Slice of Life - Unplugged

 You have probably watched the AT&T commercial where there’s a family who loses their WiFi for about 20 minutes. They make it seem so terrible, and it really is. Try to imagine losing WiFi for not just 20 minutes, but for 1 whole month and beyond. That’s exactly what happened to my family. It really wasn’t fun.

Just until recently, on the day after Presidents Day to be exact, I didn’t have WiFi. We lost our WiFi at the beginning of January. We lost it because we didn’t pay our bill. Not that we weren’t capable, but because Comcast was charging—get this—$60 a month for just 25 mbps. 60 dollars! You pay that much money if you have either a 60 mbps plan, or a plan with WiFi and cable! So we couldn’t take it. We also weren’t even getting close to 25 mbps, more like 15-20. We literally need WiFi to progress through essential tasks, like paying the bills. We still have a landline, and that didn’t work because we didn’t have WiFi. I couldn’t play games on my PS4, we couldn’t use our technology. It was a really bad situation.

Our phones’ cellular data still worked, however. So we used the mobile hotspot to act as an artificial WiFi. This worked, but, it had may problems. First of all, our phones’ data plan is 10 gigabytes, so we were limited to our usage. Second of all, the speed was not reliable at all. Even less so than the likes of Xfinity. Third of all there is no third reason that I can think of right now. So this plan (no pun intended) worked for a while, but then came crashing upon us. I used the hotspot for my PS4 and going on my iPad. My mom used it just for her iPad, but she uses it a lot for many different tasks. Soon, my mom’s plan ran out in maybe a week. I was already using my phone for the hotspot, but with 2 connections, it would be very slow. So, I had to break out a third phone for my mom/me. And that Android phone was already pretty slow. At this point, we all needed our WiFi back.

My phone had 20 gigs in its data stash, so in total I had 30 gigs. But we were burning through that quick. I begged my parents to get WiFi back, but they always said that we had to switch it from my dad’s account to my mom’s, and then do this and that, blah, blah, blah. Short story was, I had to wait. Maybe a week after my mom’s phone was lost, the poor Samsung was lost as well. My phone was still going, but I maybe had under 7 gigs left. Thankfully, the month of January passed and now we were in February. All of our phones were refilled, so that was good. We just kept on doing the same stuff over and over for some time.

One week before my birthday, I went over to my cousins house. Then they said that we were going to the Chicago Auto Show. It was kind of like a birthday present. We picked up my mom, and drove to the auto show and hour later. It was pretty cool, considering I love cars. There was a bunch of cars, obviously. But there were some good ones, like the Kia Stinger, Ford Mustang, Dodge Demon, Audi R8, BMW I8, and my all time favorite, the Nissan “Godzilla” GTR (only car people will understand). There was also a Lamborghini Huracan and an Aventador but I didn’t get to see them :(. So, you may be wondering, what was the point in telling you this? Well, turns out there was a Comcast booth, which my mom went to. She signed up and prepared the WiFi stuff. So when we went home she told me. My first reaction was, “WHAT, REALLY, WIFI?!? THANK YOU JESUS!!”. It didn’t come that day though.

It came the next day, and boy, let me tell you, I was very, very happy to say the least.