Bah, Humbug!

July 4, 2009,

Happy Independence Day. What a beautiful day today was, the first sunny and warm day in three weeks now. I spent 4 freakin hours working trying to fix an internet for a "client". The word client is in quotes because they are not a client, hubby and I volunteer at this organization with computer stuff.

Instead of over dosing on House, MD Season 3 and quilting, and sipping a ice cold coffee in a frosted mug, I got stuck going up and down three flights of stairs trying to figure out what was wrong.

The cry for help came in the form of an email at 11:13 AM. This email was addressed to myself and another lady who in the past have assisted with the center, and have dropped the ball in the middle of helping out with technical stuff. So there goes my thinking that this other lady will try to resolve this internet issue.

So my first thought was, will stores be open if I needed parts? So I called the local computer store and was on hold for 20 minutes and did not get anybody nor did I get a message that the store was closed. Then I looked on the internet and saw that another store was opened till 6:00 PM today.

You ask, why didn't you go tomorrow (Sunday) instead? We are planning to go visit hubby's mother because it's her birthday tomorrow. So it had to be done today.

So I reached the place at 1:30 PM, troubleshooted it and needed a router. So went to the store and luckily it was open, and bought a router. Configured it and everything was working fine till I went down to the first floor, and realized nothing was working there.

Went down to the basement to see if computers there were working, and found out that some computers were working and some were not. Found a hub in the basement that was not there before and wondered why the hub was there in the first place. The hub should be a switch instead. So went back to the store and bought a switch. Replaced the switch and got internet on the basement computers.

Went back to the first floor and still no internet. F*CK. Went back to the basement and followed the confusing wires. Went back to the first floor, still nothing. unplugged everything on the first floor and did more troubleshooting. Finally I realized what the culprit was. One of the network wire was plugging itself back into the switch, and causing everything to go hay wire. So unplugged that one culprit and everything was working fine.

So was the router necessary and was the switch necessary you ask? Probably. Because the router kept on going down after we power cycled it. The switch was definitely necessary, to replace the hub.

If we could have billed for this time, plus time and a half for working on a holiday plus aggrevation fee... could have bought me a new cue... oh yeah, I already have a cue that I am picking up in the next few days.

Quilt & Bitch