Why I was dead for a while

I'm not dead, but I have a funny story to tell.

So I got home last Tuesday.  I leave my computer on all the time, and apparently it had crashed while I was at work.  When it comes on, it says there was some kind of hardware failure.  I go through a bunch of dumb stuff to fix it, and I see that my internet isn't working.  I see an unrecognized driver, so I assume that's the network card or something.  I figure I'd try using wireless instead.  My dad sent me the old router they used at their house, and I set it up about a week earlier, and I noticed it didn't work at all, so I went out to buy a new one.

The new router I bought wasn't working either because there was apparently some connection issue between the router and my modem.  At this point, I finally notice the link light on my modem isn't on.  I assumed this was because it couldn't connect with my computer, but now it can't connect with my brand new router either.  I try another ethernet cable that I had lying around, and it doesn't work either, so I "confirm" that the problem is with the modem.

So I go to call my internet company's tech support, and they go through all the procedures I had already tried, and tell me that they will submit my support ticket and have a guy sent out to my apartment to take a look at it.  However the tech support people don't have access to the schedule, so they can't give me a specific date.

The next day (Wednesday), I call my apartments during my lunch break.  (My apartments deal with the internet company directly so that we don't have to, which can be either good or bad.)  I find out that they apparently didn't submit my support ticket, so they didn't even know that I had a problem, and they wouldn't know to send anybody.  I call them back to get them to resubmit, and hope that they can come fix it on Thursday.

Nothing happened on Thursday either, and since it was a holiday weekend, my apartment's office was closed on Friday, so they wouldn't be able to send anyone until the following Monday.  At this point, I go home to visit my parents on short notice because I needed to use their internet to do important stuff for my job over the weekend, and everyone else I knew was going to be out of town.

I come back Sunday.  On Monday after work, I stop by my apartment's office and find out that a guy tried to call me earlier in the day, but didn't leave a message.  Apparently he was going to ask if my internet was still down, when it obviously still would be.  So once again, nobody came to look at it.  But they tell the guy to come Tuesday, and apparently they confirmed this.

Tuesday came, internet still wasn't back on.  I went into the office again and asked if the guy came today to look at it.  Apparently the guy came, but for whatever reason had the wrong information or something, and didn't actually go into my apartment.  So once again, nothing got fixed.  This time, they specifically tell me that they'll give a note to the guy directly to go into my apartment and take a look.

And finally, today.  I get home, and notice my modem had been moved, and they left a service notice.  It still doesn't work, but they told me to go into the office and get a new modem because mine was bad.  At this point I realize I could have probably just taken it in on the first day, but it took me a while to figure out what the actual problem was because several issues popped up all at once.  But anyway, I get the new modem, go back to my apartment, and install it.

And it still doesn't work...

I go into my closet and get the router, which I had purposely put away because it hadn't been set up yet, and I didn't want them thinking the router had anything to do with the problem.  I set the router up, and the exact same problem was still there.  At this point, I have literally no idea what to do.  So just for the heck of it, I try the new ethernet cable that was in the box with the new modem.  And apparently it works...

So after all of this time, over 8 days of dealing with my modem, the modem wasn't even the problem.  I had two ethernet cables in my apartment which I had always used, and always worked perfectly.  And at the same time, both of them completely failed.  This led me on a wild goose chase for 8 days to fix a problem that wasn't even a problem.  I don't even understand how all of my cables can fail at the same time.  This entire thing was pretty ridiculous, but I'm actually looking back at it and laughing now, even though it was literally the worst week of my entire life.

TL;DR - Had no internet for 8+ days because of the most unexpected reason.  All of my ethernet cables stopped working.  Then I spent forever tracking down and dealing with my internet company to replace my modem, when it wasn't even the problem.