Let me tell you about the last ten or so hours.

I was happily working away on my research essay last night when my Internet died. No warning. just one moment it was working, and the next, nothing.

Well crap, I thought. I guess I’d better try to figure out what went wrong. I am no expert, but I have some idea what I can check, anyhow. And things I can try.

So I poke around, trying a bunch of stuff, like checking to see if the connection between my computer and our cablemodem was good (it was), seeing if the network card was working (it was), and letting Windows try to diagnose the problem itself (it said network protocols were missing…. they were not. )

So I escalated the order by asking a bunch of my furry friends to help. This is an excellent strategy as like half of all furries work in IT and will rise to any computer related problem like the knights of old. And with their guidance, we tried a ton of other stuff, to absolutely no avail.

And the really weird thing was that the wireless connections were working. The other hardwired connection was working. Just not my PC.

So I decide to try to download the drivers for my network card to my tablet and then connect my tablet to my PC and transfer them to the PC from there. This turns out to be a maddening nightmare like I knew it would be, as Android is a very frustrating operating system to work with because it never tells you where it is putting a file. So you have to go searching for the file you just downloaded. For a lifelong PC user, that is sheer madness.

And even when you know where the file is, that doesn’t mean Windows will be able to see the damned file. And just when I think I have figured out a way around that, the tablet starts refusing to make a data connection to the PC and I am once more befuck’d.

All of this has taken three hours of solid effort and intense frustration as things refuse to work and I am met with roadblock after roadblock and complication after complication and my bullheaded determination to fix the motherfucking thing leading me to wear myself out in anger and frustration.

And all for naught. All I had accomplished was to work myself into a very negative frame of mind. If I was a character in a comic strip, black smoke would have been hovering over my head. I was so emotionally disturbed that even after trying to deal with my emotions via this Facebook post :

I am so messed up right now.
My computer suddenly lost the ability to connect to the Internet today. One minute fine, next minute fuck all. I have spent the last four hours doing everything that I and a bunch of other people, some of whom are IT professionals, could do to fix it, but the problem defies us all. Worse, when I decide to do common sense things like download the drivers for my network to my tablet then connect my tablet to the afflicted PC and copy them over, that spits in my face as well. After teasing me by working once (but refusing to see the necessary file), the computer then proceeded to refuse to see my tablet as a data device and mocked me by making a power connection instead.
To top it off, when I went to see what I could get done with my old computer that I let Julian use, I discovered that it had developed the exact same problem despite having worked just fine earlier.
I almost wish I could give up. But I can’t. I can’t give up till I run out of ideas, and I am a man with a LOT of ideas.
I am cursed to try them all.

… I was still too emotionally disturbed to be able to sleep or eat. The thought of either was intolerable. So I ended up playing this odd game called A Dark Dragon for hours, just wearing myself down till I could go do my usual snack thing, take my sleeping pills, and finally get to sleep at around 6:30 AM.

So I wake up around 2:30 pm and get up to eat n’ such, and Julian tells me that Joe decided that because we all have colds now (sorry guys 🙁 ), we would not be getting together with Felicity like we normally do every Sunday.

And just like that, on top of everything else, I have disappointment and confusion added to the mix. The one thing I had been looking forward to, snatched away, without even consulting me. Pretty miffed at that. I don’t take that kind of thing well even when I am healthy both physically and emotionally.

Then I sit down at this computer, not looking forward to going another ten rounds with my Internet issue, and find that the problem has mysteriously fixed itself overnight.

Which is a good thing, of course. I was severely stressing out over how the hell I was going to finish my research paper with no Internet, let alone submit it to the prof via email. Plus, I did not look forward to doing my blogging via tablet. Virtual keyboards kinda suck.

So I am quite happy that my Internet works now, even if it was not by dint of any of my efforts. But I am left wondering what the fuck happened to cause me such intense strife and stress and then just mysteriously disappear, like its job was done.

At this point, even a rugged rationalist like myself is tempted to conclude that the universe was trying to teach him some sort of lesson, or provide him with an experience he needed, or something like that.

And to think, my friends and I were just talking about the notion that “when the student is ready, a teacher will appear”.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.