Roxanne’s Glimpse of The Matrix

 Or Why I Hate Technology.

…and DERAILED.

So last week, I started having some trouble getting online with my desktop computer. This is my main brain, and the fact that I’m so dependent on something I understand so poorly makes me very uncomfortable. Paranoid, even. Technology bothers me, like a splinter in my mind.

Then the new printer quit.

Then none of the networked laptops could get online.

It was horrible. Like being dropped back into the seventies, onto a big black dial phone that won’t stop ringing. I couldn’t Tweet or Like or Share. I couldn’t even send an email to explain that I Couldn’t SEND AN EMAIL. So now that I can again, I thought I’d explain to those of you who follow me (yes, both of you!) why I disappeared temporarily.

I did all the usual things to fix it: restart computer, unplug and replug router, push buttons on modem, bang hands on desk. Nothing worked. So I sent an urgent Hail Mary SOS to Morpheus, our computer technician. After two hours – and this guy is good – he shook his head and said Something Very Bad and Unusual Occurred and you may be Totally Technologically Screwed. Apologies for the jargon.

Computers aren’t here to annoy me; they’re here to destroy me!

Yay. Did I mention that our old cordless phones have 3 seconds of charge, making them useful only for screening our vacation winnings, and that I communicate almost entirely by email? (Of course I use Pinkie, my iPhone 4, but she lives a fairly sheltered life. I don’t want to stress her out.)

So the next morning, I put Pinkie on speaker and called my internet service provider. After about an hour of clicking and pointing and whatnot, they told me “everything’s JUST FINE on our end. It’s your router.” So I followed the White Rabbit…

…to the router customer service number. I attempted to interpret the polite instructions of our call-center representative. I have to say, she pulled out all the stops. But after another hour of various machinations, including standing in the closet, plugging a five-pound laptop into the too-high router, with a too-short cable, then balancing it on my shoulder, while my daughter typed in commands above her head, all she could tell us is that “it’s not us. It must be them.”

So I called my provider back. I think they could hear my eyes spinning over the phone because they hastily agreed to send a technician out first thing in the morning.

Long story short, after replacing the modem, the router, a bunch of cords and plugs and whatnot, it was discovered (not by me) that a cable doohickey from 12 years ago had cracked or something.

So everything’s just fine.

Well. Something won’t stop twitching in my forehead. But at least I’m online again.