I know I was supposed to talk more about my store's anniversary, but something came up yesterday, so expect more on my store next week.
When I arrived home yesterday evening, I did my usual routine. I put away my stuff, turned on the television, and began to play a game on one of my phones. It was the one without a SIM card that I only use for games and storing a few pics and videos. However, when I started to play, I got a notification that there was no internet signal. That's when I noticed that the lights for the internet were not blinking on the modem. Now, I also get cable television and telephone service through the internet as well, but they weren't being affected. In fact, they were working perfectly. I could even use the landline to call someone to see if they had internet service. They did, although it had went off for a while earlier in the day. We also called the provider to see if they had any idea what was happening. All we got was a recorded message saying that there were outages in the area near us. We couldn't contact a living person at that time.
We tried to call later on that night. This time, we got a different message, but nothing more about any outages. I was getting suspicious about what was happening. Since we had the other services, we should have had internet as well. Now, I could've tried my iPhone, but I have almost no bars in at home. It is a cellular dead zone. I tried unplugging the modem, for up to a minute, to see if that would reset anything on my end. Nothing happened, but the television was unaffected. I would later get onto my MacBook to see if there were any nearby wifi spots. Instead of the usual list of mostly letter and numbers, there were a bunch of names listing wifi spots, some I recognized as neighbors. This included one under the name of the account for my place.
And it was close enough to be in the house with me.
I immediately thought that the provider had somehow installed a new modem for us outside when the put in new lines, or something to that effect. I had seen workers practically everywhere lately installing new equipment. As an experiment, I tried to join the wifi using the old password. Didn't work. We were going to call one last time before going to bed, but we put it off too long to do so. I went to bed without being able to go online. Well, for a few minutes. I remembered a shortly thereafter that I forgot to clear the online history, like a normally do every other day or so. I went back to my computer, still without internet, and cleared the history.
This morning, the internet was still out, but we still had cable and phone. We waited to eight to call some more people to see if they had any problems. They didn't. So, we phoned the provider again and reached a real person. While I started to get ready for work, someone else stayed on the line. The provider gave them a runaround, moving from servicing to billing to help. I had to put some clothes back on multiple times to rush back to the phone to help out. (Yes, I was partially naked at times. Try not to picture that. Unless you really, really want to. No judging.) Finally, after almost an hour, we came to a solution.
When the provider switched over to the new lines, the old modem was renamed after the account and not the device any more. My devices no longer recognized the old modem under the new name, so they couldn't connect with it. We had to come up with a new password for the modem. After typing it in to join the network, everything worked perfectly. My MacBook and phones connected easily. Of course, I was now an hour behind schedule, and I would open the store a half hour late. At least we didn't have to pay more for a new box or try to schedule an appointment for a worker to com in to install something. I also found out that the modem will work even when not all the lights are on. I just hope that the internet is still working when I get home tonight.
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