https://www.hatch.org/tags/banjo/ Recent content in Banjo on Steve Hatch's Blog Hugo en-us Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hatch.org/2026/10/20/netmon-cable-guy-dashboard/ Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.hatch.org/2026/10/20/netmon-cable-guy-dashboard/ <p><img src="https://www.hatch.org/images/netmon-cable-guy-dashboard.jpg" alt="My Internet Dropped 632 Times, So I Built a Dashboard for the Cable Guy"></p> <p><strong>My internet went down 632 times in two days. I know the exact number because I built a monitor out of spite, and then a dashboard, and then I sent an AI to call Comcast.</strong></p> <p>Quick roadmap:</p> <ul> <li>How a perfectly boring connection turned into a strobe light</li> <li>Why &ldquo;the internet is down&rdquo; is five different problems wearing a trench coat</li> <li>What a cable modem writes in its diary when nobody&rsquo;s reading</li> <li>The AI phone call that ended with the AI asking for a grown-up</li> <li>A dashboard with an audience of exactly one technician</li> <li>What&rsquo;s still held together with tape</li> <li>How to set up all three pieces yourself, why they&rsquo;re built the way they are, and why they&rsquo;re safe to leave running</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="it-worked-for-a-year-and-a-half">It worked for a year and a half</h2> <p>For about eighteen months my internet was the best kind of utility: invisible. Then, on the evening of October 17, it started blinking. Ten seconds down, back up. Forty seconds down, back up. Video calls froze mid-sentence and left me looking thoughtful for longer than I&rsquo;ve ever looked thoughtful in real life.</p>