a bit too reliant on the internet.....

Ever been working right along in the office and all of a sudden your Internet connection stops responding? Happened in our office yesterday.

One by one employees either came into my office or stopped me on my way back to the computer area, a slight look of panic on their faces as they said things like, "Um, did you know the Internet is down?" or "I was doing such and such online and it just stopped."

After turning the DSL modem off and on several times (which is what all tech support people are told to say first, so I got it out of the way), I called AT&T. No one answered the tech support line. They ran a message that said something like, "Due to technical difficulties, we're unable to answer your call. Please call back later." I figured that meant it wasn't just us having the problem. I got a call from our web host, who also uses AT&T, and they said there was a regional outage. Yeah, it wasn't just us.

I never heard what the actual problem was or just how big it was. But I did notice that the pace in the office slowed drastically. It was like because our Internet connection was down, all work had to cease. Never mind the files that needed to be filed. Or the dozens of other tasks that can be done without the Internet.

Now if I could just figure out how to get the Internet to file our paperwork for us.....