Our latest wireless adventure is the one that should not be. See, I connect to the wonderous web through my cable company, and while they are experts at estimating the time they will arrive at your house (give or take 4 hours) they are not experts at internet connection problems.
I mean, I am a professional computer geek, and can troubleshoot everything up to the ethernet cable between my router and the cable modem, but once it hits the cable modem (which they own) it’s all up to them. So when the connection gets flakey, I call them. They have me redo everything I did before on my own: reset things, unplug and plug things in, say magic words, stand on one foot while holding the cable in the air while Woz laughs at me… I assume the guy on the phone is staring at some diagnostic screen and not just guessing, but I don’t know for sure. Anyway, none of this works, and they decide to send someone out. Oh, keep in mind that the connection goes between working and not working. At random.
So they send someone out, and someone who is not me is home to greet them while I’m at work, and they leave because they can’t find the splitter. Sigh… Thanks guys!
What to do? The connection is still semi-working sometimes… Ah! I plug the wifi adapter into my Mac and try to reach the neighborhood wifi point known as ‘linksys’ and I can’t. Hmmm, is it down too? Wait… Could these thick concrete walls and all of the dirt surround the basement of the house have something to do with it? I again stand on one foot, waving the wifi adapter near the basement window, but nothing. Finally I remove a piece of the drop ceiling and stick the adapter in the rafters and I can see the network!
So I worked that way for a while, with the adapter wedged into the ceiling, borrowing a wifi connection. I need to start recommending those Linksys products to all of my neighbors.
The connection seems back to normal now, and I realize that I really do need to write that app that monitors my connection and logs the disconnects so I can send them to my cable company and demand to know what is up with that!