APOCALYPSE NOW*

 * Or, maybe soon.

We had our own taste of the apocalypse yesterday.

No, it didn't feature Robert's four horsemen 

nor any of those other hallucinogenic fantasies.

But, it was still pretty darn serious. We had no internet for a day and a half!

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On Sunday, The Old Girl, who will be working from home this year looked at me and said. This internet is too damned slow matey. She looked right at me so I knew that it must be my fault.

I said that I'd look into it.

I did an internet speed test which came up at the high end for ADSL settings but The Old Girl is  used to working in an office with higher speed internet. I looked at the likely speed increase of VDSL (we cannot get Fibre here yet) and the speed increase is quite a lot more.

I contacted SPARK to request a change from ADSL to VDSL. I was assured that this could be done within 48 hours. We received a text from SPARK yesterday saying that the changeover was happening and then ....THE INTERNET WENT DEAD. DEAD! I checked all the fittings and settings but no internet.

We use the internet a lot for The Old Girl's work, email, Facebook (to access Neighbourly), reading NZ Herald and international news , YouTube, on-line banking and - TELEVISION. We don't have access to cable TV or standard TV frequencies except via our Broadband where we access YouTube, Netflix, TV On Demand, NEON etc.

Well, I tell you, yesterday was a nightmare not being to access these and especially not being able to access the blogs. What the hell were Richard and Robert up to? A whole day went by without knowing about Richard's New Year resolution to practice practise try and play his ukulele more often or whether Robert has found out yet why women can't be Catholic priests. I could see how a global collapse of the internet could be the fifth horseman.

I slept fitfully.

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This morning I received a text from SPARK saying that the changeover from ADSL to VDSL had been successful. I texted back saying that it hadn't and rang the 0800 number to talk to a technician. The (very helpful) guy, after we ran some tests on our current modem to see if it could be VDSL compatible, apologised on behalf of SPARK for them not telling me earlier that this could be the case. He advised that a new modem was needed and started to run through some payment options. I interrupted him to say that The Old Girl really needed the set up immediately (I didn't mention the importance of accessing the blogs to him or The Old Girl). He said that I could get what I needed from the SPARK store for $119. I thanked him and drove into town which is only a mere 1 hour return trip. It's best to keep The Old Girl happy you see.

The new set-up is working fine and I can see that the speed is much greater than before.

Imminent cosmic cataclysm averted.