The Router: a sob story

Yesterday I spent several minutes writing about what happened to our computer router. Then Yahoo ate it. I was not amused.

Here’s the recap of the saga of the router, originally titled, “It’s dead, Jim. I’m a doctor, not a computer tech…”

We had a bad lightning storm on Tuesday night. I had enticed Hubby upstairs at a reasonable hour, so as a result, we were asleep before Midnight. All Hell broke loose at 2 AM.

Recall, if you will, that we get rather nervous about lightning storms due to the fact that our chimney was struck by lightning a few Summers back. We are a little “gun shy” to say the least.

I said many a prayer early into Wednesday morning as I listened to the storm rage outside. “Thank you, GOD, that we are safe inside, snug in our dry beds. Bless those poor animals outside. Keep us safe from another strike. PLEASE let the kids sleep through this.” The storm kept me awake for more than an hour. Every time I started to drift off to sleep, the storm would kick it up another notch. Then something exploded outside.

I snapped my head up to see if my alarm clock was still glowing. It was. We still had power. I had startled Hubby awake. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a very alert voice for 2-something AM.

“Transformer blew. We still have power.” We settled back in and tried to sleep. The storm raged on and on. Sometime close to 3 AM, I managed to fall asleep.

Wednesday afternoon I tried to check my email. “Send/Receive Error”.

Ut oh.

Best Friend, the children’s godmother, called with a need for emergency transport. I left a note for Hubby about the computer. At that point I feared it was the modem. Apparently my note was not clear enough. I called to let Hubby know we were finally on our way home and explained my note. By the time the children and I returned from our rescue mission, Hubby was hard at work diagnosing the problem.

“It’s not the modem,” he tells me as I’m dialing the internet provider to get a diagnostic ping. “I’m on the net right now.” Several minutes and much cable moving later, Hubby said confidently, “It’s the router.”

Lovely. More money to spend.

Hubby spent several minutes on the phone with the router manufacturer. Our new router should be here today. If it doesn’t make it today, it will be Monday before it is delivered. We have only one computer attached directly to the modem. This is the computer with the keyboard that doesn’t work right and the insane mouse. Don’t bother to suggest switching equipment around. We plan to get a newer keyboard and mouse soon.

The old router has been put back to work. This is the same router that decided certain computers could not access the internet on certain days, whereas other days they could connect just fine. Obviously, this situation is NOT good for playing online games. Connecting to GameSpy is flakey enough without having the router play roulette with my access. Since I’m all for reducing stress and anxiety, I will not be logging in to play until this situation is remedied.

Once the new router arrives and is installed, we hope to be able to link all our machines so we can play NWN with the kids. The girls still need some help with game mechanics. Playing a magic user as a noob just is not a good idea.