Wireless Networks Hate Me

I was in my hometown yesterday, visiting my mom, to help her with an aspect of the her business. She has a DSL connection to the Internet, and a wireless router on which I can use my laptop computer, but I still missed another blog post.

Her wireless network went down, and I spent over two hours trying to get it back up. I was on the phone to India twice for tech help. The first person I spoke with spoke English very well, but she was of no real help at all. Everything she told me to do, I had already done in my own attempts to get the network running, and finally she had me download (on the desktop computer, wired bypassing the router) some troubleshooting software that supposedly would help me get the network up.

Unfortunately, the software she had me download was basically just a setup program. It walked me through all the steps of plugging everything in (which I already knew how to do, and had already done multiple times before calling for tech help), and then failed to finish because it told me my wireless router was not reaching the Internet. No duh! I cussed and screamed in frustration.

Fortunately, when I called the tech help back, I got a different person, but this guy had a very thick Indian accent. He did end up helping me get everything up again. Basically, he just had me change the IP address for the router.

Once I could, at last, get on the Internet with my laptop, I started writing my November 27 blog post. But when I saved the post, it disappeared. I don’t know what happened, or how, or why, but instead of having this page like you see, here, I got just a blank, white page with only the number 1 showing as text. Nothing I did restored or found the lost information, so I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning, I got up early enough to rewrite the blog post. I wrote it all again, and saved it. I opened it from my desktop to make sure it didn’t pull the erasing trick again, and all looked good. But when I uploaded it to the server, it was lost again—just a blank, white page with the number 1. I checked the file on my desktop, and sure enough, it was also just a blank, white page with the number 1. I cussed and cussed and cussed. What the hell was happening?

So, that’s why there was no post for November 27. I got the laptop primarily so I can post when away from home, and it has served that purpose well in the past few months that I’ve had it and been away from home. But then this week, I’ve twice been unable to post while away from home.

Anyway, I apologize for missing two days this week. Maybe I need to set up some kind of automated system that will post for me at the appropriate time. All I’d need to do is have the post written and ready, and the system would upload for me. But then again, if I had that kind of programming skill, I’d have a better Web site—using a real blogging program instead of this crappy, basic HTML layout.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com