How I wish I didn't need the Internet. Well, there's a qualifier in there. Sometimes I wish I didn't need the Internet. Actually, there's another qualifier. Sometimes, like when it's not working and refuses to cooperate, I wish I didn't need the Internet.
See, we have The Most Temperamental Connection On the Planet. We also get the net from the least reliable of companies, MediaCom. Why? Because we can't get anything else but Verizon out here, and that costs WAY too much to be worth it. And to give you an idea, getting Verizon would be as much as we pay for the Internet and the land line phone, and in our case the phone is the expensive one.
Anyway, because we're blessed with the best IP on the planet (eyes roll frantically), when we have a crappy connection, they blame it on our landlord. The landlord, in turn, says it's not his problem. Which would make sense; if the cables aren't physically snapped in two, I can't see that it's somehow his problem.
Since we have three computers, we networked the house. This was working just fine until just before Thanksgiving when everything went all to hell and MediaCom blamed the problem on our router.
A Linksys. Somehow, I doubted, so I did not call Linksys. Nope, I fiddled with it for hours until I was in tears. I got it to the point that the Internet would work, but the wireless network wouldn't. Fine. The Boy can steal the wireless from the neighbours for a while until I got up the strength to try again.
I tried again today. At two thirty I began the process. Sometime before nine thirty, with a long, frustrated time out to eat dinner and watch Monster's Inc., I managed to get everything working again. Do I know how? No. Do I know why? No. Will it probably crash and burn in another couple of days? Yeah, probably.
Currently, all the little lights on the modem are flashing, which they're not supposed to do, but we're connected, so I don't care. Of course, that could just be because of the rain. Anytime is rains we have trouble with the Internet.
Stupid thing. I just hope it hangs in there for a while this time.
Most of the reason I decided to get the router working again was that we're on the hunt for a Wii. Yeah, I know, those two things sure sound related, right? Well, I've been scouring the Internet for resources and learning all about everything a Wii does, and I discovered that Firefox is supposed to be putting out a Wii browser. Before now, I'd always assumed that the Wii's wireless capabilities were just useful for buying the old games, but a browser would be nice.
See, TB has been grousing because we do not have The Cable. This apparent lack is just fine with me because my family has never had The Cable, and I do not see any reason to pay for fifty channels you don't watch than get four you don't watch for free. I loved Mythbusters and HGTV and the Food Network and Comedy Central back in CF where we got the cable included with the rent, but I don't see any reason to go out of the way for it. TB does not see this my way.
Now that he's complaining, any time he gets near a television, all he does is flip through the channels and pick three or four different shows to watch all at once while he eats. Not only is this irritating, well, OK, it's just irritating, but it's never anything he has to see, just stuff that happens to be on.
However, he trumped me with the football. The networks aren't showing football anymore, and, yeah, TB likes to watch it from time to time. So, I signed him up to ESPN (for FREE) so he can watch the games online.
He hasn't.
Why? "It's not comfortable." Even though he has a laptop, and he can sit in bed and watch football, the idea of watching the game on the LCD screen is so abhorrent... Oh, but yes, he does want a widescreen someday. (I don't understand either.)
So, I thought, if the Wii gets a Firefox browser, we can pay five bucks to get the Internet channel, and then he can watch the ESPN football over the Internet through the Wii on the TV whenever he wants for basically nothing.
He cannot beat me for logic, but practically speaking, when I explained this to him, he had to say that our router wasn't working and we couldn't have a wireless Wii (even if we did have a Wii) until then. So, I fixed the router- personal challenge.
Now, all we need is the Wii. We should have got one last October when we wandered into the Best Buy and discovered that they had a buttload of them on the shelf in spite of having heard that every place in the universe was sold out. But, we didn't really have the money at the time.
This experience gave us hope, and we've been fruitlessly searching this last week or so. I hear rumours of Jan. 21st, but obviously, rumours. Well, we'll see.