Rumours of My Disappearance

... were greatly exaggerated. By me, in fact, though quite unexpectedly.

The story goes that I hopped a bus to attempt to acquire a new modem, to use in the interim, until the replacement one arrived from my ISP. Unfortunately, I'm either blind or a ditz.... possibly both, and I could not find the Big Box Store that had the modem for a reasonable price (as found by The Other Half). Instead I wandered into the mall in search of some a possible entrance to the Big Box Store, as well as to acquire some form of portable sustenance.

Did not find the BBS... did find A&W. Teen Burger combo with rings. Savour the flavours and the childhood memories that flow with them. Life is good.

Wandered around the mall in an attempt to find another electronics store, which I did, easily enough and asked after cordless phones, because I'm so sick of being leashed to a headset at this point, I'm starting to consider scissors. The nice man behind the counter provided me with two options for cheapy single handsets: one white, one black. I picked the black because I like it more. He goes into the back and checks the stock... no black, he says, they have the white, but there's other options here: and he points out a different black one and... gods have mercy... a red one. My red. Good Gods was I tempted. But it was a question of budgets. I could afford the cheapy one, the red one would have been a bit of a stretch... but it's just so pretty...

Sneaky man units, reading me like a freakin book and tempting me, tempting me sorely, to spend more money.

If I can't stop thinking about it... I'm going back tomorrow and getting the damn red phone.

Where was I?

Oh yes! So I get the cordless thing, and head out of the mall, disappointed that I couldn't get the modem, but trying to cheer myself with the phone, and knowing that, if worse came to worse, I could at least have a nice phone call with The Other Half and fall asleep on the handset. I was pretty bummed out by the time I got back to the apartment, and trudged up my steps only to find... a delivery notice.

Now I'd checked the Ebay package at work earlier. The Noro hadn't left Texas so I was a little confused as to what this could be. Hope rising I wandered downstairs (the nice delivery person had left it with my building manager for me) and, powers be praised!, it was my replacement modem from my ISP. They said 3-5 business days when they put the order in on Sunday, but boy howdy they got 'er done!

I skip upstairs, gleefully happy, looking forward to surprising TOH with my online presence. Get it carefully unpacked (oooh! shiny! new model! yum!) and hooked up, waiting for sync, when the phone rings. I explain the story to TOH and he does what I knew he'd do: admonish me, chide me, scold me like a naughty child for not getting the red phone. He's very happy I have the modem and wants to know why I'm not online. I explain about needing to set things up; he, of course, understands.

Setup takes about what one would expect, and then, per the instruction manual, I attempt to browse.

It fails.

I try again.

It fails again.

Run tests, perform troubleshooting.

Failure.

Either DNS fails, or connectivity fails, or it goes to local only.

I disable the wireless.

Browsing is sssssllllllloooooooooooooooooowwwww.

I call again.

The nice tech support guy checks everything out, finds out that my speed was dropped, kicks it back up again. I run a speed test, it's still a little low, let the agent know, and he kicks it up a notch again. Very polite, very efficient, apparently new. Good kid. Speed test is rocking where it should be, up around 6 on the download. Wireless connects just fine, browses smooth.

After a quick tweak of my wireless settings (because the defaults make me a sad webpanda), I'm back in business, and browsing just fine.

If only a sweater would go so smoothly...


**Edited**
And for those who may be so inclined to notice: This post is the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. Happy 42 everyone!