Why are we speaking of your memorial thread? Is there something we should know?

Not that I know of. Maybe I will die while laughing at a Houzz thread.

Not if your internet is down you won't.

Then I will attend my memorial at the library. I will be very quiet.

Actually there are no quiet rules at Aussie libraries, (within reason.) Our last three didnt go by the book.

Walk up the 93 steps of the stairway to the history section at my lovely Carnegie Library, then down, then up down up down …….

With a Mexican walking fish?

I've come to the conclusion my local library only employs deep depressives, to ensure silence.

Ours never goes down! Seriously I can't remember it ever going down. Even during some severe winter storms we rarely lose electricity. Losing electricity would be the only reason we wouldn't get Internet connection. On the very rare occasion we ever lose electricity it's only out for minutes to maybe an hour. In the 40 years living here, that's maybe happened a couple of times. Long enough though. The "problem" with our Internet is getting a strong signal consistently throughout every room in our house. Certain rooms at certain times get a stronger signal but that's more a router issue.

Horned Toads. I'm not much of a fish person, unless it's edible.

I hope it doesn't rain on anyone's parade. If so what if it's raining men? Hallelujah! I'd prefer it to rain meatballs personally.

Horned toads and meatballs, now we're talking!

How many photos and what for? Axolotes I mean

Whatever you like!

Internet down? Expressing my feelings through interpretive dance is the only option...

I've been known to run to the local cafe for a quick wi-fi fix... :) Or I use my data plan on my phone to stay on top of my inbox.

My job depends on internet use, and I'm on it all the time for work, so when it's off, I have problems. Ours goes off intermittently due to a seasonal filter on the cable line that needs to be periodically changed out. (Temperature-related issues that give us too much or not enough signal, both of which render the connection useless.) We've had the "cable guy" troubleshoot it about every 6 months since we've lived at this house. It's annoying, but I think we're finally getting to the bottom of it enough to speak knowledgeably about it to the cable company. Sometimes, it's off for a few days to a week at a time, depending on when I can get them to come out and mess with our cable connection.

When it's off, I do go nuts. I usually clean like mad, because that is what I do when I'm irritable! :)

I didn't realize I was on the AU site when I commented above. Hope it doesn't matter to others. I think it's good to be aware & learn about how people in different countries deal with day-to-day issues we take for granted living elsewhere. In thinking more about the comments posted, maybe it's not to be considered a "fault" losing Internet connection. It's a very good thing to get out into our neighborhoods, local libraries & stores, talk to our neighbors again. Too often here it seems we've become prisoners of our technology. More & more people are talking on their phones or texting in every store, car or public place I go to. However I'm slowly becoming guilty of being Internet dependent more often too.

So maybe involuntarily losing Internet & forcing people to get back to the real world where people matter is a concept we should desire! Far easier than setting up rules with teens or setting technicological boundaries for ourselves especially when no one else is joining you.

Now losing our TV cable connection would force me into withdrawal convulsions!

Sorry for the delay. Second son breeds them. The dark one is really blue, at least to my eye, name Axolomon, the pink one is a dwarf, and the one with the dog was passed onto me as he can´t be with his kind due to a cannibal gene. Name Pokemon.

They are entertaining for a while, and can be tought a few tricks. And are soft and slimey, ugghh.

Oh, they are cute, Nats! They have that permanent smile I associate with salamanders or frogs. :) What kind of tricks can you teach them?

Chook, I saw this magnet on a website for a funny book I just read. (The book is called "The Mincing Mockingbird Guide to Troubled Birds" fyi. It's not for kids. But it's got some great bird art. LOL)

Anyhow, it made me think of you. :)

Not many tricks, mainly to take food from your hand, to rest on hand, go through a hands tunel. Movements must be slow as they scare too easily, even from strong water ripples , and unless they are taught from very young, they dislike to be touched. They are curious and watch you and follow your movements. Favourite food is live worms. then small sweet water fish

Our internet conection is via satellite as being in a rural area cable is complicated. I´m okay without internet on the pc, as long as it´s not for more than say 10 hours, Meanwile I do other things but the www is nagging at me , and I find myself checking every 20 minutes or so. Meaning, I can choose to be away from internet but not viceversa.

