Yesterday's Internet Shutdown in Gainesville

Late yesterday morning at home, I had the television on, tuned in to C-Span2, the station broadcasting the floor session of the United States Senate.  Republican senator Mike Enzi, from Wyoming, was on the floor rambling on about something or another in his typically boring fashion when he stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth wide open.  And the dude wouldn't move...he was positively frozen!  Of course, I quickly determined that this station had a broadcasting glitch and tried other channels.  I could still get anything on channel 27 or lower, but nothing beyond that.  I then tried to get on the Internet...no dice.  I concluded from this that the problem was due to a modem that my son had procured and installed the previous day, and decided to go out to Starbucks a little later to do my Internet stuff from my laptop there.  But when I sat down in my favorite coffee shop, all comfortable in the air-conditioning with my coffee and open laptop, I discovered that I couldn't get online there, either.  I then heard someone working behind the counter remark to a customer about the loss of the Internet...and I promptly closed up my computer and left...an offline refugee in search of an online homeland...

By that time I had inferred that Cox Communications, which provides my home with both TV cable and Internet service, was experiencing a break in their services...the question was how extensive this problem was.  I decided to go to the far south end of Gainesville, to a McDonald's I frequent near my workplace.  Voilà, everything worked there and I was able to write and publish my blog article about the late David Bowie's musical legacy...

Later, in the news, it came out the service interruption was due to a tree-trimming accident in Ocala that severed a crucial line in their system.  Reportedly the outages were widespread...going out as far as Pensacola in the western Florida panhandle.  The services were supposedly restored in late afternoon.  Of course, if you had a different Internet provider...as that McDonald's apparently did...then you were unaffected by yesterday's hassles.  For the thousands of Cox Communications customers who were affected, though, there was a lot a scrambling around if not weeping and gnashing of teeth...