Pannes (outages)

It just came back.  For the last 90 minutes, I've had no internet, no telephone, and no television.  The internet and phone seemed completely dead.  The television was intermittent, with moments when it seemed fine, and longer moments when the screen was frozen or completely blank.  The remote control wouldn't work.  Then suddenly it all came back to life. 

Yesterday, I went to Super U to get some supplies.  The store was fairly crowded.  When I had found everything I needed, I got in line to check out and pay.  A woman about my age, two customers ahead of me, was trying to pay with her bank card. It wouldn't work.  She tried again.  And again.  People ahead of me and behind me in line stood and watched in disbelief. How could that woman be so incompetent and slow?

Well, it turned out that it wasn't the customer's fault.  Super U's internet was down.  The cashier was on the phone with somebody trying to figure out what the problem was.  Pas de réseau (no network), she finally told us.  Bank cards couldn't be used.  The woman who had been trying for a while to get her card to work then got out her checkbook and slowly wrote a check.  But even checks need to be run through some kind of reader/printer that verifies the account and prints the amount on the check.  That was down too.  The woman had 100 euros' worth of groceries.  Asked if she could pay cash, she said she didn't have 100 euros in her purse. 

The woman right ahead of me in line turned to me and said she didn't have any cash either.  Luckily, I had a fifty-euro bill in my wallet.  I quickly added up my purchases and realized I had less than 50 euros' worth of stuff.  I told the cashier I could pay cash for my groceries.  She told me to go to the next cash desk, which was not open, and come around to the front of her desk.  The customer who had been in front of me picked up my groceries and handed them one by one to the cashier, who scanned them (that was working).  I handed her my 50-euro bill and she gave me about 8 euros in change.  The check-out lines were getting longer and longer.  Confusion reigned.  Nobody knew what to do.  I was glad I had cash in my wallet. Usually I don't have much more than 10 or 20 euros on me.  Soon I was out the door, in my Peugeot, and on my way home. 

Something big is going on in Saint-Aignan.  There are work crews everywhere, digging trenches along roads all around the town.  A lot of smaller side roads are closed off.  Either they are connecting more houses to sewer mains, or they are putting down fiber optic cable.  Or something else.  I hope it's fiber.  Maybe I should run a speed test and see if my internet connection is faster than before the panne.  I'll get back to my regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.  Meanwhile, here are the speed test results.  They're about what they've been for a few years now.