Ha!, just realized that as I post my comment it gives me the aussie time and date.

In our previous home we had periodic problems, the most memorable of which was a "weather event" which took out all power to the entire town for two days. While not having the internet was a problem, not having power for our electric oven and stove top was a bigger one (especially as the rain and wind made using the BBQ impractical as well). I have never been fond of cheese sandwiches...

On another occasion, we lost the internet connection, phoned the telco, tried all the various steps and got nothing . They suggested calling in a computer guy. Fortunately, before I did that I went to pay a couple of bills and realized the post office, vet, and supermarket were all offline. Seems a construction crew had managed to cut the telstra line into town, a thing the telstra tech curiously failed to mention.

My Internet has been so flaky over the past couple of years I think I'm permanently traumatized.

However if it's down for long enough a great sense of relaxation and a remembering of the time before Internet comes over me.

I feel sorry for younger generation who has not experienced the time before internet. There's a privacy to that space and an insulated quality that is not found now.

Great responses, thankyou!

I was born BEFORE television. We played Old Maid, board games, jacks, pickup sticks and many group games such as charades and ring around the rosy, and worked on puzzles and our collections, stamps, match covers. Summers there was baseball, bikes, tag, hide 'n seek, roller skating, running after the Good Humor Man, climbing trees, filching apricots and sweet peas from a nearby orchard, and on weekends we scrambled all over and up on top of the frames of new houses, had clod fights [still have a forehead scar], sang 'putty putty ce-ment mixers' at the construction sites and ran for the sheer joy of running. There were scrapbooks and photo albums, Easter Eggs to dye and at Christmas paper chains and gold walnuts which we shelled, glued back together with a string loop, and painted for the tree. We made leather belts, daisy chains, boxes with wood burned designs, clothespin guns that lit and shot wooden matches, color transfers from the funnies using waxed paper, tin can telephones, seashell sculptures, and built towers and bridges with the erector set, cabins and barns and fences with Lincoln logs, and played with our Lionel train, and did not burn the house down with the chemistry set.

We helped Mom make chocolate cookies with white frosting, beat the yellow stuff into the margarine, shucked the corn, shelled the peas, pulled the string off the green beans, the leaves off the cauliflower,and poured the thick cream off the top of glass -bottled milk, made jello and kool Aid and set the table, then washed the dinner dishes [brother could reach the sink, but I stood on a footstool to dry them]. We helped Dad at the Victory Garden, pulled weeds at home and planted a little maple tree in the back yard; 28 years later I drove by and could see it high over the roof of the house. We camped in the back yard and admired the stars and listened to the B-29s flying overhead, marveled at the searchlights after the war ended. We read, of course, and listened to the radio …. oh, so many delightful things I would do if the computer failed!

BLee - did we really do all that? You totally wore me out reading it. Yet life seemed so much simpler back then, summer days seemed endless, families communicated and great friendships were forged.

I didn't collect stamps. Yes to everything else, for about 6 years until I was 12. I was the only girl in my little neighborhood and until I started school my mother wouldn't let me outdoors to play with those roughnecks. School was a disaster, since I hadn't experienced any children other than my brother, The school nurse met with Mom and convinced her to let me play with the big boys [I was 2 years younger and a lot smaller than the other kids]. I received a geared bike at 1946 Christmas, unusual for a child at that time, but it meant I could keep up with the fat tired bikes. So I became, to her despair, a "tomboy", and learned to stand up to the meanies who teased me at school. I survived 3 years at that overcrowded in-a-Quonset-hut school, then was sent off to a prim girls' boarding school, ran away, and then went to my brother's all-boys school, where I was again the youngest and smallest … and was spoiled and pampered by this new bunch of big brothers.

