I felt like a character in a book today, we’d run out of electricity. Every time I turned around to do anything I need electricity and there wasn’t enough to even boil the kettle. Gah!

All hail the internet!

A few days ago we had internet problems. This started on Monday night and wasn’t fixed until Tuesday lunchtime. Interesting how when something like this happens all we want to do is on the internet. I couldn’t write anything for the blog (but that’s okay as I could read the book I had in mind for Mondayitis), I couldn’t do Facebook, Twitter or any other online writing or researching or… I think you get the idea. I did manage to finish my book in time then drove off to a cafe on Tuesday where I sat and wrote, you can read the results here.

What was interesting about the lack of internet is the accessibility we have. Both of us have smart phones, the OH has lots of data available (I’m sure this makes no sense to people who don’t have smart phones) but I was running low and didn’t think to bot off the OH’s hotspot. One of us had very slow internet while the other did stuff offline.

There’s a wonderful forum called Whirlpool which is the go-to place for all technology problems. We were able to monitor the discussion and get an estimated time of repair using Whirlpool. There were suggestions reminiscent of the IT Crowd such as ‘turn it off, then turn it on again’ and much discussion including the specific network exchanges the people were on. As it turned out a part had broken, the replacement had to be taken to the site and installed. Besides being in Perth, I have no idea of where the location of the server is and where they have to get the parts from. The thread is currently up to 10 pages and ongoing. Most people were back online Tuesday lunchtime but it seems some people are having ongoing problems.

Onto the electricity.

Last night we lost some power, very strange as some things went off and others were working intermittently or strangely. The kitchen fluorescent lights had this very loud hum, the dishwasher beeped at us and the computer turned off and wouldn’t turn on again. There were other problems with other equipment and we went round the house testing and discussing the possible insurance claim before finally going to bed. The electricity did come back in part at some stage so we were able to use the computers for a while but bed was the easiest option.

This morning things were no better so I rang the electricity company before breakfast and they promised to have someone out within four hours. It’s a good thing I popped straight into the shower as they arrived about half an hour later, so much for the four hours. After some time working in the rain they knocked on my door to tell me they’d replaced the service line and could I test things out. Everything worked fine! The line running from the electricity wire to the house had been damaged, it was the original line and the rubber covering had worn away so it’s no wonder we had problems. All our equipment seems fine so I don’t think we’ll be putting in any insurance claim this time.

So that’s two problems this week, I do wonder what the third will be.