The Old Dog Barks

Well, today was a corker. Near as I can recollect, it was 14:00 hrs when it happened. There I was, happily putzing away at my ‘puter. Then shazzam! Simultaneously the window at my elbow lit up, and magnesium-bright white electrical fire shot out of be back of the Comcast Xfinity gateway modem accompanied with a staccato burst like a string of firecrackers. Followed by a thunderclap that near knocked me out of my chair. The smell of fried electrical circuitry hung in the air. Needless to say, everything shut down right then and there. The gateway was dead as free lunch, and that was that.

A quick check revealed:
Phones: dead.
TV: dead.
Comuter monitor: dead.

Time to grab the cell phone, and ring-up customer service. After the usual automated BS, I got to talk to a live human. Female, nasal Bronx accent, and a case of motor-mouth like an over-revved top fuel dragster. Great. After much yammmering back and forth, she set up a service tech appointment for…wait for it….Tuesday. This is Saturday. Ummm…excuse me? How about something soonest, sweetie? I could hear some wrangling conversation in the background. She came back to me, and said someone would be out today. Wunderbar! That’s the stuff we like to hear.

Techs showed up about an hour later. Investigations showed that the lightning pulse had entered via the telephone lines. Opening the interface box on the side of the house revealed the connection block blasted, and hanging in pieces. So, they had to rebuild that, plus two new wall jacks in the house. A new Arris router with a Netgear Wireless, and good to go.

Except I’m out a monitor, television set, and two cordless phones. It is an ill wind that blows no good, however. We now have our WiFi back up. For the last week, the old gateway wasn’t sending. I went round and round with tech-support over the phone, and got nowhere. Suddenly, the problem was resolved with a little help from the Thunder God.

With my monitor kaput, I am now forced to borrow from family members until it can be replaced.
Monady the phone will be ringing, “Hellow, State Farm? We have a problem!”

“Where do they keep the dwarfs?” That is how the Opening Chapter of Star Siding Road, just published at the FutureVerse.net begins.

This post will explain what I have been doing lately and why I am posting less here at Old Dog.

I finished my last Cardoman Universe Novel at the end of April and was ready for a break. Then got two websites ready; the new Alchibah Colony and the New FutureVerse. I did post quite a bit here up to the start of July but then I had to finish up the web sites and get on with a new book.

That I have done. And Chapter 1 of Star Siding Road is the result. PrimeEvil is doing my editing on the new one. It should read pretty clean from the start. I will keep working on that book until I finish it. Three months should see it complete. I will post the Week in Saratov but not much else. I will probably put up about as much as I did in July. Not necessarily a bad thing.