No Car, No Tv, No Internet

Yesterday evening wasn't supposed to be much different than any other Tuesday evening: pass by groceries after work, have dinner, cleanup & a few chores, catch-up with what's been happening on the internet, maybe watch a couple of episodes of some show... Except that a couple of things turned it into a situation where I had no car, no internet and no Tv signal. Note that I'm not complaining; these things are luxuries. It was just unexpected, is all.

Yesterday morning around 07:30, I dropped off the car at the dealership to have the water pump replaced. I assumed (wrongly, as it turns out!) that I would pick it back up around 17:00 towards the end of the afternoon. Not so. They ended up finishing the replacement around 10:00 this morning.

Also yesterday, around 12:15, my Internet connection dropped-out. I figured it was a hiccup, maybe something rebooted so I waited it out for a bit. It was lunch time anyway so I made myself a sandwich and didn't think much of it. After 20 minutes or so, the service wasn't back. I picked up my phone and checked for outages in the area. Nothing reported. I went to the basement where the IPS modem is located and saw it was booting up. I stared at it for a while and noticed it looked like it was in a boot-loop. It restarted about four times before I decided to unplug it, wait a bit, then plug it back it. Only for it to start boot-looping again. Great.

I finished the work day via my phone hotspot. It wasn't fast, but it got me through the rest of the day.

At that point I realized I wouldn't get the car back that evening so figured I would postpone the grocery store trip to the next day. I took the opportunity to do something I hadn't done in a while and ordered delivery.

Alright so at that point I had dinner. Time for a few chores. No surprises here. I then contacted support about the boot-looping modem. They had me go through the typical steps I had done on my own earlier, and I obliged. This resulted in the same outcome as before: boot-loop. They scheduled a technician to come over as soon as possible, which was the next day between noon and 17:00. Oh and did I mention that as well as providing Internet, the modem is also the hub for the Tv signal? Okay, so scratch off both of those things for the evening. On the plus side, I did something I hadn't done in a little while again: picked up a book and read for a while. Which was a nice change of pace and quite enjoyable.

The next day, I spent the first half working off the hotspot once more. At 10:00, the car dealership called to notify me that the replacement was complete. I would've picked it up at lunch time, but might've missed the ISP technician. At that point I was just hoping the technician would show up before 16:00 so I would have time to pick-up the car. They ended up coming over around 14:30, and by 15:30 we had narrowed down the fault to the power supply/cable. They swapped it for a new one and things are working again.

I normally walk to/from the car dealership when I pickup/dropoff the car, which takes about an hour. It had been snowing a decent amount all day by then and wasn't sure if the walk would take me longer than usual. To play it safe I opted to do yet another thing I hadn't done in a long time: use ride-share (Uber in this case). I arrived at the dealership well before 17:00, picked up the car, passed by the grocery store, had dinner & did a few chores, and now I'm catching up with what's been happening on the internet the last couple of days.

Back to the normal routine! Except maybe this evening I'll resume reading that book instead of doing the Tv thing.