The-Evil-Doctor-Merlin-Channing-Lowe-Jr. made a reference in a previous post in regards to technical issues with Jeremy-Gilby-dot-com.

What he was referencing is a funny situation we had with the Technical Support of our Internet Service Provider, back in the old place.

I’m not going to mention the name of the Service Provider, to protect its anonymity. But it starts with a C, ends in an X, and there is at least one O in the middle. It is also a Three Letter word. That is all I’m going to say, and if you ask for more information I will refuse.

Anyways, we live in the desert, so it does not rain that often. But in the summers, as I’ve mentioned before, we get quite a bit of rain. And we noticed that whenever we had a good rain storm, the internet would go out.

Being the technical geek that I am, I made sure that all the computers and routers were performing correctly. (I abhor having to call technical support and learning it was something stupid on my end.) And after having had a miserable time with Cox Technical Support (Oops, I’ve typed too much) and since Chan’s name was on the bill, I would make him call, and let him deal with all the support rep’s scripts that would only frustrate me, since I’ve already troubleshot my end of the issue and have proven the issue was not inside the house. The issue was the Cable modem could not connect to their servers.

What seemed to baffle the Technical Support Agents was the symptom Chan and I kept stating. “When ever it rains, we lose our internet connection.”
The story was always the same.
First they would blame the Router, and say they don’t support Routers. Which was fine. But they wanted to punt the call. My response was always the same, “That isn’t a problem because *I* support Routers. So we can continue.”
Then they would send a technician out (when it wasn’t raining) and the internet connection would be fine. The tech would look at our Router funny. (Cause this was before personal home routers were commonplace) and say the same thing. “Well, it must be your Router. And we don’t support Routers.”
And our reply was, “Well, as you can see, we keep the router inside, and it doesn’t rain inside the house. The problem only happens when it is raining.”
Which again baffled the technician.

What was the kicker was Chan and I would actually LOOK in our alley, and there was a wire hanging off the common utility pole that hung in the way that wires shouldn’t. We would point out this misbehaving wire to the technician and get lines like:

Them: That’s not in my contract to investigate. I’m only contracted to work on equipment between the pole and the house. (This belligerent wire was “behind” the pole and was technically city property.)
Me: But that is probably the problem.
Them:
Me: Don’t Tell me its my router, or I’ll scream.
Them: I think it is your rout-
ME: **SCREAMS**

I’m not very user friendly, I know.

This went on for years. YEARS! Fortunately it only really rained in July and some of August. But still it was a pain to help COX Communications to troubleshoot. Every time we called, and the internet was out, we would say the same thing. “Hey, its raining and our internet is out.”
The rep would say things like, “That doesn’t happen to our regular customers.”
Which would get a polite stare. If only those could translate over the phone.
Then the rep would say, they would send ANOTHER technician to look at the router. But put a note in our account if we have to call back again.
The Tech would come, blame the router, not look at the recidivist wire mis-hanging just in the alley, and leave, resolving nothing.
It would rain again, we would call, “Hi, its raining again. And the modem cannot connect to your systems. You should see a note on our account.”
Guess what?

No note. Ever.

“There is no notes here.” the rep would reply, “But I’ve seen this before, I think its your Router.”
And we would start the madness all over again.

It was too bad that Dr. Chan didn’t have prescription writing ability yet, because I could have easily used LOTS of sedatives.
Fortunately, Chan was much more patient than I was. And found much humor in the farcical nature of this crap. I just wanted to throttle the telephone in hopes my violent outburst would somehow kinetically translate over the wireless phone to the telephone line all the way to Texas where the Call Center apparently was.

And I dreaded whenever the technician would mess with the router, because they always seemed to make it so only one computer, usually The-Roommate-Formerly-Known-as-Matthew-Maynard‘s Windows PC could communicate with the modem; and leave as if everything was perfect, but the modem connection to the COX Server would handshake with the PC and NOT the Router. So I had to call up another COX agent and explain that I needed to re-handshake (which was something only 1 out of every four agents understood.)

The problem was never resolved. We moved to a new place in 2004, and our weather-related internet issues were resolved. Ironic that we’re still using the same Router today.

We have/had friends who lived in the same neighborhood, and we later learned they had the same issue. During Rainstorms the internet would go down. After further investigation we learned that there was distribution station that was leaking, letting water in, shorting out the Cable Internet, but not the Cable Television.

So it wasn’t really the dysfunctional wire, but it WAS COX Equipment, and not the router. So Dr. Booya and I were not 100% right. But we were definitely not wrong.