went well until the first of several thunderstorms came in. That kicks out my DSL Internet connection. Then the power went off for a while. Then it came back on and we had some torrential rain.

I got calls from both my Aunt and my neighbor asking about the cable, but the repair guy wasn't due until after 1 PM, so the morning was a washout in more ways than one.

The storm rolled by and there was a knock at my door. It was the cable guy. He still didn't know it was not just my cable that was out, but in short order, he found out I had absolutely no signal coming into my house. A little worried about the storms hanging around the area, he climbed the pole in front of my house and found there was no signal there either. That meant that the touble was further down the line and down the road.

Back to square one. This meant a line technician had to fix the problem instead of this guy. To add to it all, since it was Sunday, there was only one line tech on duty, so we had no idea if and when he would make it out.

Fast forward a few hours. The DSL came back on and, to my surprise, so did the cable TV. I picked up the phone to call my Aunt and....no dial tone! Now my phone was out.

I checked all the connections inside and went out to the phone box on the side of the house to plug in another phone to see if I had a dial tone outside. One line had some noise, but no real dial tone and the other was dead.

I will have to presume here that my DSL is a separate line if from my phone because that is working fine.

I headed over to my Aunt's house to see if her phone was OK and it was, so it is just my line.

I called the phone company and "spoke" to one of those voice response answering services. The computer automatically checked my line and found nothing wrong. That now meant I needed a repairman to come.

Swell. Next appointment? Tuesday between 8 AM and 5 PM. Would someone be home?

What could I say? So now I am stuck sitting home all day waiting for the phone guy.

Did I work a horse today? Nope. The torrential rain really did a mud puddle number on the ring again. It should be fine tomorrow.

And the weather will, I hope, be better as well. I THINK the rain broke the humidity, but the morning will tell.

Let's see....cable, electricity, phone. I think that covers the utilities that can go bad.

What's next?