Some Of My Internets Is Missing

While enjoying a lone night in and happily online gaming with a friend on GT5 on Friday night I was suddenly disconnected from the server. When this has happened recently connection has been restored quickly and about 10 seconds after getting the error message, a “logging into PSN” message appears as something somewhere is reset. This time though it wasn’t as straightforward as that.

Diagnosing the problem as being the modem, I carried out the usual “turn it off and on again” procedure on both the modem and the computer that most helpdesks seem to want you to do. But when they both came back on, there was still no joy. I even did it twice, just to make sure!. But it wouldn’t fix the problem and so it was time to call Virgin for support.

Navigating their “press 1 for this, press 2 for something else and 3 for something entirely different” process I eventually made it through to someone in India who went through another 10 questions before putting me on hold while he checked to see if there was a problem in my area.

There wasn’t, he told me when he returned, and so they’d have to get an engineer out to me. Unfortunately, with no slots available the next day (well it was a Saturday, they’re all off for the weekend probably!) he wouldn’t be able to get someone out until Monday. So I reluctantly got myself a timeslot booked for Monday morning, hung up the phone and went to play GT5 offline for a bit.

However, on Saturday afternoon I received a text telling me that they’d cancelled my engineer as there was a fault in my area, and they were working on getting the service resumed as quickly as possible. When I phoned them on Sunday to double-check that my engineer wasn’t coming out I asked when “quickly as possible” would be I was told that it would be Wednesday!

So I’m going to be internetless for five and a half days. No updating my podcasts. No downloading tv and movies. No online gaming. No checking of my emails. How did we ever survive pre-1994?