I had a really embarrassing experience today that should have never happened 
to a guy whose been a ham right at 49 years.  I read a couple of left over 
emails about 11 PM last night and went off to bed.  I'm not on as many 
mailing lists as I once was so I don't get 300 to 400 messages a day 
anymore; more like 30 to 40 at best.  First thing I noticed about noon today 
was that I had no internet connection.  I did all the usual things, 
including checking to see if my ear buds were plugged in just in case they 
were cutting my speakers off but everything was fine.  So, I unplugged the 
comcast modem I have, my other one died a few months ago, unplugged the 
router, shut down the computer, plugged the modem for the cable back in and 
plugged the router back in, and fired up the computer from a cold boot. 
Nothing.  I did it a couple of more times and when nothing worked, I mean, 
no internet access for mail or the web, I checked everything all over again. 
Well, comcast has the automated phone menu thing that, if you punch the 
right button on your phone, it will send a signal to jump start your modem. 
If it sees you are dead in the water, it switches you to tech support.  The 
pulse they sent out didn't help so it was still dead as a doornail.  Well, I 
didn't want to call them for more than one reason.  I must admit, on the 
other hand, that after today's experience, Comcast has greatly improved 
their tech support services.  Plus, the last time they came out to check out 
my dead modem to replace it with a newer one, the tech guy was super 
friendly.  We talked about football, guns, the weather, and hardly anything 
about computers.  He stood right here and used his cell phone to confirm a 
gun buy he was making.  He told me, I forget what gun he was buying now, he 
had to sell a couple of his guns in his collection to get whatever this 
firearm was and this all do  to the bumper sticker my youngest son has on 
one of his vehicles about second amendment rights he saw when he went out to 
climb the telephone pole to check my cable.  Yes, the guy, and my 32 year 
old son, are licensed, registered, and have concealed carry permits.  I know 
more about guns and ammunition than I know about computers by just listening 
to hams in Colorado and Texas and Wyoming and Nebraska and Kansas on 160, 
75, and 2 meters discussing what they own for weapons.  We have lots of gun 
shows out here, too, and every single radio station advertises firearms and 
shooting ranges.  I've got a firing range almost within walking distance of 
my home, no fooling, and I'm still in Denver city limits.  Of course, where 
I live, you best have a sidearm just to walk out to your mail box.  I'm 
kidding but it is almost true.  My kids, when they were between 8 and 12, 
witnessed a shooting less than 300 feet from my front door.  How'd I get off 
on all that?  Anyhow, so the tech guy for Comcast and I are on the phone. 
He tells me to unplug the modem so he can see if anything changes on his 
end.  Nothing happened.  He checks to see if there are any other outages in 
my area.  None.  He asked me to read the model number off to him, this is 
another reason why I hate calling tech support, and I explained I was blind 
as a bat but my son had been over earlier that day and he said all the modem 
and router lights were on and everything was showing good to go?  Another 
reason why I hate calling tech support is due to my voice.  I developed some 
vocal cord problems a couple of three years ago and talking normally is not 
only difficult but frustrating.  Thank the Lord I'm a CW op so I don't have 
to worry about jumping in to huge sideband pile ups I stumble across any 
longer.   He asks me to unscrew the cable itself so he can check it again. 
I tried screwing the cable off but the gun nut that replaced my modem a few 
months ago, you know, the one who climbed the telephone pole just outside my 
ham shack?  That guy must have used super glue or gorilla glue when he 
tighten that sucker up because I couldn't even make it moved.  Since my neck 
and spinal surgery 6 years ago, my hands are very weak and even trying to 
drive a screw into wood is almost impossible for me now.  I would have 
grabbed a wrench and tried twisting the thing off but between my boys 
borrowing my tools, along with my grandchildren taking them off to play 
with, I don't have even simple tools like screw drivers left.  In fact, I 
just bought myself a 50 dollar Swiss Army knife last week off of Amazon with 
13 implements, all stainless steel, and I made sure half of the tools were 
useful things like a flat edge screw driver, a Phillips screw driver, 
scissors, a couple of good blades and even a small wood saw.  This way they 
will have to take it from me before using it.  The problem before was them 
just borrowing my tools and forgetting to tell old dad and old grandpa.  So, 
I explain this to the guy on the phone.  He says, fine, and said, "I can 
wait on the line if you want to get your son to come and screw it off for 
you."  My son was at work, I explained, so the guy said, no problem, let's 
try it again.  So, I reach behind the cable modem sitting on my desk and 
grabbed the plug.  As soon as I started to unplug it, I said to myself, 
"Wait just a cotton picking second."  I was unplugging the dad blamed jumper 
cable running over to my router and not the AC power cord.  Holy Cow!  I 
couldn't believe it.  Some ham radio operator I am.  I almost began laughing 
but I didn't want the guy thinking he wasn't doing his job so I explained I 
had been pulling out the wrong plug, why, I don't know.  Yes, I saw that 
square plug, whatever they are called, and should have realized it wasn't 
the power cord but I decided later, I had a very good reason for making such 
a simple embarrassing mistake.  First, I was in a lot of pain today for some 
unknown reason from the previous spinal surgeries.  There isn't a day, any 
longer, that I don't have back and neck pain for that matter.  I was hurting 
so much, I bummed a couple of pain pills off my wife, who is going to have 
hip surgery in a couple of weeks, and after washing them down with cool 
mountain spring water, I tuned the bands and waited the two hours it takes 
for the dump pills to even act like they are working.  If things don't start 
working better, I'm going down to one of the Colorado Marijuana pot shops 
and make a buy score some weed.  Guess what time I called Comcast tech 
support.  I checked my watch and it was almost exactly two hours that had 
passed as I dialed on my iPhone.  I knew I should not have called them but I 
was tired of not figuring it out after 14 to 15 hours of being offline.  So 
between the pain, and the pain pills that were beginning to work, not to 
mention my age, and, oh, yes, the tinnitus I have due to the stress 
generated by the pain, I was really not firing on all 8 cylinders.  I could 
blame it on my blindness, especially when the guy asked me to look at the 
lights and tell me what I was seeing after I'd already told him I was blind 
but being blind had nothing to do with the event.  Plus, the way my voice 
works, I sometimes sound like I'm 80 years old or more.  As we waited for my 
old computer to cold boot for the second time, this tech guy and I talked 
about the snow we've had in Denver of late, how nice the 60 and 70 degree 
current weather was, how he was born and raised right here in Denver, 
something unusual, the Denver Broncos and how we both hoped Payton Manning 
would take Denver to the super bowl again since this most likely will be 
Manning's final year playing football, and finally, my computer comes alive 
and pulls down a mail packet.  Man, is my old computer slow.  I had to 
explain all this about my computer to the tech guy and he probably figured, 
by this point, I didn't have a clue.  I almost told him I started in 
electronics when I was 10 years old and that I was a ham but I was afraid it 
would draw a dark cloud over the ham community forever, plus it likely was 
being recorded and I didn't want anybody to hear what I had done, but at 
least now I have mail.  It is a good thing I'm not climbing towers any 
longer.  I average 100 contacts using Morse Runner every day at 30 to 45 
words per minute just to keep sharp.  Today was pretty dull, you might say, 
but it was funny, even if it was embarrassing, too.  I am going to copyright 
this email so I get a dollar for every person you forward this to.  Who says 
you can't make money off of ham radio, haha.

Phil.
K0NX