I came home late last night. The fist thing I did was check my mail and I found something unexpected--a bank statement of a supposedly closed account. I thought I might saw something stating this account was closed in this bank statement, but instead I saw a -$3.49 balance (which means I owe the bank money). My first thought was to verify my account online, so I turned on my PC and cable modem, and was ready to go online.
"Server can't be found ..." My Firefox displayed this message after I typed in my bank's URL. (Looks familiar? :-) ) After some quick checks, I noticed the "cable status" light on my cable modem wasn't on, so I rebooted it. It didn't work; the light blinked for a long time then went off, which means the cable modem couldn't get a lock on a channel. After two or three more tries, I gave up, so I moved to checking the cable--this is easier than checking the modem anyway.
Our cable came in through the basement, so I went to the place and checked the cable splitter. Everything looked fine to me, but....what the heck, so I detached the cable lines. Soon after I removed one cable, something fell off. I didn't know what it was, but soon I found out it was water because I saw water coming out of the splitter terminal which I just removed the cable from. I examined the cable I just removed and saw water in the metal casing too. So, it was obvious that the reason my network wasn't working was the water in the splitter and cable. (Oddly though, our cable TV didn't seem to be affected.)
I knew any further investigation would take time, so I moved on and went back to my bank account issue. It was straight forward--I called the bank and had the issue fixed. The explanation they gave me was the account was opened again when the monthly interest got deposited into it, and because the account "went back to life", they charged me a maintenance fee because of a below-minimum balance in the account. I didn't like the answer but what could I do? Maybe I'll write a complaint letter to the bank.
So, one issue down and it was time to go back to my cable problem. I later found out the water was from the cable outside. I could go out and take a look, but it was very cold and late, so I figured I'd continue my investigation the next morning.
Well, I did go out and take a look this morning, and everything seemed fine. The cable lines and the splitter in the basement looked dry to me too. I tried them on and the network was back to normal. I'm guessing the water was from condensation, but I'm not very sure......
