Today, outside, it is pelting down. Talk about coming down like cats and dogs – elephants and blue whales, more like!
Oops… down comes a rhino! This is getting serious.
Not to be daunted, and my near vision blurry from peering at the computer screen, I repair to the fireside to indulge a good Netflix or SBS On-Demand series… damn!… the wood bin is sadly wanting after my puny efforts to hold back the cold last night consumed the bulk of my dry wood.
By eye – I’ll be damned if I am going out in this to check it close-up – the wood heap is super-saturated [like most of the fatty foods I have indulged during Lockdown #5]… though, I ask myself, why not? I know all those Internet sites that keep telling me ‘wine and nibbles are bad for you’… but if Covid can’t get to me and finish me off [after all, I am locked up], why not allow ‘some guilty pleasure’ free access?
Outside, water is continuing to pour off the sodden red gum heap in a mini-mimic of Erskine Falls after winter rain… Ha! thought I, just like today… if only the lockdown travel restrictions would allow me a chance to go up to the Falls and look!
Abandoning thoughts of lighting the fire just yet… I asked Rosie and Yogi for their thoughts on the matter but received no reply – they are both snoring on the couch… I turned up my DeLonghi 2400W column heater [trying hard not to think of the September power bills] and turned on the TV.
Almost with a smile – though I know in its TV heart of hearts it is really a sneer – its fickle screen beams back at me ‘No Internet Connection’!
No Internet connection? I ask the wilting bananas in the fruit bowl.
No Internet connection? I howl to the last elephant to fall on the deck outside, though it seems a mite distracted as it avoids the slashing tail of a decked blue whale and does not deign to answer.
No Internet connection? I plonk, disconsolate, on the couch beside my two oblivious snoring beasts. What now? After clicking the few remaining functioning switches in my brain, a glimmering light comes on…
‘Point your phone at the Teddys’ Lookout communications tower’, it said, ‘and Google ‘What to do on a rainy day when there is no Internet connection’.
Tempted to add ‘and I am in [yet another] lockdown’, I worried that Google might ‘block me’ for being too provocative and grudgingly decided to leave this last bit out.
Google helped – well, at least to better understand if the weather was to blame or not – though sadly, he/she did not call round to fix my connection.
Incidentally and as a complete aside, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder: ‘is Google gendered?’ It seems a fair supplementary question to ask in these ridiculous and unproductive cancel-culture days we are being dragged through – as if the virus is not enough!… but I digress…
Google helped – at least in part. ‘He’/‘she’/‘it’/‘they’ offered me the following [paraphrased] advice:
There is almost nothing more irritating than to have your technology malfunction when you need it most. On a rainy day when you can’t play [or garden] outside [without risking non–Covid–related pneumonia], and you decide to stream a movie or a series, your connection seems to be as bogged down by the poor weather as you are.
Could the mist be clogging up cyberspace? Is the rain seeping in to confound the copper? Has a sheltering possum eaten through the cable? Has one of the elephants done structural damage to the node? Does weather affect internet speeds?
But it seems that if you are worried whether poor weather is negatively affecting your Internet, the trouble may be less weather-related than you think.
While it may seem like bad weather and a slow Internet are cause and effect, most evidence suggests that the influence of weather is slight and that, while there may be a correlation, it is not causal.
The most common cause of a poor Internet connection on a bad weather day – rather than the weather itself – is likely to be a higher-than-normal ‘traffic’ volume. When more people are stuck at home, more are likely to be online and entertaining themselves by surfing, streaming, gaming, and researching.
Temperature has little effect except at the extremes of high and low temperature – and here on the coast [except for summer heatwaves when overheating of the modem can be an issue], the ambient temperature is unlikely to be a factor.
Stronger weather conditions – primarily wind – can cause trees to fall onto power lines or satellite dishes, but then the cause is usually apparent – the lights go out, or there is a crash on the roof!
When the sky is gloomy, it can be nice to stay in bed to read a blog or stream a show, but this natural human tendency to cocoon may lengthen the distance between the user and the home Internet router, thus slowing down the Wi-Fi.
I had considered none of these. Somewhat mollified, I smiled wanly back at the TV, gave it the benefit of the doubt, and switched to Midsomer Murders on free-to-air! Shocked, yet secretly relieved, that there was still somebody alive for DCI Tom Barnaby to stumble across without a pitchfork protruding from their torso, I settled in for a fireless romp through middle England.
Crash!… and another whale hit the deck.
John Agar
