Internet Problems

I'm writing this right now as I'm struggling with my internet. The problems started about the same time the heat wave kicked in around here and they have slowly gotten worse every day. It's taking forever for webpages to load. The other day I had to give up on uploading pictures to my blog because it took 20 minutes to upload the pictures. The worst is Skype. The long distance relationship is hard and with the wonderful advents of modern technology, I thought it would be relatively easy to stay in contact with people back home, especially Kaitlin.

What started out as a minor nuisance, losing connections when we were using the video function, has now become a complete pain in the rear. I have been trying to just tough it out, but what should have been a simple 30 - 40 minute conversation has now turned into an hour long struggle to connect, be disconnected and reconnect to the Skype servers. There are times that I will sign on and I don't see anybody on. I know for a fact the person on the other end has logged on since we've talked about it later, or I was talking to them seconds earlier and they just disappeared.

I don't know what the deal is. I've tried to reset the router, restarted the modem and restarted my computer and nothing is working at all. I have never had this kind of internet problem before. There are two things that I think it could be; either Skype is poor technology that doesn't have all the bugs worked out and we have a hard time connecting or the heat in this country is making the internet fail. I know there have been other people expressing issues with Skype and internet service, so maybe it's the heat.

While I was checking the wires and stuff on the back of the modem, I touched the "splitter" at the back. It was hot. Not just warm to the touch, but it hurt to pick it up. I'm thinking this has something to do with the heat. I can't really think of anything else that I could blame it on. If you have any ideas or possible solutions I would be very grateful for anything that could help get this internet situation worked out.

For now, I'm just going to take a deep breath because, "y'he'yeh b'seder." יהיה בסדר
It will be okay.

UPDATED (19:33 on Aug 5)
The connection is so bad that googlechat has now disabled itself.