Would you rather your internet be offline or up and down intermittently all day long?

I asked this question from current experience.

Your Daily Lex.

Yesterday I had a little break in my day and I was like, you know what, I’m going to watch a streaming show.

And normally I would just do that like on my computer or on my iPad if I had like 20 minutes in between things.

I was like, you know, I’m going to go into the basement.

I’m going to use the theater because it’s there.

And why not?

So I go down there, I get everything set up and then it won’t play.

And I’m like, what the heck is going on?

And I’m trying to debug it.

And then I eventually realized the internet has died.

And then it was back and then it died and it was back and then it died.

And eventually I call Optimum because I want to make sure that they know that there’s an outage or an issue in my area.

But you have to go through their robots and their robots are like, we can restart your modem remotely now.

We don’t have to have you talk to a human.

We’re going to do that first.

And so it restarts my modem, which I had already tried, but fine.

And then of course you’re like, now we think you should restart your router, which I’ve done, but I do that too.

And it’s like, Hey, it seems like your internet connection is back.

And I’m like, yes, but robot, it’s been back.

It’s on and then it’s off.

It’s on and then it’s off.

And so eventually you can call again and then get to a human.

And he was like, well, I want to try all the things the robot did, but I’m going to have the, you know, be controlled by me.

So I’m going to restart your modem and then I’m going to tell you to restart your router.

And I’m like, okay, I did all this with your automated system, but let’s, let’s give it a shot.

And he’s like, well, it looks like your connection is working now.

If it goes down again, give a call in and you can book an appointment.

And I’m like, okay.

Then we hang up.

And two seconds later, of course, I’m offline again.

I call back in, do the work to get to a human, which that time was surprisingly difficult.

And I get to the human and the human’s like, well, let’s do some testing before we schedule an appointment.

I’m like, okay, but I did it once with a robot.

And once with a human, just 20 minutes ago, you can probably see a call log or something like we just did this.

And she’s like, yeah, but let’s do it again.

So we go through all those frigging steps again.

And man, I was, I was, I was polite.

I was kind to this person who was doing their job, maybe doing it poorly, but doing their job.

Uh, but man, I was very annoyed, uh, because now I also had a call that I had to start getting to.

And all I wanted to do at this point was call optimum and schedule an appointment.

Uh, but that appointment scheduling took a long time because first we had to do all those tests.

And then when it’s just time to schedule the appointment, she’s like, okay, I’m going to get somebody out there Tuesday.

That would be today for those of you playing along at home.

And she’s like, I’m going to get somebody out there Tuesday, give me a minute.

And then it was clear that she took so long that she lost the appointment time.

She’s like, I’m actually gonna have to make this Wednesday.

And I’m like, okay, that’s not even worth my complaining.

Like, Hey, uh, I can’t wait until Wednesday.

I need the internet to work on Tuesday because it’s not going to change anything and whatever.

So, uh, it takes about a half an hour to book the appointment.

Fine.

Uh, I get to a zoom call late.

Luckily I had texted the person the zoom calls with to say I was running a few minutes behind and whatever.

So get on my zoom with this person.

And it goes, um, uneventfully other than well, right.

It was, Oh, that’s not true.

I’m wrong.

I misremembered at some point.

I warned the person at the start.

Hey, I was late because of this internet issue.

If at any point my zoom freezes, I’ll just call you directly, which is indeed what happened.

Uh, but later on, I’m on a zoom with, um, a client who I wouldn’t just text like that.

And it’s a bigger team.

They’ve got a conference room full of people I’m talking to.

And of course, again, uh, at some points during the call, my internet dies, but this time it was dying for, you know, a second or two at a time.

So from their perspective, I would just freeze.

But from my perspective, I would miss things that they were saying.

Uh, so once or twice they were like, I was not answering a question because I hadn’t heard the question.

I told them I was having internet issues, whatever, but extremely frustrating.

If it had simply been offline, then you could, you know, say, Hey, I’ve got to go to a coffee shop or steal somebody else’s internet or tether to my phone.

But when it comes back on, every time it comes back on, you feel like it’s just working, uh, which indeed it was not, it was not just working.

Uh, man, oh man.

So I hate internet outages.

I don’t think anybody loves them, but, uh, man, just knowing how you’re going to be offline for six hours is so much better than it’s going to be up and down like a yo-yo for a while.

Um, I asked somebody the other day, if they wanted to make plans.

And the response was I’m down like four flat tires.

Uh, and the first one I was reading that text, I’m like, I’m down my fourth floor.

And then I eventually figured out that, uh, it was a yes.

I’m down like a, a car with four flat tires, four flat tires.

Anyway, that’s what all that made me think of.

Uh, may your internet be stronger than mine is today because I’ve definitely already had some offline bounces.

Uh, but don’t worry.

They’re coming tomorrow, allegedly between eight o’clock in the morning and 11 o’clock in the morning.

So we’ll see how that goes.

I did get to hear from two of my three kids at camp that they’re doing well.

And, uh, Sierra is the star of the musical at camp this summer.

She’ll be paying, uh, playing, she won’t be paying, but she’ll be, I’m paying, she’ll be playing Willy Wonka in the Willy Wonka musical, I guess.

So there you go.

Happy Tuesday, Lex.