I spent most of the afternoon at home trying to get my wireless internet connection to, for lack of a better word, connect. Since I moved, I have had intermittent connection issues. I'd lose connectivity, then regain it. This happened numerous times a day and often at the most inopportune times; while uploading my work websites or worse yet, when talking to the ones I love on messenger.
Last night, after numerous attempts to upload a rather large website update, I called my internet provider's tech support for assistance. He had me restart the cable modem and wireless router, all things I had done numerous times on my own but was more than willing to try again just in case doing so under his tutelage would somehow correct whatever problem there was in my system. Unfortunately, it didn't and he scheduled a service call for today.
Harry, the very kind and knowledgeable service rep, was a bit late to arrive and while I was waiting, my cable TV quit working. I hoped that the TV would remain on the fritz until Harry arrived, so that he might have a better chance diagnosing the problem, but it did not and by the time he arrived I had both cable TV and cable internet.
As he walked through the door, he asked if I had lost service completely for a few minutes. I responded that I had lost cable TV for a little while, but still had internet. The look on his face was priceless. Apparently Harry had replaced the main line to my apartment, hoping that it would fix my connectivity problem. Since both cable TV and cable internet come from the same line, I should have lost both during the replacement.
We finally figured out that I had been "borrowing" internet from someone in the area and had never actually been connected to my own router. Aha, we thought, that should solve the problem. We hooked to the router through a hard line and went through all the steps necessary to set up a network, but no matter what we did, it still wouldn't connect to my own router.
Harry called his tech support person who told him it must be a router problem. He told me to contact my router's tech support, which I did through live chat. The first tech (yes this is a long story, so smoke 'em if you got 'em), had me go into dos, change some settings, stand on one foot and wave a magic wand. Finally, after about 2 hours and several dark moments, I was connected to my own router!
Yippee! I was home free.
Or not.
After about an hour I got the horrifying "blue screen of death". After watching my system crash and restarting the computer, I connected again.
As you can see, Emily was VERY concerned about my computer problems...Now, about 3 hours later, I have still not had another b-l-u-e s-c-r-e-e-n o-f d-e-a-t-h (yes, I'm spelling it in hopes that the computer does NOT recognize what I'm saying and reward me with yet another) and it seems that it may actually be working.
Another strange thing that has happened since I moved in to my own place is that my TV has decided it needs to display close captioning. I have tried everything to remove it, to no avail.
I was chatting with some friends tonight on yahoo and they had several suggestions. They told me to go into the menu, which I did. I started clicking on things and ended up with the entire menu in Spanish.
Since I have no grasp of that language and frankly a very limited grasp of English, I was at a loss as to how to change it back to English. I kept fiddling with things as my cyber friends urged me on and I ended up with what I can only imagine was the Arabic language on my menu.
Since I couldn't figure out how to turn off close captioning in English, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to change it in either Spanish or Arabic. I was about to give up when I noticed a button on the remote that said CC. I pushed it and viola, close captioning disappeared. Who'd have thunkit? CC stands for close captioning.
Hmmm, I never made the connection.
I think I'll join my kitty in bed now. I've had enough fun for the day...
Sigh...is it Friday yet?
