Sunday, March 23, 2008

AN INTERNET "RISING FROM THE DEAD"!

“He is not here, but is risen...” (Luke 24:6)

I hope you had a nice Easter Sunday!  Overall, I had a very nice Easter Sunday.  It was great to have our daughter Amy and her new husband David at our morning worship service.  The atmosphere at church today for the most part was very upbeat and positive.  It was a truly enjoyable day at church!

Our family went to my sister’s house in Canton for Easter dinner, and I hate to admit it, but we ate way too much!  I think I’m about ready for a Spring diet!

Last night, the internet “went down” at our house.  After we got home from Canton, I tried to get on the internet at home a couple of times and was unable to.  We also were having a minor Verizon telephone problem, so I decided to telephone Verizon repair service about each problem.  The minor telephone problem was corrected quickly and easily.  The internet was another matter.

The Verizon person ran some tests and found that there were no Verizon FiOS outages in Massachusetts and that we had a good strong signal coming into our home.  Although I’m not technically savvy, she had me look at the router and some settings on our Apple iMac computer.  My son helped me with this because he had much more of an idea what she was talking about than I did.  “In any event” the Verizon tech support person was unable to help us.  She concluded that we had an Apple computer problem and gave us the number for Apple tech support.  Unlike Verizon, Apple tech support was not up and running on Easter Sunday evening.

My son was NOT convinced that we had a computer problem and was NOT convinced that our problem was not a Verizon problem.  My wife has a Dell laptop, so he tried to get on “WiFi” with her Dell.  IF he would be successful, it would pretty much prove the Verizon tech was right...that there was a problem with our Mac computer...BUT if we could not get on “WiFi” with the Dell, it would pretty much prove the Verizon tech was wrong.

My wife suggested shutting off the Verizon router and turning it back on.  Jon had thought of that, but (like me) had been afraid that doing that could cause more problems.  However, Jon did shut off the Verizon router and turn it back on.  When he did, BOTH COMPUTERS HAD INTERNET UP AND RUNNING!

Jon’s comment was “Why didn’t Verizon tell us to try turning the router off and turning it back on?  That would have solved the problem, and the part about calling Apple would have been unnecessary?”  Jon’s absolutely right.

My, how dependent we’ve become on computers and the internet!  Twenty years ago, I had never used a computer and would never have believed what the world of 2008 would be like!

It WAS great to have the internet up and running again!  In a sense IT WAS AN INTERNET RISING FROM THE DEAD!  But Verizon and computers and routers are FALLIBLE.  I am so thankful that JESUS IS ALIVE AND THAT JESUS NEVER FAILS!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lesson learned #1: Don't forget the middleman when you diagnose a problem. Yes it may be Verizon's fault, or it may be the computer's fault, but the fault may in fact lie in the connection between the two. Like sometimes when your cable goes out and you call the cable company about it, only to find that a wire has just come loose in the back.

Lesson learned #2: Tech support people need to be more aware of what they are doing and who they are dealing with. If I weren't there, there could very well have been a ridiculous technological runaround with nothing getting solved. How many senior computer users (or whatever device) are there that are getting this sort of "help"? When TV all goes digital, it's only going to get worse. Bring me the good old days of manuals that TOLD you things, live tech support operators, and well-trained repairmen who would come to your house and fix things for you with a friendly smile.
(That's what Nielsen was like.... boy I miss being a Nielsen home!!)