The Dark Night of the Soul.

A quick post from my iPod via the free wi-fi at A Minor Place in Brunswick. (Incidentally, my coffee machine is in the shop for repairs, so internet access and a coffee as black as death makes today almost absolutely like Christmas!)

This ADSL2+ so-called "churn" period is a killer. Five straight days of no Internet access and we're starting to go a little nuts. I've begun unconsciously assuming that things around the house like lamps won't work just because the Internet isn't working, and Kate's taken to reading the Yellow Pages because "It's sort of like the Internet."

Even Winter's showing signs of distress as her favourite game of popping balloons is a web-based game and she just can't understand why Mum and Dad won't let her play her favourite game!

Oh, when will the madness end?!

UPDATE: So this is what no Internet does to you: I've found myself dropping into friends' houses because I was "just in the area" and "Hi, how are you, oh, that's great, do you mind if I just check my email?" Which wouldn't be so bad, except they give me their wireless passwords so I can use my MacBook... and suddenly I find myself taking every opportunity to pass by for another quick check from outside across the street and then fleeing before they look out the window and wonder why I'm not coming in...

UPDATE 2: And the heavens did open and it began to pour! Actually, 'pour' is probably getting a little carried away. 'Drizzle' would be more like it. It is only dial-up, after all.

But yes, that's right, after seven days and seven nights lost in the wilderness, we are back on the Net! Sure, it's not ADSL2 just yet, but when those old familiar screechy tones filled the air and Winter looked up saying, "Music?" we turned and replied, "That's right, Winter; music to our ears. Aah."

Man, I never thought I'd be excited about dial-up ever again and, do you know, after only half an hour of it, I wasn't. Drop-outs, misdials, redials, unknown errors, so-called "unexpected" errors and an almighty struggle to download even email... how did we ever survive like this? I'm starting to think I actually preferred it before when we had nothing. At least then there was no expectation, but now with dial-up there's the hope that things can be as they were before. But then you log on and you sit there for five minutes watching the freaking Google search page trying to load. And then one eighth of the Google logo appears and you cheer and high-five all round, and then someone calls through and your connection drops out and you have to start all over again. Argh!

How far we've come. Which, actually, was another hurdle to overcome. Macs don't ship with dial-up modems anymore, and finding someone who still owns an external one that I could borrow was no easy feat. Davet, of course, was eventually able to find one, but it was so old there are no OS X drivers available for it. In the end I had to dust off a friend's retired PowerBook G4 that has a built-in modem, and I'm sharing its shaky internet connection with my iMac via a firewire cable.

Sigh. Only 10-14 days to go, apparently...