Big Dumb Me

Sometimes I do some really stupid shit and it winds up biting me in the ass.

In this case, I may have wound up pulling one of those classic “TV/Movie Nerd” blunders and fried my modem with half a pot of coffee. It'll be my own damned fault if I did, of course, because I got careless and stupid with it, and now I may wind up paying the price for it.

See, what I had done was to bring the coffee pot over by my computer so I could just pour myself more while I was watching something on YouTube. That wouldn't have been such a bad idea had I not been too lazy to take some other stuff to better locations because I was done with them. Where things started going wrong is that I eventually found reason to use my keyboard for something, and had to move the coffee. Because the part of my desk where it would have been better to put the coffee was all full of other stuff I needed to get rid of, I thought “Oh, well, I'll just put it over here on this stack of other crap on my tower because it'll be OK for a minute while I make this comment here.”

Naturally, I should have known better, as an experienced computer user who is also very familiar with Murphy's Law. I may have gotten exactly one full minute out of the arrangement before the whole thing gave way and soaked my modem.

As a result of a stupid and easily avoidable blunder, I don't have a wired Internet connection as I write this. The good news is that I don't necessarily need one to do the writing and basic editing parts of what I do here. The bad news is that it makes actually posting and sharing any of this quality content I do a little more difficult than it needs to be. I still have other ways I could go about it, of course. It just involves using my phone, but there are issues there, too. I know there are apps for this sort of thing that I could get set up, and even some decent physical keyboards for such things if I wanted to get one. Where that runs into issues is that with no functioning modem in my apartment, I don't have WiFi, either, and that means burning through the data that's part of the family plan I'm on with my folks, and I'd rather not do that for the kinds of things I post.

I'm not entirely sure what to think of how this situation might turn out, either. On the one hand, it's the original modem I got when I first got Internet set up in my apartment, which makes it just shy of fifteen years old now, which makes it high time for a new one, I'm sure. At the same time, I think it might still be the cable company's property, which could make replacing the thing a bigger mess than just buying a new one myself.

The good news here is that I do have options for getting at least some stuff up and out while I'm getting all this sorted that don't involve smartphones and wireless data. I know I'm being at least a little presumptive here, but if it comes to that, I'm hoping I can at least post some stuff from one of the various laptops or desktop units my folks have until I get this sorted, because I'm still going to be over there a couple times a week. I'll just have to hope I can remember my login information for blogger, should it come to that.

In the meantime, I'm gonna have my modem disconnected from everything while I let it dry out, just so I can kind of avoid some potential problems. While I'm at it, I may as well have my mom come over and help me do a little housekeeping, since this is as good a time as any for that. Wish me luck in getting everything sorted in as positive a way as I can.