What I did on my summer vacation

It’s been a productive weekend already, and I’m not even halfway through.

I bought a new computer desk Thursday, and Sarah came over to help set it up yesterday. In point of fact, Sarah came over with the kids and set up my computer desk while I kept the kids fed and busy and occasionally went upstairs to say, “Do you need me to help you with anything?” and she responded, “No, I’m good.” This is because she is handy, and I am not. I can’t stand doing things like putting together computer desks. Before I even bought one, I asked her if she would put it together for me, because that would completely affect the type of desk I would buy, and the type of store I would buy it from. Having a friend that likes to work with her hands is a wonderful thing. As I said yesterday, we trade services—she puts my desk together, and I take care of her kids. Works for me.

I realized this morning that my old desk (which is going into the guest room) is about twenty-five years old. I bought it when I bought my first PC, which, I think, was in 1984. Might have been 1985. Yes, I’ve been computing longer than millions of Americans were alive. I’ve been online since the modem days of 1986. I fought it for months after my friends were into the BBS world, because I knew I’d get hopelessly addicted to being online and spend hours and hours and hours a week on it. I was not wrong.

And now we come to the Saturday morning duh. My FIOS router is upstairs in my office. I unplugged it while moving the desks, and left it unplugged until last night because we wound up going to the county fair last night (and a big woo-hoo! to Sarah for winning the blue ribbon with her brownies). When I got home and wanted to blog, I plugged it in and tried to get online. Connected to Fred, no problem, but I couldn’t get a page to save my life. After a few minutes, I gave up and did some other things on the computer and went to bed. This morning, after feeding the cats, I tried again. And failed again. I could not for the life of me figure out what was wrong. Then I went to the local admin page, which is internal, and so doesn’t need a modem. Finally, something caught my eye. The word “COAX.”

I am so glad I didn’t call Verizon over this. That would have been so embarrassing. I never reconnected the coaxial cable, so sure, the router was sending Fred perfectly, but it didn’t have any broadband to pass along while it was at it. Here’s a tip to my readers: You really need to plug the damned cable into the router if you want to have a wireless network. I can vouch for that.

In any case, Sarah’s coming over for part two of the new desk (I got two, they’re going in an L shape in my office so that this computer can finally go upstairs where it belongs), and we’ll be watching movies as well, along with my niece (and new driver) Sorena. Girls movie afternoon. There will be popcorn.