I thought I'd share this just in case someone else out there finds it helpful. For the past month, my Internet connection and telephone have been crapping out. Despite a good background in being a computer/hardware tech, all my jiggling and troubleshooting made no difference - there was no rhyme or reason for the sudden disconnections and then the sudden reconnections. I figured it was a cable problem, but couldn't find the source.

The cable guys finally came today (my phone was out all morning and part of Wednesday too). They jiggled the cable - in a place I never thought to jiggle it - and everything immediately came back. Duh. But in their investigation, they found that the guys who ran the cable back in the fall had stapled it all along the wall and around the door - two of the staples went right through the cable. The cable guy this morning told me that that alone would have been enough to cause these intermittent losses of signal.

Time will tell if this has resolved this problem, but who would ever have thought that a tiny staple could cause all this aggravation!