How long has it been since I last posted? 10 days? not sure. Welcome to internet winter.
The blizzard began over a week ago. Yahoo! and Facebook began loading with extra delays, first in the afternoons and then even at night. And then just one morning--the fury of the storm consumed everything--whiteout. No internet.
When the internet is gone, you realize how much you rely on it. And you realize how much you take it for granted. For the last month and a half, the internet has been good. At nights, you could definitely call it high-speed internet. You could even surf the internet in the afternoons if you were prepared to wait a few extra seconds for everything to load. I had grown accustomed to the speed... and I was enjoying it...
Which makes the current storm all the more difficult to tolerate. The internet has returned, but it is as slow as if it is still gone. And it is wired with bugs and glitches--like patches of ice lurking on the highways intent on sending you into the ditch. With all the patience I can muster, I go through the ropes: waiting 10 minutes for the Yahoo! homepage to load just so I can click the link to go to my email... another ten minutes... sign in... another 10 minutes... click on a new message... another 10 minutes... and then I am almost there when the Internet tells me there is an error and shuts the whole operation down. Welcome to the ditch
Blogging is another exercise in patient futility. I can type, but I cannot post pictures. It's the same story... wait, wait, wait for the pictures to load only for the internet to putter out... burying everything in the deep snowdrifts of cyberspace.
So I have two options. I can wait for Internet Summer. Nah, who knows when that will happen. And already there is such a backlog of things I need to do... emails I have to write... emails I have to respond to... topics I want to post. Well, I'm going to burn the midnight oil to get some of this work done. Maybe winter madness is calmer then...
Side story 1: The Google Survivor
When the internet winter snowstorms are at their worst, nothing works. Except Google. If there is even the slightest connection between my computer and the network, Google will be there. And it still loads quickly even when nothing else loads at all. It is my beacon in the storm.
I always wondered, "Why does Google have such a simple homepage... shouldn't it be animated and detailed like Yahoo! ?" "How can Google even compete for scraps muchless be this net giant with such an empty homepage?" Now I know the answer. Simplicity sells! People just want to search. Who needs all that extra junk?! And in parts of the world where internet connections are unstable or overburdened, simplicity draws the line between accessible and inaccessible. Google wins.
Side story 2: The Real Winter
The real winter may not have officially arrived yet--as per the requirements of the calender--but it is here! It feels like it has been here since September. Cold, but I'm surviving. More on that in a future post.
3 comments:
Aaron, if Google is the fastest, you should definately set up a Gmail account then. That way you can at least get to your email without a headache. I have a Gmail account remember; used it to correspond with Mark. I do prefer Yahoo! mail better, but it wasn't bad at all.
I'll consider it... but I hate gmail.... then again, it's probably the simplicity of gmail that allows it to be faster.
Now how do you know you hate gmail unless you've tried it?
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