Well we're back online. 

A few weeks ago we very happily bid farewell, good riddance to Bell!! Hoorah! We've only been waiting for years to do it.  And so we bundled our existing services and switched over to Cogeco. 

We were happy, excited....that is until we tried to use the internet.  For some reason we couldn't get on.  Now let me set the stage for our thinking. Our computer is a few years old, it was a wedding gift actually from a friend of Len's in Vancouver.  When he heard about our impending nuptials he cobbled together a computer for us and mailed it out. Now, this isn't as bad as it sounds, he does do this for a living.  Its been a great computer for us. We've always treated it with respect, much like we would an elderly person. We appreciate all it does for us and recognize it has certain limitations as the years go by, and so we try not to ask too much of it.  Like it's operating system for instance Windows 98.  Yes, you heard me. Windows 98.  If we even suggested updating, it may have brought on the untimely retirement of our dear friend.

And so with this in mind I bring you back to our story. We get phone...we lose the internet.  Cogeco had supplied a new modem for the additional services, so we surmised that may have been the culprit. Len tinkered....Len called Cogeco...Len tinkered some more. I asked our computer guys at work. They joked...did you plug it in! Duh, how stupid do they think we are.  To their credit, they only asked that because they were completely stumped. They couldn't figure out why our computer couldn't accept the new modem.  So disheartened, a little sad we decided maybe it was time to bid farewell to the computer. 

Len went out and bought dics and began backing up all our data, to transfer to a new computer.  Luckily, we had the help of Len's friend.  Now I say luckily not because backing up files is a time consuming task, but luckily Ted knows how to read.  Ted had been plugging away at the helm, with us over his shoulder, when he noticed that the bar in the bottom right side of the browser indicated activity. How odd for a computer which apparently could not connect to the modem.  So following a hunch, Ted opened up Mozilla, cleared the cache and clicked on the home page button. And there, before our eyes, a Cogeco homepage came up with the self-activate services including the ability to select a service plan, its attributes, and review the terms of the service agreement. Apparently these self-activation and self-care features are supposed to drive subscriber empowerment, resulting in significantly increased customer satisfaction, and the ability for the cable operator to reduce costs and support increased subscriber volumes. (Yes! thats a direct oquote of theirs!) But I figure if they maybe tell the customers that it might help our empowerment issues!!!

So the long and the short of it, we have internet again, we apologized profusely to our computer for ever doubting it, and we'll never think unfaithful thoughts again.