Wonderful stuff.

Wow, what memories. I collected stamps, still have them. The things I missed out on playing with my stamps!!!

And chased after fireflies.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=psuRGfAaju4

Owl City - Fireflies

OwlCityVEVO

3.45mins

wonderful video! Thank you.

And I enjoyed your posts very much.

jmm1837........ oh yeah! I hear ya. We've experienced similar here.

OH Yeee-aahhh!!!!!

Vey frustrating.

@ dogmom5 I don't get that cable TV thing. Pay TV has started here, but I can't see the point of paying for something that gets provided for free. And......., Who can keep track of more than 12 TV channels anyway? You can only watch one programme at a time ( unless, of course, you are a channel surfing male...... who 'thinks' they can watch multiple programmes.)
Can you explain the appeal of it, please? I know pay TV is huge in USA. I know this by watching TV. [Bit of a self - deprecating smirk there.]

We get it to improve our TV reception . There are designated kids channels plus I have parental controls on the rest of them. We watch the history channel alot until the stupid alien shows come on pretending to be history.

OK. In US cities "free" TV has only a few mostly local channels, sometimes just one. Cable TV for a basic subscription [ $$ ] offers the national channels like ABC, CNN, FOX and Public Television, and a variety of others, but to receive the most desirable such as current movies, ESPN [sports], a baseball channel, National Geographic, History channel, Discovery - hundreds of specialty channels - the cable customer pays more and more and more [ $$$$$$$ ]. Most sports used to be on the basic cable, but virtually all today require paying extra. I have heard that the cable companies are losing customers - too expensive, and news and reruns of nearly everything except sports are available on computers. Btw, I dumped my TV long ago; so many of the programs I enjoyed, nature and home decoration and sports especially, cost more than I could pay. I don't miss it.

Mine was expensive until I rang up to cancel. Then they dropped the price by two thirds.

Being a Canuck I grew up with cable (my folks got it in the mid 60s) so when I arrived here I was a bit puzzled by the funny metal things on the roofs still being in existence. Everyone has cable in Canada (well, unless they're out in the boonies, in which case they've got satellite).

Oh, and it really is "cable." I have no idea why, living here in a reasonable sized town, I have to have a satellite dish on the roof.

In any case, as Blee says, it was attractive when it started because it gave you more channels (where I lived, there were two Canadian channels and a handful of American ones you could get with an antenna but when cable came in, the reception was far better and the number of channels much higher). It's got more specialized and more expensive over the years, but the cable companies (there are three major ones in Canada) long ago branched out into mobile and internet technology (which is why it's the cable companies, not the taxpayer, that are paying for all that fiber optic cable there) - so regardless of what the future brings, they'll probably be providing the infrastructure to deliver it.

I had cable years ago because I had very bad TV reception. At first it cost me $25 a month for channels that really interested me and the company contracted with me to provide a package that included those channels. Over the ensuing years the cost went up to $75 a month, and apparently these providers are free to break contracts to their heart's content and delete channels from your contract and then offer them back to you as part of another optional package at extra cost.

I enjoy collecting DVDs of my favourite TV shows and movies - ones I enjoy watching over and over so I decided to use these when there was nothing else to watch and cancelled the cable. Our TV reception had been upgraded so this was no longer an issue. When I rang I told the guy just why I was cancelling, and that I was happy to watch my DVDs when I felt like relaxing. His comment - but then you are watching repeats all the time ....................... hello, I'm paying to watch repeats all the time on your cable. Ooops .......... he actually agreed with me.

There are certainly too many repeats, and its getting worse. They think we are all mugs. Perhaps I need to have another chat with them after the school hols are over.

I also found there were more and more ads sneaking in. Why are we paying to watch ads??

True.

Our payments don't come near to paying the cable companies' costs. They make their money from advertising revenues. Our subscriptions are just the frosting on the cake.

Good point.

True, but when they first started out, their whole promotion was on ad-free TV.