I wanted to show my good friend J the photo of the kitties holding hands. She's a big-time kitty lover, so I knew she'd enjoy the photo. I was over at her house yesterday afternoon helping her bake cookies for church on Sunday. She wanted to make these ones that need to be piped out, and she certainly couldn't do that one-handed. While we were waiting for a batch to bake, I loaded up Flickr to show her.

She doesn't know about this blog. Very few of my real life friends do.

Anyhoo, Flickr would not load. It just kept working, trying to load, but nothing was happening. I was thinking maybe it was just her connection (they have high-speed, but it's shared between several computers in her house).

Then I came home and Flickr wouldn't load here either. Yet my good buddy Art could access Flickr, as could my sister Michele. And another d-land writer that I read had photos posted from Flickr, and you could tell by her comments that her photos worked just fine.

So why would it just be me and J, but no one else??

I called Comcast. When in doubt, annoy your ISP.

The woman who answered my call was a bitch. Seriously. I don't know if the last person she talked to tried to rip her a new one or what, but it was quite frustrating. For one thing, she knew less about computers than I do, and yet here she is working as a tech rep for Comcast. I asked how it is possible that my friend in Salt Lake City and my sister in Florida, both of whom are Comcast customers, can access this site and I couldn't. She had no good answer for me and basically told me nothing. And she made it seem like I was in the wrong for calling Comcast in the first place!

I have called Comcast several times in the last three years, ever since high-speed internet made it to my neighborhood. When we moved here, dial-up was my only option. After four years of a T-1 line in college and another year and a half with high speed in Kurt's apartment, I had to cope with dial-up. I nearly died. It sucked. But anyhow, every time I have called Comcast they have gone above and beyond simply answering my questions. One guy stayed on the phone with me for more than two hours troubleshooting my computer when we figured out that my IE had been corrupted. It wasn't a Comcast issue; MY computer was mucked up. Yet this guy spent two hours on the phone trying to help me out. That's the level of service I am accustomed to with Comcast.

This lady didn't even approach a normal level of service. She didn't have an answer, she was very snippy with me, and she basically tried to make it seem like it was MY fault that my computer wasn't accessing this site. I did have that concern, but then why was J's computer having issues too? She has Comcast as well. All the rep could tell me is they knew Yahoo was having problems, so that if it was a Yahoo-based site, it could be slow because of that.

I was spazzing out a bit because I do pay for my Flickr access, and I was concerned that maybe my computer was getting all mucked up like the last one did. That's the worst thing that can happen with Kurt being gone, is losing my computer. Hence the mini panic attack... but just a mini one.

Finally at 10pm last night I called Comcast again. This time there was a message saying that several sites were having issues, and that techs were working on it. I still stayed on the line to talk to a rep, and this time I got this gent who didn't blow me off. He told me that it was actually COMCAST's fault that we were having issues. I asked him if Flickr was on their list of affected sites, and he told me it was. There was a problem with a router somewhere along the line, which is why it wasn't all Comcast customers that were affected.

This guy made me feel SO much better and really calmed me down. And all he did was his job.

Sure enough, by 11pm Flickr was back up and running for me. It was so lovely. I do pay for my Flick account, and I was just worried that it was something wrong with my computer and I would lose access to it forever, or something weird like that. I know it's not quite logical, but hey, I was stressed out. Logic plays no part in stress sometimes.

And now everything is working and life is hunky-dory again! To prove this, I shall leave you with a very devilish Grace, trying to score more fresh cookies over at her "auntie" J's house!