Technical Jargon

Today I wrestled out of my class…and lost. I don’t have a natural inclination to techie things and today my lack of ability brought me to my knees.

Yesterday I noticed something was wrong with my internet connection. I went to investigate. Hmmm, no lights were lit on my wireless router. I tried unplugging and replugging, switching plugs, disconnecting wires and reconnecting. No dice. After consulting with several of these “techie types” I determined my power supply was shot and needed to get a new one.

I mentioned this to Jason last night and he gave me an Apple Airport Express that he didn’t need anymore. “Great!” I thought. “I’ll set that up in the morning.” Ha ha ha…little did I know.

I started out by plugging it in and connecting the “Ethernet” cable. (I’ve learned that term in the past 24 hours) As you know, Apple products are designed for people like me. S-I-M-P-L-E. Apparently all you need to do is plug it in and you’re pretty much set. 14 hours later…I’m still without internet.

What is a LAN? A domain name? WEP? IPP? Why is this so confusing?!?! At one point in the set up, it asked for information that would have been supplied by my internet provider. Since I didn’t have this information, I called Bell. This did not help much!

The guy I was talking to didn’t realize until 15 minutes into our conversation that I had a wireless router. He assured me that the model of modem I have will not work wirelessly. This confused me as it had been working perfectly fine until yesterday. He then went on to say I had been using someone else’s internet. Ummmm, no. It was mine! Finally I made him realize that I was using a wireless router. Geesh!

It was then that I discovered Bell should’ve sent me a wireless modem in the first place. I didn’t even know that was possible. To add to the frustration, I had just gone through a back & forth with Bell about a month ago when a power bump knocked out my modem. It took 4 weeks to straighten all that out and now I need a different modem?

So, now I wait. Stealing internet from my unassuming neighbours ☺