Electronic Havoc

The old saying, “You don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” certainly hit home around our house this past weekend. Two hours before the Falcon/Packers game was scheduled to start, our television screen went blank, the computer monitor froze and there was no dial tone on our landline phone.

My husband arrived home from a golfing trip with his brothers to be advised that the television was not working. Countdown to the big game was less than two hours. He went into action trying to access, the problem, first by rebooting the system, then using an app on his cellphone to run a check, finally resorting to calling the company to report. Sadly, he was told it was a large outage in the area.

No way to watch the game, he began to call friends who would understand and in addition, had their television working. Quickly, he was off. Never get in the way of a true Falcon fan who has been waiting nearly 20 years to see them in the Super Bowl.

No internet reeks havoc on one who depends on it for research, entertainment, writing and sending “Hello, Monticello” to her demanding editor who wants the column usually sent on Sunday.

These days many folks don’t have a landline and the younger set probably don’t even know what the terminology even means. Yes, we have a landline and two POTS (Plain Old Telephones). Cellphones are so much a part of our lives, but they also require electricity to stay alive. Sometimes the landline is the only phone that works even during an ice storm or when we lose electricity since old reliable only requires a little current through the phone line. Reassuring.

Late Monday afternoon, things returned to normal. Thanks to Jeffery from AT&T who located the problem and quickly brought our electronics back to life. And congratulations to the Falcons and all their fans!