Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Another frustrating computer day. Late last night our internet connection just died. No websites, no Messenger, no Skype, no emails in or out, no connection to my client’s system. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. I rebooted the router. Still nothing.

Same thing this morning when I booted up. So at 6:00 AM I called my ISP. After an hour of diagnosis and testing, the Support guy determined that the router had died. But all its lights were on and flickering away like in a demented cockpit, as they normally do. Fortunately, my folks were coming over here for lunch and to pick up my Mum’s old sewing machine (another tale), so I called and asked them to pick up a new ADSL modem/router from the store in their town (we can’t buy such things in our town though the electronics store can get them in within 24 hours).

After we had lunch, Mum and Dad headed home and I connected the new modem. The instructions had three steps only—how hard could it be? Problem was, one of those steps was “configure the modem” with no information on how to configure it, what the native IP address of it was, etc. I called the ISP again and the guys there helped me establish a connection around 4:00 PM, but that was just on a direct line to a machine. The ISP guys couldn’t help me with the network settings and warned me that some settings might need to be changed on the server too.

So another call, this time to the PC Guru guys. The very patient Mike helped me through changing the IP address of the new modem so it matched what my server was looking for, and removing the modem’s DHCP settings so that the server ones applied (WTF?). He then helped me do some ipconfig stuff (ipconfig /release; ipconfig /flushdns; and ipconfig /renew) on all the machines. After another reboot of the server and all PCs as well as the modem, we FINALLY got access after 5:00 PM today.

The cost of a new modem ($110) was small in comparison to the real cost:

• 8 hours: Lost day’s work—and therefore pay—for me… and this is with my new client too. Not a good look for the second week of working for them.
• 3 hours: Round trip for my folks + fuel
• 1 hour: Time on phone with PC Guru
• 2 hours: Time on phone with ISP’s Support

Bloody computers… [mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble]