I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with a very pleasant and helpful seeming fellow at Verizon, in who knows where, trying to find out why our home internet service has been intermittent. He led me through all manner of technical stuff on both our home desktop computer and then on my company laptop.
The end result was that he tried to give me to a paid service or connect me with the manufacturers of the computers to try to figure out why he was seeing internet coming to our wireless modem, and our home computer was seeing the wireless modem, but neither of the computers was seeing the internet. I declined those two options because the two computers are from different manufacturers and they run different versions of windows. Also, I told him it's hard to see how our computers can be at fault if both of them see the internet intermittently and we have not made any changes to their settings. In fact, I can't make changes to the settings of the company laptop, so its literally impossible for me to have screwed it up.
After I got off the phone with the pleasant support guy, I cut power to the wireless modem and then powered it up again, figuring that maybe that would knock some sense into its little brain. This was, by the way, something the tech support guy did not suggest that I do. Well, here I am on the internet again with the laptop. Go figure. I haven't tried yet with the home computer because I also cut its power and it takes forever for that desktop to reboot. I'll try that tonight. And then, assuming everything works, I'm going to have to call Verizon again because as part of his procedure the fellow changed our account password since I couldn't remember the original one. Who can remember such passwords over a gap of years? Who even knows that the little modem with its five green eyes requires a password?
If you are having internet connectivity problems you may want to try cutting off power to the modem and then giving it back its power as a first step.
I'm skeptical that this is a final fix because we've had some odd internet on and off issues for a couple of weeks. In the meantime I left the very helpful and patient Verizon fellow with the word that I'm not going to be paying their bill if the problem continues, so we'll see what, if anything Verizon does.
Update: I didn't mention above that, after remaining polite with the seemingly helpful human who failed to help, I also spent a couple of minute cursing the little modem, and Verizon, and the internet, and the gods of technology, before I cut off the power. If you have ccasion to try this you may need to say to the modem, "Take this you faithless little bastard, starve in the dark for a while," just before you cut off its power. And then, after its confused little green eyes have finished with their blinking once you have restored the power, it may be necessary to say to it, "The next time I'll cut you off for a few hours or I may just rip you out of there and throw you on a fire to see how you like that."
Update 2: Tonight at 6:00 the DSL was working. At about 8:00 it was no longer working. I had other stuff to do on this computer so I let it alone. A little while ago I checked and it still wasn't working; so I unplugged the modem and sure enough the DSL was working again after I plugged it back in. Does this mean I have to unplug the thing ever few hours? I think it means that I call Verizon's billing office tomorrow and tell them to cut off the DSL service. Hopefully that will cause them to put me in touch with someone who will authorize a new modem, which is clearly what's needed. Of course they may play it tough, in which case modern technology may retreat from this little piece of Collegeville.
Update 3: 84 82 45 82 54 84 87 59 86 :<(
Update 4 on 11/8: I got in touch with a different technical services human in wherever they are after I called billing. This tech services person spoke with a bit more of an accent than the first one above. I'm failing to resist the urge to believe that he was hired more for his technical competence than for his English language skills. He fairly quickly went into a mode of replacing the "firmware" in my internet connection gizmo after telling me that it's an older model whose "firmware" sometimes gets corrupted. Since then no problems. Someday I have to do a post about the tradeoffs inherent in recruiting and hiring, a subject about which I'm pretty knowledgeable.
Showing posts with label wireless router. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wireless router. Show all posts
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Three bucks a day! And for what?
I just opened our electric bill for mid September to mid October and discovered that the Philadelphia Electric Company is ripping us off for $99.19. That's more than three bucks per day just for providing light and hot water and heat and electric fire for cooking and power for the water well pump and and the juice which somehow makes it cold inside the big white box in the kitchen and for electrons to run around in this computer thingy and do whatever the hell they do in there to make the pictures appear.
It's outrageous, and I'm thinking that we shouldn't put up with it anymore. I have half a mind to take one of my big tree limb loppers back behind the house and clip the line by which those blood suckers at PECO send their outrageously expensive electrons in. That would cure our addiction to them. We don't need their damn newfangled electricity.
I just finished listening to an audio book that made it sound very romantic and quaint to light a candle on a moonless winter night when you need to go out to the outhouse to take a dump. I would mention the name of that book but I can't open up a new window in the browser right now because I'm typing this on our primitive old computer instead of on my less primitive work laptop. I'm doing that because PECO's damn electrons are for some reason refusing to jump from the thing with the little green light on it up here in the computer room down to the laptop on the dining room table. Or else maybe the electrons running around in the laptop are all confused; or maybe they're angry with the electrons up here in the computer room.
At any rate I'm not in a mood to be kind to PECO and all of the modern world right now even though $99.19 is the lowest electric bill we've had for the past few years. What the hell good are PECO's electrons if they won't even jump to my laptop properly.
Linda's just gone off to church, so the coast is clear. I'm thinking that I had best wear my rubber creek wading boots when I take a lopper out back to end all this electricity trouble once and for all.
