Connection Interrupted...

So I was wrapping up another sports experience or two before planning to continue my Sports Weekend (Week)-Part 2 when 1) I forgot my laptop at school and couldn't blog and 2) the internet suddenly became very, very, very slow. Early-dial up days slow. Hit 'Next' on Amazon, walk away, brush teeth, wash face, return, and it's still not up slow. I thought it was my normally decent but sometime sporadic home wireless.

Today at school, where I use an Ethernet cable, it was still a little spotty. Then we received an e-mail, stating:"UNSCHEDULED EVENT:Computing Services would like to inform you that Internet access has beenslow since yesterday for all Q-Tel, Home-ADSL, and Business users. This is caused due to a major Fiber cable cut near Egypt."

Ok, that explains it, I thought. No biggie. Internet seemed to be working ok and I had no real reason to watch videos or stream audio anytime soon. Then another email:"Computing Services would like to keep you updated regards this incident.

Two cables were cut in the Mediterranean yesterday which bought down our Atlantic link. Traffic is currently routed via a second link (through the Pacific).

We are measuring 150ms latencies over this second link. Hence, some congestion may occur causing delays and backlog. Computing Services recommends that you plan tele-conference backups for your video-conferences as the service could face high delay under the circumstances. [CM-Q faculty and staff regularly teleconference with the 8-hours behind us Pittsburgh campus. It's not unusual to walk by a conference room and see folks chatting with someone on screen in a recognizable room in Pittsburgh. The classroom I use is wired for video-conferencing; our lecture halls are designed for distance teaching; and all of our faculty/staff laptops/computers have webcams].

As we understand, it is anticipated that new fiber will be laid down within
approximately 2 weeks. [Not too shocking- I've come to expect that things take time here]."Thus I wasn't too surprised to go home after work and find my internet didn't work at all- at least for 6 hours. It was a welcome break-absolving me from checking email and forcing me to read some prior-downloaded recycling reports, listen to Anthony Bourdain read his 'Kitchen Confidential' on iTunes, and sketch a typeface.

With the internet back on, I saw an email from my mom discussing my Uncle's communication with his employer Aramco in KSA(Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) was interrupted and then I just noticed the Internet outage is one of the top stories on CNN.com. Yep. That's us folks. Far as I can tell- not quite the chaos here they describe in Dubai in the article but bothersome nonetheless. We'll see what sort of effect it has here in Qatar.