I can haz internet? I canz!
Tuesday, September 25th, 2018 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelCable guy came out this morning to hook us up with internet access. First he checked the quality of our video signal (kind of a distraction, but I appreciated his thoroughness), and ended up replacing the squirrel-chewed, so-old-it-crunches cable from the pole out back. Which took a while, in the rain. He gets points for that.
Then he set up the modem. And then it got fun.
My laptop's been finicky about what wifi it'll connect to and what it won't. No idea why, but some places, it insists on a password (that shouldn't be required) in a field that won't let me type anything in it. Yeah. One of my several worries about this new install was that it would prove to be another of these.
And guess what? Yeah. This was slightly different, in that I could type 7 characters (numbers only) before it gave me a checksum error. Yes, this is effing weird. Cable guy had never seen anything like it before. Housemate's tablet connected fine, so it wasn't the new modem, it's my crotchety old computer.
Cable guy was stumped, and said I should call cable's tech support. Cable's tech support, once I finally got them to slow down enough that I could explain the problem, was polite but useless. Finding a local shop that will look at a machine this old instead of just laughing at it... yes, well. But I was definitely at the point of being ready to throw money at the problem just to make it someone else's problem.
I was sitting down to back up the laptop prior to taking it... somewhere (eventually -- I still have no car, after all), when it occurred to me: There are two wifi utilities on my computer, the built-in Windows one and the Intel one. I've been using the Intel one, on the grounds that anything non-Microsoft is a plus, but I figured whatthehell, I'd give the other a try.
Thank goodness I'm a technical writer. I couldn't even remember where to find the thing, but I had typed up notes when I switched it off. So I reverse-engineered the notes. I had to turn back on a service and do a bit of plinking around, but I got it up and running. And (drumroll) select network, click Connect, type in password (which this would let me do), and hey presto!
(I probably could have configured the Intel util to work if I had the specs on the networks it wouldn't talk to -- it has ready access to every possible setting, which is one of the reasons I chose it. But settings are no use if you don't know what to set them to.)
So I have internet now! At home! Where it's convenient!
And then I spent an entire hour on the cell (in the driveway) to get the phone company to cancel our non-working DSL without charging us a fortune. An hour, four departments, and finally a very rude woman who couldn't grasp that I didn't want their extra features. I think I succeeded, though I'll wait for the next bill before I'm sure.
Then he set up the modem. And then it got fun.
My laptop's been finicky about what wifi it'll connect to and what it won't. No idea why, but some places, it insists on a password (that shouldn't be required) in a field that won't let me type anything in it. Yeah. One of my several worries about this new install was that it would prove to be another of these.
And guess what? Yeah. This was slightly different, in that I could type 7 characters (numbers only) before it gave me a checksum error. Yes, this is effing weird. Cable guy had never seen anything like it before. Housemate's tablet connected fine, so it wasn't the new modem, it's my crotchety old computer.
Cable guy was stumped, and said I should call cable's tech support. Cable's tech support, once I finally got them to slow down enough that I could explain the problem, was polite but useless. Finding a local shop that will look at a machine this old instead of just laughing at it... yes, well. But I was definitely at the point of being ready to throw money at the problem just to make it someone else's problem.
I was sitting down to back up the laptop prior to taking it... somewhere (eventually -- I still have no car, after all), when it occurred to me: There are two wifi utilities on my computer, the built-in Windows one and the Intel one. I've been using the Intel one, on the grounds that anything non-Microsoft is a plus, but I figured whatthehell, I'd give the other a try.
Thank goodness I'm a technical writer. I couldn't even remember where to find the thing, but I had typed up notes when I switched it off. So I reverse-engineered the notes. I had to turn back on a service and do a bit of plinking around, but I got it up and running. And (drumroll) select network, click Connect, type in password (which this would let me do), and hey presto!
(I probably could have configured the Intel util to work if I had the specs on the networks it wouldn't talk to -- it has ready access to every possible setting, which is one of the reasons I chose it. But settings are no use if you don't know what to set them to.)
So I have internet now! At home! Where it's convenient!
And then I spent an entire hour on the cell (in the driveway) to get the phone company to cancel our non-working DSL without charging us a fortune. An hour, four departments, and finally a very rude woman who couldn't grasp that I didn't want their extra features. I think I succeeded, though I'll wait for the next bill before I'm sure.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-Sep-27, Thursday 06:38 pm (UTC)And yes I hope that the phone people jolly well don't put you through any extra misery/cost.
But sweet, sweet internet! *g*