Internet Interruption

Internet Interruption

My wife and I watch a lot of TV, and we both are on our PC’s a lot.  Oh, we can multitask baby!

We do this in the bedroom. 

The bedroom is on the second floor of our town-home.  We get our TV reception from cable, our land phone line from cable, and our internet access from cable.  We have the cable “Triple play.” 

If cable is out, we lose TV, the internet, and our phone.  We do have cell phones also. 

Why, you ask, do we also have a phone landline?  Because we are old. 

The cable connection comes into our basement computer area, and the internet router also is in this area.

Suffice it to say, the corner of the basement where all these connections take place is a confusion of wires and boxes.

Anyway.

Sometimes we lose connection to the internet.  Usually if I just disconnect from our network on my PC, then reconnect, and it comes back.  Occasionally that does not work and the solution is to go two floors down to the basement and unplug the router for a count of ten (Probably don’t need to count, but what the heck) re-plug, the internet resets and we are good.  Needless to say, this is a pain, especially when comfortably ensconced in bed.

The other night the internet was down again.  The basement connections needed to be reset.  Now there are two boxes with power and even though I only need to cut power from one, I never know for sure which box.  Mrs. C says she knows but it seems to me, she keeps changing her direction on which box to cut power.  Being pragmatic, I simply pull both power cords and do the ten second thing.

When I returned upstairs, we had power again.

“Did you pull the cord from the router?”

“I pulled cords from both boxes.”

“Just don’t pull the cord from the one with the antennas!”

“Last time you said to pull the cord from the one WITH the antennas.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, I even blogged about it.”

“Well you were wrong.”

“So, I pull from both boxes, what is the big deal?”

“You should only have to pull from one!”

“Here is a great idea.  The circuit breaker box is in the hall upstairs.  If we figure which breaker controls the cable/router box circuit, when we have an issue instead of going to the basement, I can just cut off that circuit for a count of ten.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They both may not be on the same circuit.”

“What! There is only one outlet in that corner of the basement.”

“I don’t like messing with the circuit breakers.”

That whooshing sound you just heard was the “logic train” roaring past our house.  I’ve learned to not expect it to make any stops at our house.

I suppose I could figure out which switch works which circuit by myself, but that would entail about a dozen trips up and down two flights of stairs.

I think I’ll just leave it alone. 

The next time I’ll still unplug both boxes, but when Mrs. C asks which one I unplugged I’ll just tell her,

“The one you always tell me to unplug.”