I got home last night to discover my internet connection was down. I immediately went into withdrawals. No e-mail, no vpn, no podcast updates for my Zune, no Twitter, no IPTV. Last weekend I bought a new bigger / badder /better hard drive for my laptop in preparation for TechEd. I tried to install some software, but almost everything required an internet connection to validate, verify, and register.
I was amazed when I realized how much of my life had become dependant on the internet. I do a lot of social things, via the web. User group communications, announcements on http://altechevents.com, e-mail with other developers, and more.
Fortunately for me, my cherished bride suffered through 85 minutes of tech support calls this morning and worked to get the internet back up and running. Way to go baby! (In the interest of full disclosure, her motives were not entirely altruistic. She’s as big an internet junkie as I am. Nonetheless I do appreciate the pain and suffering she endured, having to call a tech support line. )
Life without the internet… it’s a scary place!
Arcane Code 
I hear you. I got home the other night to find that there’d been a power outage, and my wireless router was dead. I thought I’d find out who had the best price on a replacement, but … rats, I need the Internet. Couldn’t send an IM to people to let them know I was offline. Thankfully, text messaging let me tell my family that there was a problem. And then I had to find the flyers from the Sunday paper to look for any bargains on routers (which I didn’t find, so I just went to the closest place and bought one).
At least it was my router – if it had been the DSL modem, that would have taken a while to get fixed/replaced…