Failure of the Day: SBC

9:30 AM: If you're reading this at all, it means that SBC's failure was temporary, but as of this writing, my ISP is failing spectacularly to live up to the P. I am not being provided with much at the moment.

I wonder if this is what it was like in the olden days when the worst punishment imaginable was banishment from the tribe. The isolation! To be completely cut off from the community! It's awful, I tell you.

They told me they had just detected a server problem in my area when I called at 9 this morning, which surprised me because the connection has been unavailable since just after 10 last night. Shouldn't there have been big alarms and flashing lights right when it first went down? They needed me to tell them about it? That doesn't seem right.

I am left to wander aimlessly through the rooms in my apartment looking for things to do with my hands and my eyes. Of course I am aware of how pathetic this is, and how clichéd, but I'm not particularly interested in discussing how amazing it is that just 5 years ago, the internet played virtually no part in my daily life whatsoever and today, its absence for even the first hour(and counting) of my morning puts me into a state not unlike clinical depression. Nothing is interesting. There's nothing to do. I'm not engaged with my surroundings. I just don't feel like myself: I am just like that sad amoeba in the Zoloft commercials.

5 PM: Still no internet. I've called SBC 4 times.

Call #1, 9 AM: Told there is a server outage in my area.
Call #2, 11 AM: Told there was no server outage in my area.
Call #3, 12 PM: Told there was a server outage in my area.
Call #4, 3:30 PM: Told there was no server outage in my area.

I was thinking of calling every hour on the hour and then making a logic puzzle. If 100% of the male customer service reps confirmed a server outage, but only 33% of the female customer service reps confirmed a server outage, how many customer service reps are female?

6:30 PM Finally!