We lost our cable connection today. We have a cable service, through which we get our TV service and our internet. It went out.
I did the usual stuff. I rebooted the router. I rebooted the cable box for the one TV in the house that is on a hard coax connection (the others are on WiFi connections). I verified that there were no service interruptions in the area. I checked all the connections… (more on that later)…
For about an hour, I was on the phone to the cable company, rerouted to 5 different people, until they finally told me that they couldn’t get a technician out until Tuesday (it’s Sunday). This is what they call “24/7/365” care. I was getting more and more upset. Clearly, the problem was on their end. Nothing changed on mine — or so I thought. I was so sure.
So here’s where I should have gotten a clue…
It turns out that, few hours ago, I had gone back into the furnace room to get a fan. The furnace room also happens to be where the cable comes into the house. It’s all up in one upper corner of the room, in the ceiling. It’s rat’s nest of cables, but I went nowhere near it when I got the fan.
However, I did have to move some things around to find the fan. In doing so, it seems I knocked a plug loose from the outlet in the wall — on the other side of the room from the rat’s nest. This plug (wait for it…) happens to be the power for the key splitter for all the cabling into the house. Bingo. Problem solved.
My wife found the problem. Why? because she wasn’t focused on the part of the room where the cables were. I knew the cabling couldn’t be the problem, because I hadn’t been anywhere near it. She had an open mind. I didn’t.
The fact that I had to move boxes around to get to the fan because my wife put a bunch of stuff in this room that shouldn’t have been there in the first place… well, that’s another story. 🙂