Monday, March 02, 2009

Broadbanned

Our (ha!) wonderful high-speed internet service crashed today, at the ISP's end (amazing what they can get away with as the only broadband option out here), leaving me without internet access most of the day. Now, it was bad enough that the lack of high speed internet meant I had an unanticipated day off work to do all those nagging chores like defrost the chest freezer and discover all the things I forgot were in there. Worse, I couldn't even complain about not having internet access, because everyone I would complain to is online. For a moment, I was thinking of calling PengSis, but we're so accustomed to video chatting through Skype that it didn't occur to me until today that I don't actually know her real phone number.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh man I am laughing all over the floor! Hyper-techie Penguin, you are! How would you have called anyway, isn't your handset a Skype phone, dependent on your broadband? I'll email my numbers...
~PengSis

Anonymous said...

Pengsis' reply reminds me why we keep a wired-in landline phone, as walk-about ones rely on mains electricity for the stations.

Nimrod

Anonymous said...

Nimrod is correct. We do the same thing. It is actually scary how many people have ditched their landlines completely for cell and VOIP phones like Skype. But I insist on at least one "phone company-powered" phone in the house for emergencies. JD Power published a study a while ago that said Internet outages go at least 20% of the year, power outages are 5% of the year, cell towers are too new to know how often they go out; usually they don't, but almost always go out during emergencies, and landline phones go out 0.03% of the time. Always have at least one traditional telephone in the house for emergencies.

PengSis, our Skype phone is dual band. It works as a traditional cordless phone, and a Skype phone in one. One of the reasons I got that brand.

--Emp. Peng.