Wednesday, October 07, 2009

The modem's got the ball! It shoots! It ...

flies into the stands.

The saga of the computer continues. Last Wednesday I left my laptop in the hands of Dell certified guru Brandon, who shall in my pantheon of demigods stand tall as the Monitor and Network Restorer (All hail! **genuflect, genuflect**). He found my network card had truly decided to create a language of its own that wasn't communicating with the rest of the computer, so he slapped that boy into shape and in the process succeeded in restoring my monitor from the Andy Warholian 16-bit mush to proper 32-bit. He tested the computer's DSL networking and pronounced it good. Saturday when I went to spin with his wife Tami I received my laptop back. I could have gone skipping back home to test it out but I was there to spin and I had yarn to spin up for Judy. I was a good kid, finished my singles, and started plying.

When I got home, I got everything all set up and was able to talk to the modem. Yay! I did my configuration in the modem. I tried to get on line. Nothing. Tried another configuration. Nothing. By that point it was too complex for me to tackle. I found that I could go on dial-up for an extra ten bucks a month which since this was starting at the beginning of October worked out fine. I wouldn't be able to talk with my ISP until Monday evening but I had something for the weekend.

So Monday evening rolls around and I get on the horn with my ISP. Now one thing I have to say about my ISP is that despite all the mess they have been the nicest and helpful tech guys to work with. Not only that, the techs are local. Like across the river. Love 'em. They want me to be connected and use their product and I hear it in their voices. So this time around I spend nearly an hour with my tech guy trying to get the modem to let my ISP DSL talk to my computer. He can detect my computer and all that but the modem won't let me look at the Internet. So after a bunch of settings testing he thinks the modem is the issue, that it's defective, and I need to get another one.

Argh. Still no picture loading. Now where are all those original packing materials for the modem?.....

Heavy Breathing

There's been a bunch of remodeling going on in the past week in my office so I'm ensconced in a different office on a different air conditioning system to keep from reacting to the dust. However, I still have to go in those areas so I'm running around with a respirator mask on. Yesterday I got some looks that I thought bordered on rude from folks in the hallway. Then again my fellow office workers kid me with Darth Vader jokes. If it means I can breathe freely, all the better. Friday's carpet ripping nearly sent me to the ER, so I'm not taking any chances. it sucks though that with the crappy economy the company couldn't afford to send us to another site to work until it was all done.

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