Things have been a bit quiet here lately in my little patch of cyberspace, due to phone line problems. We had no phone dial tone or internet for almost a week when we learned that it pays to always do the standard checks thoroughly, even if it seems the problem lies elsewhere 😐
Assumed the electrical storms we had the other week took out our phone line. Called our phone company and was told there was an exchange problem, with no ETR. I guessed there was a lot of repair work going on, after some quite severe storms that weekend.
Still nothing a couple of days later, we asked our neighbour how she was faring – and learned that she’d had no disruption at all! Back to our phone company, who organised a remote test of our line and discovered a problem there. They arranged for a linesman to come out and check the lines to our property. A couple of days later the linesman came while we were out and left a calling card – phone line is fine, check your equipment.
A bit frustrating since we had done all the basic checks, like unplugging the modem and trying a different phone on the line. I then remembered the second phone line jack we have upstairs in the bedroom, and we tried the phone in that – instant dial tone. Then hubby tried plugging the phone back into the downstairs phone jack and it worked until he plugged the modem back in. I then tried plugging the modem in upstairs, leaving the phone plugged in downstairs and both worked. So go figure.
As good as it is to have our unhindered phone and net access again, being without internet for so long didn’t affect me as badly as it once would. Must admit I wasn’t completely without it – I had access at work, and also Optus WAP on my mobile. But it was kind of nice to let other things take the place of my normal computer time – cooking, gardening, sitting on the porch with a book. I like that my lifestyle is so much more balanced these days.