When Tech Support Asks; What’s In Your Closet?

Living in small-town USA has it’s disadvantages when it comes to things like high speed internet. You see, unless you’re living inside the loop, you’re connected to an overloaded RT, or if you’re too far outside town, you’re connected to, well, nothing.

I happen to live just outside the loop. And when I say that, I mean I can see it from my house. I could tell you what model of car just passed by if it weren’t dark outside.

Anyway, I’m a couple hundred yards from a reliable internet connection. It isn’t at all unusual to be without internet service a couple hours every few days. So, when I got home after lunch and discovered my internet was down, I was ticked off annoyed, but figured it was a regular outage and it would be back on real soon. I put my kid down for a nap. I did everything a person can do online from a smartphone. I printed business cards for a client. Then I got bored and took a nap.

When I got up the internet was still down so I called the provider. Turns out, there was no outage in our area. The technician was very kind and didn’t treat me like an idiot. When I told him I’d rebooted my modem and my wireless router, he believed me, and he didn’t make me do it again just to prove to him that the problem wasn’t on my end. Instead, he got started right away on ‘provisioning’ the modem. He tried over and over to connect and said he could see that the service was fine, but the modem seemed stuck. He tried something on his end, had me reboot it, and the problem was the same. The modem kept getting stuck at step 5 out of 6. We came to the conclusion that my modem is shot.

That’s right. Dead.

The tech then said he had a really stupid sounding question to ask…
Do you, by any chance, have a spare modem??
I wanted to laugh out loud. I think I probably giggled a little bit. I told him I didn’t, but that his question wasn’t all that crazy… had we not just had a yard sale and sold the last one, I could have produced at least three DSL modems. No Cable Modem, but heck, us, the techie Mueller family, having something like a spare modem really isn’t a stretch. We’re packrats geeky like that.

I was given a couple options and decided to purchase a new one from a local store. I thanked the kind tech support guy and hung up, frustrated that I’d have to spend money I hadn’t planned on spending and I’d have to leave the nice warm house and make the track to the store. In the cold wet weather. With a two year old.

I started supper then started the movie, UP. Lil Man and I were about half way through watching the movie when my husband popped on on Skype.

WHOA!

So, for the past few hours I’ve had internet. I have no idea how long it will last before my modem starts sticking again, but for now, I’m online.

So, I thought I’d ask, what kinds of things are in your closets? Do you keep the half-dead tech items you’ve replaced with newer technology?

C’mon, tell me about them and I just might give you a peek into my inventory!!

That is if my internet still works.

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