I write this entry after finally getting back online. Insight, the local cable and internet provider, apparently decided that last night would be a fun time to go nuts and cut the internet on and off for my section of town (possible all of Bloomington?), meaning that I haven’t really had a stable online connection since last night at 6PM. They’re apparently upgrading and screwed up big time. I’m going to call and complain; this is ridiculous. I’m not in the best of moods.

It does make me realize, however, how important the internet is to everyday life. I mean seriously, especially with summer here, and me still being technically unemployed, a great deal of what I do is with the internet, and cutting it off is probably more of an inconvenience than the electricity going out. Please ignore the fact that to use the internet, you need electricity. I think you understand what I’m saying. It’s not even that I want to sit at my computer for hours on end surfing and reading pages and changing my Facebook picture every 10 minutes. What really gets annoying is the smaller things, the ones that you use the internet for because it’s convenient. I guess I might do this more than others, but the internet has clearly infiltrated most peoples daily lives and without it we cannot operate as we would most like to. Unless you’re Amish. I guess they’re stuck building barns and eating oatmeal.

E-mail is the first big one. Summer’s here and IUSTV has tamed down, so I don’t have the usual 2,929,084,903 (approximately) e-mails a day to wake up to, but e-mail in general is somewhat of an obsession of mine. Outlook is open all the time. When an e-mail comes, I will immediately get up off the sofa, only to be ever so slightly disappointed when it’s spam or something I don’t care about. Without the internet there, I always have that feeling of “what am I missing?” OK I realize that makes it sound like I have some kind of severe psychological issues, but it’s not that bad. Instant Messenger is another big one. Like most people between the ages of 16 and 25 (I’m just guessing), I use AIM to communicate with people probably more than I use the phone. And of course that means cell phone, because who uses land lines anymore? Not having AIM to communicate with the outside world means that you don’t know what’s going on, what people are doing, and sitting at the computer isn’t quite so entertaining without the flurry of beeps and boops that AIM provides.

Other minor things, for me at least, mean that a sudden internet failure just makes things less convenient. Watching TV even, which I have not paid for since last July (somehow I just plugged my cable in, and I got cable TV, although I only pay for the internet service), usually starts for me with a quick look at the Yahoo! TV Guide, so that I know what is on and what to watch. Note that 9 times out of 10, this means I will watch Cartoon Network or Food Network. Another thing that seems to stand out is just the general ease of information that the internet brings. I mean, if I’m sitting here wondering that the names of the 7 Koopa Kids were from Super Mario Bros. 3 and can’t remember offhand, it will literally take me 30 seconds to find the answer online. There’s no other way to do this, unless you have a really really brainy friend who sits there ready to answer trivia questions. But I met Donkey Lips, not Sponge.

Well that’s the end of this nerdy rant. The internet hasn’t cut out again yet, and hopefully it won’t anytime soon again. The computer was a great invention, but the internet made it 1000 times better.