Life without the Internet

There was a time when I had hobbies. Among other things, I used to draw quite a lot; play chess and once I was a keen photographer. I was a prolific reader too. Lately however, I don’t see to have the time for such pursuits. I rarely even watch television these days, although it has to be said, that’s no great loss.

I work fairly long hours and have a ridiculously heavy commute, even in good weather. That means I have to get up at a time when 20 years ago I was just going to bed. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could stay up late but usually, I’m falling asleep before I’ve finished dinner. I have two dogs that get cranky if they aren’t properly exercised and a drum sergeant who gets just as grumpy when I don’t practice so it’s a challenge fitting all this in between getting home and going to bed.

That said, over the last decade or so I have, like many other people, become completely and hopelessly addicted to the Internet. And there’s more than just porn out there. (It’s true, go look!) Reading the news, checking the weather, looking up historical facts in a book I’m reading, browsing other people’s blogs, following the British football results; it’s all there at my fingertips and I’ve become totally dependent on it. In a fire, the computer would be one of the first things I’d grab. In fact, if the dogs spread coffee grounds around the kitchen floor once more, it may well be the first thing I’d grab.

This meant I experienced a deep sense of despair a few nights ago when I sat down for a spot of surfing, opened Mozilla and encountered the blue screen of death. You know the one. Royal blue with white lettering stating something innocuous like

"Ha, ha, ha – your life is over! Signed B. Gates"

It’s happened a few times before. Usually when I have five or six web browsers open at the same time and I’m reading one web site while the other five are still downloading. (That’s not called 'impatience' anymore; it’s now 'multi-tasking'.) So as usual, I closed everything and rebooted.

Nothing.

I shut the computer down and left it for fifteen minutes.

Still nothing.

I tried Internet Explorer. Nope. Then Netscape. This was successful, but probably only because I still have a primitive version loaded, which is useless for all but the most basic web sites. The rest of the computer seemed to be working fine, but I couldn’t for the life of me access the Internet. I ran Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter, Anti-Spyware and Virus Scan. Zippo.

Finally, I went to bed after deciding that if I simply didn’t think about it, everything would be fine in the morning. It wasn’t. So, with a heavy heart, I unplugged all the cables from the back (and goodness, aren’t there a lot?), carted the thing out to Dear Wife’s car, and instructed her to place it in the tender care of the teenaged boys at the local computer fixing store.

"No problem." they told her. "Leave it with us and we’ll give you a call in four or five days." After six days, I called them. "Yep" they said. "It’s causing us a bit of a headache."

"Oh?" I replied, trying to keep my voice from cracking.

"Yeah, we’re pretty sure there’s some Spyware on there which is preventing your browsers from opening. Problem is; we’ve run every piece of anti-Spyware software we own and still can’t find it. We’ve each had a go at it and it’s got us all stymied."

"So, what happens now?" I asked.

"Oh, we’ll get it" he replied with the confidence found only in the young. "We just need to figure it out."

After two more days, they admitted defeat. "Here’s the situation." They said "We can open Internet Explorer now, and the latest version of Netscape, but we just can’t get Mozilla to work. We’ve deleted everything and reloaded it. As far as we can see, your computer is completely clean, and we just don’t know what’s causing the problem."

"So what do we do?" I bleated.

"Well, if you’re agreeable, we’d like to upgrade your version of Windows. That might fix it, but worst case scenario, you’ll have an upgraded version of Windows. If it doesn’t work, we’ll download Firefox for you, which is kind of like Mozilla."

He then quoted me a sum higher than my first mortgage payment before adding brightly "And we’ll give you a newer version of Microsoft Office, on the house." I didn’t see that I had a whole lot of choice so I gave the go ahead. "Two or three more days" he told me.

Two or three more days without the Internet. Two or three more days of using my monitored-by-corporate-office work computer for my surfing needs. Two or three more days! That’s a lifetime.

On Day 4 Dear Wife called to see if it was ready. The owner of the store told her.

"Yes, I’m glad you called. There’s been a bit of a hold up because the employee who was working on your computer quit without notice this week."

"Ohhhkaaaaaaaaaay, so what’s the situation now?"

"Well, I was hoping you could you tell me what it was he was going to do."

Dear Wife is more polite than I am in situations like this so in the cosmic scheme of things it was probably best that she was on the call, not me. Nonetheless, when three more days had come and gone with no word from them, I concluded that as man of the house, I would make the call to enquire about the status.

"Yep, it’s done." Came the response. "It’s ready for you to pick up."

My relief at the thought of being connected to the outside world once more comfortably outweighed my irritation over their lack of consideration in picking up the phone to tell us this so I cheerfully arranged to pick it up later that day.

All right, Internet – here I come!

Except I still can’t get on. It turns out the Windows upgrade wiped out our Internet Provider’s software.

Of course, there is an upside. I dug out my sketch pad the other day. And I’ve played several games of chess, and spent some quality time with my camera. And I’m working my way through a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time.

I’m still not prepared to watch television though. I’m not that desperate.