'Net goes down

So today was one of those days.. when the Internet was down at work. You would think thats really cool - without the internet the office is dysfunctional, blah blah. And you would be right. But you know what the problem is? So are you!!! We have become soo dependent on the internet that there is little we can do without it. Without the internet, the computer is a very large toy which has immense potential but no power to realize anything. I stared at the computer for a good 10 minutes with no clue as to how to kill time.. virtually all my 'time-passing' elements had been vanquished - be it the Frasier episode at lunch or the IMs or the blog or the news or anything! Finally I opened Minesweeper up and returned to it after a long long hiatus. Within minutes my wrist started aching of course and it paved way for my ebook collection which worms its way to any computer or laptop I work with (in fact a secret I must share is that I keep a whole bunch of ebook favorites and the VLC player on my flash drive). Thats for emergencies. And today certainly qualified. With VLC going and one random CD of F-R-I-E-N-D-S lying in my bag, it made for a normal yet entertaining internet blackout at work (Pssst... I heard that some of the others had actually taken to racquetball at the Ames Racquetball center across the street from where I work!!). You would wonder why I would have to think and plan so much for a net outage which probably lasted 10 minutes. But no.. today's lasted 3 hours and being planned helps! But incidents like today just show how we are slave to the internet....