It really should be more simple. Especially in the 21st century. All I wanted was to connect my school-issued laptop to our new router so I could more easily complete school tasks...
It started with the purchase of our new router. I asked a sales clerk if there was anything special I needed to know. I am by no means an expert in technology, but I do have a basic understanding of how things work. I am not fearful of trying something new, either. But I do (and did) get very frustrated at times.
Sales clerk said it should be fine. In fact, it was the exact same router she used with her school-issued laptop, except she's a student. 'Nuff said. We bought the router.
Steve was actually more excited to get started on hooking everything up than I was. But I was more distracted with a newly-crawling Sydney, so...
He attempts to follow the directions on how to set up the router. BIG MISTAKE! We succeed in getting short with each other. But then again, both of us were running on fumes at that point and truly needed a good night's sleep. We took a step back, refocused, and attempted, again, to figure the router out. In the process of trying to see where connections needed to be made, I turned off a power-strip that connected to more than I initially realized. We lost our cable connection when the modem was turned off.
I called the cable company, and we had to go through steps to get the cable reconnected. The first phone call didn't work. I called again and this time was connected directly to a representative. She was very helpful and ensured the cable worked, but only the HD channels really came through. And we have more channels that are not HD than are. All the others were incredibly fuzzy. Argh! She said to truly correct the issue, we needed to have someone come to the house to fix whatever went wrong. It would take 4 days to do so.
So, 4 fuzzy days later, the cable man comes to the house. He was very helpful, too, but basically told us that when the phone representative refreshed the cable connection to the house, it connected with a different pixel count than what we initially had, which was fantastic for the HD channels, but completely detrimental to the non-HD channels. I don't really understand all this, but suffice it to say, if we have something we really want to see on a few non-HD channels in particular, we have to manually adjust the pixel thingybopperwhatjamajiggers. Aargh!!
Cable dude also helped Steve (no, not helped...he couldn't touch anything...nonchalantly spoke of the easiest way...) to connect the router to the modem, etc. It was exactly as my friend Rafe said to do it (whom I asked the Monday after all this happened). Well, we figured things were looking up at this point. Too soon. Should have known better since this is, after all, Steve and Dionne, who have the crappiest of luck at times.
Steve is excited that we can finally load the router software on my laptop. I bring it home from school, we load the disc, and...nothing. It tries to connect, says I need the key (guarded wifi), I load the key, it tries to connect, says I need the key, and so on and so forth. I cannot figure out why it keeps cycling. Even Rafe didn't know what to say when I told him. Aaargh!!!
And to add insult to injury, for some confounded reason, our vcr/dvd player isn't connecting to play dvds any longer! Steve and I got cuddled up and ready to watch a good movie last night. The player says it is playing the movie, and the timer moves, but the tv screen will not show the movie. I have absolutely no idea what the cable guy did, but Steve says he admitted he cut a cord somewhere and thought it was a cable cord. We checked all cords to make sure they were plugged in and cannot fathom where something went wrong.
And all because of a little router...
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