Crazy Week!

I haven't posted anything (which is not me at all) or really visited any of my regular blog buddies for close to almost a week now and I have a perfectly good excuse, urmm, I mean reason for that ... LOL! Today is really the only time since Monday that I've had some time to actually sit here and type something out.

What happened first was my silly internet connection upped and died on me for close to two days (almost). Most of you who are using Streamyx would probably say, so what else is new? But the thing is I don't use Streamyx. I'm using a totally different service provider called Jaring and for the past 2 or so years since I've been using their wireless broadband, this is only the second time their service died on me.

The first being when the undersea cables broke or something and that wasn't really their fault. Besides, I didn't own a blog back then so I was not affected by it. The second time was just last week when all of a sudden, my wife said the service was down. I didn't really give it much thought cos I'm using a wireless broadband and it just rained and sometimes, the connection is slightly buggy for a few minutes after a heavy rain spell (which we've been experiencing quite a bit last week).

I told my wife to give it a few minutes and after waiting ten minutes with still no connection, I knew something was wrong. Their service and reception is that good that if you're not connected back in a few minutes, something really is wrong. So I went and have a look at the settings and stuff but found nothing wrong with it. Now this was already around an hour and I couldn't get online. I was shocked! I was devastated even ... LOL! (I can laugh now but I wasn't laughing then).

So I called their customer service (which I must stress is excellent) and they tried to help me troubleshoot my problem. After an hour on the phone troubleshooting together with their customer service and not getting any success, they decided to log my complain in the logs and let their technical people try to solve it. They said it might take anywhere from 24-48 hours to figure it out. Oh, man, 48 hours? I couldn't get angry with them, cos they were so helpful and apologetic so I waited patiently. I couldn't even log on in my office cos we use the same wireless broadband provider as well. Drats!

Then the next day, the worse thing that could happen, happened. My client calls up and says they need to get an ad out in the local media the next day.

'What!', I screamed in the phone ... (well, not really screamed, sounds more dramatic when I say scream ... LOL!)

They want an advert out tomorrow and they call me today. Don't they know it needs at least 3 whole days for material submission deadlines and such? Well, not really but that's what I always tell them :) Ok, normally this wouldn't be a huge problem cos I could just email them the artwork for confirmation but remember both my office and home connections were down.

Man, I panicked cos this would mean having to drive all the way to their place which is in the heart of the city to get the artwork approved and that would mean wasting a lot of time driving. Time which I really didn't have. But I had no choice. So the next couple of days were a frantic hell for me. Even my wife's needs were placed secondary to my client (sorry honey). But in the end I did manage to get things done for them and that took me a stressful 4 whole days since Tuesday.

True to my service providers assurance our connection came back in the next 36 hours but because of my last minute work, I couldn't get to replying my comments and posting anything new until yesterday evening. But after replying all my comments and visiting most of my regular blog buddies pages I got too lazy to post anything. And today being a Saturday I was even lazier. I don't usually post on weekends cos I'd rather spend the time with my beloved wife but today I just had too cos I can't stay away from not updating my blog for too long ... hehehe ...

Both my wife and me were pretty pissed when connection went down cos we're pretty avid blogger and she was even more pissed than me cos she has some paid posting assignments to complete by a certain date (which she just barely managed to squeeze in when the connection came back). Oh, and she's been doing a pretty good job with her paid postings, making loads of money too ... LOL!

This episode made me realize how much I've come to depend on my broadband service, both for my work and my personal life. I practically do everything online, from paying all my bills to my communication with my clients, research for my work, to just plain blogging and sometimes I wonder how the heck did I ever get anything done back in those old days when it was just plain dial up, worse still, when the internet wasn't even heard of yet! Boy, that is a scary thought ... LOL!

Ok, now enough with the heart stopping moments of not having connection already. It's time to go visit my regulars and see what they've been up to the past week. I've also got quite a bit of meme's and awards to post. Been sitting on it for way too long now. And since my wife is downstairs watching some movie called 'Click' I have the laptop all to myself for a whole 2 hours or so :D Happy weekend folks.