My god did I get a wake up call. This may not seem like much of a surprise to many people in my life, most of all Maggie, but I’ve become entirely too dependent on the Internet.
Wednesday afternoon I got home after a short day of makeup classes to find that the two little LEDs on my modem that indicate connection to the world had gone out. My Internet was gone. Not so much as a “hey, see ya” or a “Dear Ryan” letter… just gone.
And so I entered 48 hours of no web. Gasp. Horror. Ladies, grab yer babies – the young should not see this.
Honestly, I felt, well… disconnected. I couldn’t check my e-mail (of which I get little), I couldn’t chat with people (of which I do little) and I couldn’t work on my Web site. This last one, more than anything else, is what killed my buzz. I was eagerly looking forward to the fact that I had all Thursday to myself with no work (hoorah Children’s Day – being a teacher is cool) and I could devote the time to taking a big bite out of this new Web site I’m building.
No go.
Though at first I was faced with cold sweats and bouts of loneliness – after a few minutes I gathered myself up. Using the now rather useless modem to slap some sense into my noggin’, I realized that there was a time when I didn’t have Internet, and I could breath then, so it was stupid I couldn’t breath now.
I cleaned, I read, I watched some foreign films I’d been meaning to watch, and I even managed to kill the better part of the day on my computer without the net (new vBlog on its way incidently).
By the time this is read, I should once again be reHOOKED up and back aimlessly taking the endless detours my roadtrip on the Information Superhighway (man, that term sorta fell outta fashion eh?) consists of. What did I learn from this? Nothing. I mean hell, it was just a day without the net. Oh, I did learn that the original French version of Taxi is indeed MUCH more kickass than the remake with Jimmy Falon.
The reason for all this faux distress? The China Network Communications Group Corporation (CNC). When I signed up with them for a year’s worth of Internet (all pre-paid) in March, the wonderfully communicative and foreseeing CNC decided to start that payment at the beginning of April mentioning nothing about me having to pay March then and there. Not having paid for March, they let the late fees build up for a few months (not once calling Maggie or I to let us know) and then just cut off the service. Feckers. Time to go home and see if in their amazing ability to handle simple tasks they’ve managed to turn it back on.
Hey, also, I must be doing something right with this site. In like 4 months my stats have nearly trippled. I’ve gone from 2,383 visits in February to 5,940 visits in May. This graph shows it in a pretty picture.
Neato eh? Ok, so it’s not to anyone but me… but it makes me happy… and I have no Internet – feel sorry for me damnit.
A note about web stats. There is often mention of “hits” thrown around… as in how many “hits” a site gets. I think this is a completely useless figure as it just counts the number of times anything impresses upon your site (people, search engines, bots, etc.). Visits are unique visitors; measuring the whole time they’re at the site. My hits for last month, for anyone interested, were 79,961. Sounds impressive eh?
To put this in perspective. My IP (basically “me” in Internet terms) shows up as having given 2,533 hits for May, but only 6 visits – reasonable considering how when I visit my site it’s often for a long time (tinkering with things and such) but not extremely frequently. Top visitor for May was MSNBOT… damn bots. Visited my site 397 times, or once every two hours.
