How I'm Spending My Fall Vacation

Spending most of this morning trying to fix my internet connectivity was not part of the plan. Basically the router couldn't see Cox's DHCP server to get an IP address. It had somehow become set to 0.0.0.0. There was about ninety minutes used on trying to fix things on my own, including swapping in my old, non-wireless router, but nothing worked. Then there was about an hour on the phone with Cox after that. About half of that was with their automated tech support system (which is actually pretty nifty), followed by connection to an actual human when the machine gave up in exasperation. The human eventually got it unclogged, although I'm not really sure what the root cause was, because he just kept babbling about possible causes, while trying all sorts of things at his end, or having me try stuff at mine.

Anyway, once it was unclogged, there was still the task of getting the router back up and running. We'd taken it out of the mix to simplify things while diagnosing the problem, and earlier in the process I'd reset as one of my early attempts, so a lot of settings had to be looked up and entered. There was also the part where you have to turn things on in a particular order to make it all work right. That was another hour or so. Bozhe moi.

It's all working now, though, and, as a gift with purchase, I now have a (longer than expected) list of all the wireless access points in my neighborhood.