World Without Wide Web

The DSL modem went south on us Friday afternoon, and we're not expecting a replacement until Tuesday. Naturally enough we don't have smart phones and so internet connection means going to the library or the coffeeshop.

It makes an interesting difference in the household rhythms. Going camping is different--that disrupts everything. Here we're living ordinary lives at home, but without the net.

We didn't get a lot of news. We get the paper, but that's mostly useful for local news. Not much else: the radio is very abbreviated and we don't get TV reception. Not that TV news is worth much anyhow.

My better half and I spent a fair bit of time on the computers anyway, but it was creating lesson plans and editing and doing long-overdue file cleanup. And it was maybe only half the time we normally do. And we couldn't keep up with email--a longtime friend is having marital difficulties and has needed some help. A lot of our planning happens with email.

When you finish one task, what do you do next? I carry a mental checklist; and various needs of the day, or the time of day, make one thing or another bubble up in the queue. It hadn't sunk in how often "check online" was bumped up in the queue.

The younger ones spent a lot of time with Spore and MineCraft and New Jedi Order (or something like that).

I was planning to monitor some projects at work and start up new job batches when the old passed my checks, but that waited until this morning: lost a few days processing time.

The garden fence is down and bundled for scrap; most of the panels for the new one are built, and a little of the garden edge cleanup is done.