The internet was (actually still is) down at Lincoln Lutheran for most of the day today. I told Windstream of our woes around 10:30 and bothered them every hour for an update on what they had found. Finally, at about 3:00, the 7th guy I talked to said that they had been, “really busy” and no one had actually even looked at my problem yet. Thanks Windstream.
Being without internet is more of a thing than it was even two years ago. Our teachers and students use it for getting assignments, working on them and turning them in. I spent most of the day in conversations like this:
everyone at school: When is the wi-fi going to be working?
me: The wi-fi is working.
everyone at school: Did it just come back?
me: No, it’s been working all day.
everyone at school: huh?
At this point I generally just walk off. Usually –here I’m just assuming– they figure out the difference between the wi-fi and the Internet. But if they don’t, I don’t really care at this point.
Eventually Jim from Windstream came by (I told the last Windstream guy I talked to to change our business hours to 8:00am to 8:00pm, because today was Awards Night, and I would be here anyway.) He couldn’t figure out why they had dispatched him without first doing some off-site diagnostics. I theorized with him that it was done mostly in an attempt to slow down the rate at which I was calling them.
Jim was nice, and seemed to know what he was doing, but a series of unfortunate coincidences (including, but not limited to a tornado warning) kept him from actually fixing the problem. He did, however, diagnose the problem. There was evidently a light that won’t light on one side*. He took it back to his workshop to fix it up there and bring it back here. He’s actually going to try to bring it back tonight.
I’ve arranged a secret knock between Jim and our custodian Todd, so Todd can, at least theoretically, let Jim in. Jim says that best case scenario is that our internet might be back up in about two hours. Worst case scenario is, in his words, “a while”.