Sunday, March 01, 2009

Back in Business

Hello, it's been a while! I haven't posted in over... oh, in forever. First, my sister was visiting, and we had a great time. I fed her, took her shopping, spent time hanging out... at the end of day 10, neither she nor I properly fit into our pants, but we had had a lot of wonderful food, many opportunities to veg on the couch, and an altogether enjoyable visit. That's the good part.

In not-so-good news, we had internet problems. First, our cable modem stopped working, and our ISP told us it was area-wide. But they didn't do anything about it. So we got ticked off and decided to try another ISP -- they had a try-it-30-days-free offer. DSL isn't so bad, right?
Right. The cable that came with the modem-cum-router was busted. Then, when we had replaced that, installation turned out to be a difficult process indeed. Then, their anti-virus software completely killed Mr. Batty's hard drive... and then, to add insult to injury... DSL stopped working. Great.
So now we have two non-functional modems. I call our original ISP provider and the tech support guy doesn't see any problems with modems in our neighborhood. After some helpful instructions, I have our cable modem running again, the computer we plugged into it directly is accessing the internet. We unplug, turn on the wireless router...
Dead.
Our wireless router has kicked the bucket.
So we get a new wireless router, Mr. Batty does the installation, wants to access the web... modem is dead. After some cursing and mucking about, I discover that you have to unplug the modem, let it sit for 30 seconds, plug it back in, power cycle... and then it works.

So, after all that, we're back in business. Yay!

10 comments:

ChestyLove said...

Y'know, we had the SAME exact problem with BTInternet round last March. Finally had to get a tech out to look at things, and she came as close as she professionally to saying, "It's BT's incompetence, not yours."

Musta been something in the air...a lot of folks were having trouble with their routers lately.

Soo said...

Welcome back!

TheKnittingBee said...

Don't worry - I've been not-blogging for a lot longer than you have ;) (I'm trying to rectify that now though :) ). Glad to hear you're back in business - I find that most computer problems tend to be caused by anti-virus software, to be honest!

adrienne said...

Welcome back! Internet connections can be so annoying, and so much trouble...

Bonnie said...

So many tech headaches! Hope it's all worked out and no more problems.

Glad you had a great visit with your sister!

Elspeth said...

Yep, we have to do the unplug thing too. What a pain!

ChestyLove said...

Hubby calls the unplugging thing a Power Cycle.

"It's not working!"

"Try a power cycle."

Sounds like a new fitness regime, doesn't it. "I power cycled for 45 minutes today, and my legs are killing me."

Mary, Mary... said...

Yeah, I used to have lovely chats with the Miami roadrunner techies while waiting for the 30-45 second gap. Glad you're back!

Kathy Kathy Kathy said...

Pants can be so unforgiving, but I bet it was your dryer. Every now and then, maybe when Mercury is in retrograde, I don't know, but the dryer suddenly starts shrinking the pants. What's that about?

Anonymous said...

I don't know what it is with those routers… Almost every time we have a "power fluctuation", I have to do that same thing with ours. Isn't technology fun?!