People around me complained loud and long last week about the slowness of the internet.
But, of course, the answer was right in front of everyone, at eye level and on their screens.
The death of Michael Jackson placed enormous strain on the internet's capabilities.
There may have been some bending of the internet, but it did not break.
The overwhelming interest in the death of the pop singer showed how tuned in people were to the death.
While television stations ran live feeds on Jackson's death, it was to the internet that many of us turned.
Several sites - notably TMZ, which broke the story - were unavailable.
While television stations were reporting Jackson's cardiac arrest, TMZ was pronouncing him dead.
The news spread like wildfire on the 'net as television anchors wondered and guessed.
Even the mighty Google slowed.
Northern hemisphere bloggers reported a huge increase in traffic around the world wide web to certain sites.
Hitwise reported that Twitter had its biggest day on the day Jackson died, surpassed by the following two days.
In the United States, a company called Keynote, which monitors internet performance, said popular news sites showed marked slow-downs for three hours from 10.30am (New Zealand time).
The average speed for downloading news items doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds.
During the same period, the average availability of sites dropped from nearly 100% to 86%.
Strangely, in Europe, there was no spike in internet traffic.
Experts suggested the kind of people who were online late at night might well have decided to leave their computers and turn on the television for the breaking news.
In New Zealand, the death was reported during the morning, and traffic spiked as we all got our television and computer hits.
Much of the traffic was spread through sites which use far less bandwidth than social networking and graphic-heavy news sites.
Twitter uses very little internet bandwidth despite there being a spike in traffic.
So while we slowed, we did not fail.
Hopefully, not too many Mack-line readers were caught out by the spammers who tried to cash in on the death of Jackson.
As memorabilia flooded on to auction sites, the spammers found a business opportunity too good to miss.
BBC Online reported that as news of Jackson's death started coming through, the scams started appearing.
As the days passed, the people behind these operations increased the stakes.
Symantec, the makers of Norton computer protection products, said spam about Jackson became more convincing each day.
One message promised a YouTube video showing the exclusive "last work of Michael Jackson".
Unfortunately, all users received was a malicious programme that steals passwords.
Symantec has drawn up a list of scams that will soon become commonplace as the result of Jackson's surprise death and that of Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.
They included things like spam with subject lines trying to peddle fake medicines, Twitter tweets about these deaths with links to all sorts of malicious websites and sites claiming to host videos of the last moments of those individuals live.
The purpose is to offer fake goods for sale or infect your computer with malware Some will collect and validate live email addresses to sell to the highest bidder for spamming.
Follow the good advice written here often.
Only visit sites you are familiar with and trust - and yes, that includes www.odt.co.nzDo not click on every link that pops up related to the story and do not open emails from people you do not know.
And, of course, keep security solutions up to date.
Things are likely to get worse before they get better.
