Modem go boom!

I spent most of last week trying to figure out why I was having such trouble staying online. I had two calls in to Belkin, in case I had a router problem, and several calls in to AT&T, some of which actually helped for a time. Still, during the weekend, that little DSL light would flicker off, then come back on, winking and blinking and throwing me offline in the middle of important conversations (like IR:TNP brainstorming). Sunday, of course, saw the visit from the AT&T tech - who said all was well with my phone jack.

But yesterday, no DSL light at all. None. Nada. Zip. This occasioned another call to AT&T.

This time, the tech on the other end tested my line and said he couldn't get a signal from the "D-slam" - whatever that was - and he'd send out a technician from the DSL end of things today. Turns out that the guy who stopped by on Sunday was from the telephone end of things, and the phone's been working just fine.

So, I spent the rest of Monday (with the kids home) doing laundry, raking leaves, and trying to clean out the carport so we could actually, y'know, use it.

The tech came today, and the upshot of the whole thing was that the modem had gone bad. Probably had been going bad for the past couple of weeks.

And now I have a shiny new modem/wireless router sitting on top of my CPU. A shiny white one, which clashes with my black and silver comp. He took the bad modem... but I have a perfectly good wireless router left behind.

What bothers me the most about it all is: I had all this time without the distraction of IM and surfing to get some writing done... and I played computer Scrabble.

Technology... don't you just love it?

blech

I've been threatening to make molasses cookies for at least a week now. Today, I did.

Not impressed, though I keep eating them. Hubby says he'll take them to work. I'll have to come up with something else for the kids' lunches.

Not terrribly impressed with the sites I've looked at to replace MSN Groups, either. I went so far as to sign up at Convos, thinking - from their demo - that I could use pictures in the welcome page. No such luck. Text only, on a white background. Can change the text color, size and font, but that's not really much use. Not when I'm used to custom buttons, custom fonts, colors on black, pictures and tables. I'm going to look at Multiply again, maybe sign up and poke around as myself - but I don't hold out much hope for any of the things we have at MSN Groups. I'll also wait until I see what's going on with Windows Live Spaces, then make my final decision.

Not feeling at all sanguine...