First of all, my difficulties with the internet meant that I was unable to wish, Har'el Ska'at, my tenth and – at this moment – favouritest future husband a very happy birthday yesterday.

יום הולדת שמח , הראל

So despite my melodramatic pronouncements of the other day, my internet difficulties do not actually appear to be my computer's problem. Now, stupidity is something that I usually anticipate from the general public, but when I pay a lot of money for a certain service that becomes integral to the way I lead my life, I expect a certain amount of cerebral capacity from the people hired to give me technical support. I should know by now that the more money I pay, the lower the quality of the service I receive.

My conversation with my tekky on Friday started off pleasantly enough. She seemed friendly and I wasn't extremely worried since service interruptions are infrequent but a always possibility. At first we went through the same tests I had done myself (she was, of course, "an expert" as she reminded me) and came to the same conclusion: the modem was all happy and chipper but it just couldn't get it up, ie. connect to the net, although it could receive. I was pleased to know that I could figure out the same thing as a qualified, technical school tekky.

And then she got me doing things that made me feel a tad edgy. I had to sneak into corners of my computer I'd never even knew exist without the rest of the programmes knowing or they'd get jealous and angry (PC programmes are so sensitive!). Once in these little nooks and crannies I had to toggle things and dump other things and I began to feel a queasy sensation in my stomach akin to job interview/first date nausea and cold sweats.

"What do you mean, 'dump'?" I asked with more than a little trepidation.

"Sir, it's just a computer term," she replied barely disguising her impatience too well.

"Oh."

נודניק the Cat observed me from his vantage point on the living room windowsill and rolled his eyes. Humans . . .

I continued to click and toggle and uncheck and do all sorts of things I'm sure proper folk would never do in public to cajole the net to full performance. Soon I realized that all her words to me were words that I understood individually but made absolutely no sense when put in the same context with one another. Soon I didn`t even understand the individual words.

"Ok, sir. What we want to do now is mosulate the harpeffects of the pi-modulator. Ok? Now to do that, I need you to go into "My Synergeflizzlebox" and triple right click while scrolling with the middle roller and pressing "flx" + "F37" + "q". This should bospourize the metacomplexifier while simplificating the hyperstranding divider of your computer's warp drive and transporter buffers. Are you with me?"

I screamed in agony on the inside as I came to the horrifying realization that I had stumbled upon a pocket of Star Trek nerd trekker tekkies. In a desperate effort to quell my rising panic I stared out the window and sang I happy song myself. La la la la la la Eveything will be alright . . .

"Sir? Sir!" Her nasal voice cut through my reverie like a phaser set to "stun" through a Jelly Entity of the Planet Blobzmotroin XIII.

"La la la la . . . I mean, I'm here."

"Sir, do you type in ‘//ipconfig_-underscorerepairip//$#$%544sucker-idontknowwhatimdoing-either' like I asked you?"

"Um . . . how do you spell that . . . ?" Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Hours later, after w'd failed tp reinitialize the replicators and clear gamma particles from the aft nacelles or something, my tekky came to the conclusion that it was my network adapter and not at all Rogers fault.

"Don't worry, sir. It shouldn't cost too much to get it checked and repaired."

I wept.

However, it seems an interesting coincidence that the service cuts in and out at around the same times every day and that five other friends in the neighbourhood are experiencing the same difficulties at exactly the same time. Further investigation through a spy who works at my internet provider that they are rebuilding the network and not telling their costumers. I should be getting money back rather being told to spend more by sending my computer to the cyberdoctor. Canada's embattled health care system doesn't cover hard drives. The tekky covered her ignorance with a lot of flashy, intimidating words when all she had to say was "Patience. Please bear with us as we improve the network. I'll credit you for the downtime." I would have been happy. Now I'm angry.

Ah well. I'll find something else to do when the Net goes down again at its regular time in about thirty minutes, like dream of Montrealers and rainy days (see below).