Office Entropy: All things fixed are broken again

Fresh Internet problems this week have me flummoxed. I should have known I was in trouble the minute I stepped out of bed. There's a theme going this week: Everything that was fixed is broken anew. This morning one car had a flat -- on the same tire that we fixed last week. Our other vehicle also started having engine problems -- for a problem that we thought had been fixed a few weeks ago. Both went in for emergency service.

Then, when I finally got back to my office to start the day, I found that I had no Internet service. I was stranded. No car. No Internet.

I thought I had that problem licked last Thursday, when I ripped out a Wireless G gateway and went back to a Time Warner cable modem. What happened there is a long story. The problem was lots of dropped packets, which were affecting my voice over IP service. A technician at Vonage blamed the wireless gateway I was using. I first noticed the problem about the time I put that in, so we jumped to conclusions. Implied causation ruled the day, I tossed my unit, swapped in a Time Warner issue cable modem and everything seemed to work fine. So on Friday I declared victory and enjoyed the weekend

Today the cable modem can't even sustain a connection. After troubleshooting the problem with Time Warner's technicians by phone, it appears that the problem is with the line, not the modem or any hardware in the office. So I am working from another location and waiting, waiting, for a technician to come -- hopefully tomorrow. They don't know what time the technician can come -- or even if they can get to me tomorrow. But they'll call me before they arrive. Just not on my business line, which is now dead.