So here's how the Internet Failure went: My sister had come in, because she was staying overnight to catch a ride to my elder niece's birthday party the next day. We were also talking over the plans for how I'm going to get my load of stuff out to Lansing; she had volunteered to bring the stuff in her new horse trailer, provided that I can pack it all in boxes no larger than standard banker's boxes. (She's had experience moving before. Plus, she probably knows, a lot of what I want to transport is books, which contain information, which by the Boltzmann equation is a kind of energy, which has mass, which is why a box full of books routinely outweighs the person carrying it.)
And as I had something loading --- I forget what and it doesn't matter --- the Internet connection died. And didn't come back. I was ready to be very upset with the cable modem, since we'd just got it replaced, and went to call Verizon's tech support. There was no dial tone. Not in the kitchen unit, not in the sun room, not in my parents' bedroom phone. Well. That's pleasant, isn't it?
On the cell phone I called Verizon Tech Support and after many a bar of generic music they decided I needed to talk to someone in the phone line division. And after even longer the phone people asked whether the test station phone jack worked. I had never heard of the test station, so had no idea. My father said he could check in the morning. We got out his MiFi device and set that up, so I was able to at least get my Livejournal post out and chat with all the folks I need to in the extremely slow fashion allowed by MiFi devices trying to handle this heavy ``text'' protocol.
This morning there were multiple mass e-mails from the community's gatehouse and clubhouse reporting that their phones were out due to a Verizon service interruption. So at this point we could say the problem was likely not our phone service. And indeed, when we got home from the party (more anon) there was phone service, and Internet service, and even --- following a short sharp storm -- a double rainbow!
If the Internet stays up tonight we'll cancel the service visit from the phone lines expected sometime this week if the schedule permits.
Trivia: A 1750 instruction manual identified the procedure of offering snuff as one requiring fourteen motions. Source: Tastes Of Paradise: A Social History Of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants, Wolfgang Schivelbusch.
Currently Reading: His Share Of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction Of Cyril M Kornbluth, Editor Timothy Szczesuil. I feel like whenever Kornbluth wasn't sure how to frame a story he just made the lead a newspaperman from 1952 and called it THE FUTURE. He didn't actually send someone to the space-telex, but he did call it an etherex or something near that.