About 10:30 last night my 5-year-old Toshiba cable modem apparently figured that five years of blogging was enough and committed suicide. It was a quiet death. No bizarre behavior leading up to the tragic event. When it died, there was no smoke, sparks or flame ... the lights simply went out.

Needless to say this caused me much personal angst because of my inability to get on the Internet for all of 12 hours.

So I just got my new cable modem -- a Motorola -- installed and set up with a minimum of fuss.

The cable modem is dead. Long live the cable modem.