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[backdated] Technology woes
Jun. 12th, 2015 11:59 pmD. was telling me that the microphone on his earbuds has stopped working, and I had him look up some higher quality earbuds. He was in the process of sending me the link when the Internet failed. We did the power cycling of the modem, etc., and all the lights came on except the flashing bottom one, and we called Comcast, and she tried all the things, and all the lights came on except the flashing bottom one, so she set up a service call for Monday. Bleh. D. was greatly dismayed, as he lives on the Internet, and I wasn’t too thrilled either, since it meant I would have to go to the office on Saturday (that is, the day I’m backdatedly posting this) and set up a bunch of e-mails and download a bunch of files so I could work from home without the vpn.
I suggested to D. that he could play with the Wii U, since he hadn’t done so for months. So he set that up… but then the power wouldn’t come on for the hand-held unit. We tried plugging it directly into the a/c circuit, but that didn’t work either, so either the hand-held unit is mysteriously dead, or the a/c adapter itself is bad – I sure hope it’s the latter. Meanwhile, he was all out of his month’s data allotment on his phone, and he didn’t want to play regular games on his computer, so all that was left was playing his DS and sleeping, I’m told. Books are not something to bother with.
Today (that is, now, Saturday the 13th) before going to the office to use the Internet, I tested more things, like plugging the modem directly into the cable from the wall (cutting the TV out of the system). Again, all the lights came on except the flashing bottom one. Then J. (who had sweetly showed up with a gift to make me happy, but I was much too distracted and didn’t want a gift (!!! poor J) suggested that we should try connecting the modem to a computer via the Ethernet cable, bypassing the router. Victory! The bottom light started to flash; web pages started to load. We then fiddled with the router a while and reintroduced it back into the system, and now everything works again. (Except… the Wii U, the earbud microphone, and of course J’s sprinkler system, but those are all for another day.)
I suggested to D. that he could play with the Wii U, since he hadn’t done so for months. So he set that up… but then the power wouldn’t come on for the hand-held unit. We tried plugging it directly into the a/c circuit, but that didn’t work either, so either the hand-held unit is mysteriously dead, or the a/c adapter itself is bad – I sure hope it’s the latter. Meanwhile, he was all out of his month’s data allotment on his phone, and he didn’t want to play regular games on his computer, so all that was left was playing his DS and sleeping, I’m told. Books are not something to bother with.
Today (that is, now, Saturday the 13th) before going to the office to use the Internet, I tested more things, like plugging the modem directly into the cable from the wall (cutting the TV out of the system). Again, all the lights came on except the flashing bottom one. Then J. (who had sweetly showed up with a gift to make me happy, but I was much too distracted and didn’t want a gift (!!! poor J) suggested that we should try connecting the modem to a computer via the Ethernet cable, bypassing the router. Victory! The bottom light started to flash; web pages started to load. We then fiddled with the router a while and reintroduced it back into the system, and now everything works again. (Except… the Wii U, the earbud microphone, and of course J’s sprinkler system, but those are all for another day.)