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posted by phantom
on Wednesday July 27, @09:07PM
from the just-one-damn-thing-after-another-damn-thing-all-the-damn-time dept.
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On Friday July 22, 2005 the Internet connection just went dead here. Since I use Broadband Internet, the cable TV wasn’t looking too good either. That all paled in comparison to the electrical transformer behind my house blowing up on Sunday July 24, 2005. Which caused power to be off at my house on a 107-degree day for 8 hours. I wasn’t here to see it first hand since I was in Wisconsin on a bicycle path during a torrential thunderstorm, but I hear the fireworks were quite spectacular.
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On Friday I was leaving for a weekend trip up in Wisconsin with a friend of mine to go bicycle riding on the Elroy-Sparta bicycle trail. This bicycle path is known for being one of the first bicycle paths in the country to be created from a train route. It also still has the original train tunnels on the path and they are long and dark. You can’t see your hand in front of your face and you need a flashlight or you could never make it thru.
Above is a picture of the first tunnel we hit, and it’s weird to stand in front of it cus it almost looks like road-runner just drew a tunnel shape on the side of a rock face with a black marker. That is just how dark and black it is, no light makes it much further then 5 yards into the entrance. The white fog you see in the front of the tunnel is created when the warm air going into the back of the tunnel is cooled and blows out the other end of the tunnel as cold air. So a constant stream of fog is coming from the tunnel. About a half a mile before you reach the tunnel it actually feels like someone turned on the air conditioner. The cold air from the tunnel creates a nice peaceful atmosphere in the surrounding area.
2 hours before I was about to be picked up the Internet just went dead. Although you could still see a picture on the TV, the signal was so weak you almost couldn’t make out what was on some of the channels. My friend called and said they were going to be late so an hour later the Internet still didn’t come back up. I had to call Comcast and since I wasn’t going to be back home till late on Tuesday, the soonest time I would be able to be here for them was Wednesday. So I made the appointment and started my emergency procedures.
One thing most people don’t know is that I also run CNetBBS.net, PortZero.net, and the joinlink server that links all the BBSes chat rooms together. As well as this site (woibbs.org), so when one goes down they all go down. By priority, as silly as it may sound, the Amiga CNet BBS is the priority system in my network. All other services are expendable, such as FTP, HTTP, SSH, SMTP, and FINGER. TELNET is the priority system because without it none of the other stuff would matter. The BBS came first; therefore it gets priority over everything else. I try to maintain a 99.9% uptime by whatever means I can. I used LHA to compress the BBSes working directory and pfiles/doors, left the file base out of the LHA and wrote it to a CDROM. I then put that CDROM in a plastic case and then into a briefcase, which I then handcuffed to my wrist. Ok… maybe that’s a little over the top, but I did put it in a plastic case. Then I jumped into my friends’ car and went to their house to put the BBS back online thru WinUAE. Saturday’s joinlink chat night was a success as always and the BBS was online the whole time I was gone. This is just how serious I take my users! I know how disappointing it is when you can’t login to your favorite BBS. That is why my BBS is the priority here, and always will be.
Even if the internet had come back up before I left, on Sunday the electrical transformer behind my house that powers this whole block went up in flames. So the BBS would have gone down anyhow. There are not pictures of them putting up the new one cus I had the digital camera with me. My plan was to get some excellent pictures while on the bicycle ride for the Window of Illusion graphics on the main page. However, On Monday about 26 miles into the bicycle ride it started to rain. We made it to the last tunnel on the trail without getting really too wet. We went thru the tunnel and waited for the rain to stop on the other end for 30 minutes. It just kept getting worse, so we turned around and went back. Didn’t look like we were gonna make that 50 mile goal (100 mile round trip total) on this day.
When we got back to the other side of the tunnel the rain was light and we started on our way back to the motel about 27 miles away. 1 mile into the trip back it was clear we were not going to beat the rain and get back out of this weather system we got into. The rain came down in buckets and I don’t think I have ever been covered with so much mud in my life from a bicycle trip. In all the trips I ever made to Elgin since the age of 14 on the Illinois State Prairie Path I never ran into any rain. This was a full blown rain storm, it was quite brutal. Just when you thought it was going to stop, it just came down harder. Since here in the Chicago area were seem to be having a drought this summer. I haven’t really seen any rain in 2 months. So I didn’t mind this at all, it was quite a good time!
Today the cable guy comes and while I had some cheese spread I got from Wisconsin on crackers. The Comcast guy was out back testing the cable line to the house. Then he tells me we need a new drop line. The "drop line" is Comcast lingo for the wire between the electrical pole and your house. This is the 6th cable that has been buried in the back yard since the house was built. I am sure this will not be the last, and if it was just it’s time to go or something the electrical transformer caused before it shot into orbit nobody will know.
fin
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