Update - I take it all back; and I'm glad I decided to go out to the tanning salon to get some rays before cutting off our electric service, so to speak. Someone at PECO must have seen my complaint because they're now sending me well behaved electrons that are jumping to the laptop just fine.
I have to go now because I need to start a pot of split pea soup for dinner and then get out there and mow the lawn which is getting high from last week's warm weather.
Earlier Linda bought me a quarter pound of sliced pepperoni to put in the pea soup. I've made it that way before. Trust me that it comes a whole lot better with chopped up pepperoni than with the bland smoked ham that the Goya Split Pea package calls for. Also, forget the measly one carrot and one small onion that the package calls for. Chop up and put in a couple or three big carrots and a couple of onions. And also, add some chopped celery. And another thing, you can't cook split pea soup too long. Three or four hours is the minimum.
Update 2 - Earlier I wrote that you should chop up the carrots, onions and celery for the pea soup; but it's much easier to grate them with the side of your cheese grater that cuts things into little scalloped pieces. And it has an additional benefit in that the smaller pieces melt into the soup better, which is what you want.
You have to be careful when you grate vegetables like that though. And it's best to be willing to throw out a significant sized piece of the vegetable that you're grating. If you grate the carrots or the celery stalks down too far, or if you grate an onion down too thin, you stand a chance of ending up with little scalloped piece of your fingers in the mix. That hurts a bit if it happens when you're grating celery or carrots; and it hurts enough to make you see vivid colors for a moment or two if it happens when you're grating an onion. But it's not like a catastrophe or anything. Little scallop shaped pieces of finger graft back on pretty well if you wash them off, put them back carefully into the holes they came from and then wrap the fingers in a bandaid to hold the pieces in place. It's delicate work with one hand though, and slows down the soup making; so try to avoid it.
Don't tell Linda about any of this. She still gives me grief about being careful almost every time she sees me with a knife. And all because I managed to cut both of my thumbs that day more than thirty years ago when we had the cider making party at the old Trooper house.
It's outrageous, and I'm thinking that we shouldn't put up with it anymore. I have half a mind to take one of my big tree limb loppers back behind the house and clip the line by which those blood suckers at PECO send their outrageously expensive electrons in. That would cure our addiction to them. We don't need their damn newfangled electricity.
I just finished listening to an audio book that made it sound very romantic and quaint to light a candle on a moonless winter night when you need to go out to the outhouse to take a dump. I would mention the name of that book but I can't open up a new window in the browser right now because I'm typing this on our primitive old computer instead of on my less primitive work laptop. I'm doing that because PECO's damn electrons are for some reason refusing to jump from the thing with the little green light on it up here in the computer room down to the laptop on the dining room table. Or else maybe the electrons running around in the laptop are all confused; or maybe they're angry with the electrons up here in the computer room.
At any rate I'm not in a mood to be kind to PECO and all of the modern world right now even though $99.19 is the lowest electric bill we've had for the past few years. What the hell good are PECO's electrons if they won't even jump to my laptop properly.
Linda's just gone off to church, so the coast is clear. I'm thinking that I had best wear my rubber creek wading boots when I take a lopper out back to end all this electricity trouble once and for all.
Update - I take it all back; and I'm glad I decided to go out to the tanning salon to get some rays before cutting off our electric service, so to speak. Someone at PECO must have seen my complaint because they're now sending me well behaved electrons that are jumping to the laptop just fine.
I have to go now because I need to start a pot of split pea soup for dinner and then get out there and mow the lawn which is getting high from last week's warm weather.
Earlier Linda bought me a quarter pound of sliced pepperoni to put in the pea soup. I've made it that way before. Trust me that it comes a whole lot better with chopped up pepperoni than with the bland smoked ham that the Goya Split Pea package calls for. Also, forget the measly one carrot and one small onion that the package calls for. Chop up and put in a couple or three big carrots and a couple of onions. And also, add some chopped celery. And another thing, you can't cook split pea soup too long. Three or four hours is the minimum.
Update 2 - Earlier I wrote that you should chop up the carrots, onions and celery for the pea soup; but it's much easier to grate them with the side of your cheese grater that cuts things into little scalloped pieces. And it has an additional benefit in that the smaller pieces melt into the soup better, which is what you want.
You have to be careful when you grate vegetables like that though. And it's best to be willing to throw out a significant sized piece of the vegetable that you're grating. If you grate the carrots or the celery stalks down too far, or if you grate an onion down too thin, you stand a chance of ending up with little scalloped piece of your fingers in the mix. That hurts a bit if it happens when you're grating celery or carrots; and it hurts enough to make you see vivid colors for a moment or two if it happens when you're grating an onion. But it's not like a catastrophe or anything. Little scallop shaped pieces of finger graft back on pretty well if you wash them off, put them back carefully into the holes they came from and then wrap the fingers in a bandaid to hold the pieces in place. It's delicate work with one hand though, and slows down the soup making; so try to avoid it.
Don't tell Linda about any of this. She still gives me grief about being careful almost every time she sees me with a knife. And all because I managed to cut both of my thumbs that day more than thirty years ago when we had the cider making party at the old Trooper house.
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