Please take the time...

...to go to this website and vote. http://www.rallytorescue.org/ It's a contest where the winning group gets $5K in pet food coupons. I personally have voted for Buddy and the Border Collie group Border Collies In Need Inc. There are 10 rescue organizations to choose from, each has a short printed blurb plus a short video detailing their story. You don't have to watch the videos to be able to vote and I will ask you to vote for Buddy and his group (they're #4 in the running right now), but make your own choice if you feel like spending a little time to view the entrants.

Please take the time, it's a really good cause. Please pass this on.

Network Troubles (Final Answer)

It wasn't my laptop. It wasn't my firewall. Slowly every computer in the house lost it's ability to connect wirelessly. Finally the computer in the basement with the adapter matched to the router lost it's ability to connect. So the culprit must be the router's wireless capability. I guess that since it's a piece of hardware that I bought 9 years ago when we moved here, I should be pleased with a piece of electronic equipment that performed flawlessly for that long.

So today I installed a new router. The PC adapter for the old router worked with the new one but since it only connects at 11 mbps, I installed a new adapter on the basement PC. Everything is working just fine...hopefully for another 9 years.

Network Troubles (continued)

Sheesh! I thought I had this fixed, but apparently not. Laptop still goes fubar after and hour or so of Internet connectivity.

So I started shutting off stuff. Like TeaTimer. Yeah, I know it's a pain in the a$$ but it's saved my bacon really good twice so I'll trade some residual slowness for the protection. But TeaTimer doesn't appear to have been the cause of the problem.

Next shut down, the firewall. It hasn't nagged me to update it in a while and that's probably a strong argument for it not functioning correctly. Once it was turned off, things seemed better so I grabbed a recent installation package from the web and did a fresh install. So far the laptop's been running with no connectivity issues for about four hours straight.

Someone say network troubles?

You know, after working on computer equipment all day long, the last thing I want to do when I come home at night is troubleshoot my home equipment. So it's been a majorly crappy thing that the wireless part of my home network has been effed up.

At first I thought it was the wireless adapter on my laptop but I took it to work and it operates just fine on work wireless. My nephew was complaining of connectivity issues before he left for the Air Force, but quite frankly I didn't give a $hit if he could connect or not (long story).

The other wireless user in the house has an adapter matched to the router so no connectivity problems there and if I drag my laptop upstairs and plug in an ethernet cable, we fly.

I've disabled/enabled the adapter, without and with reboots. I've run every ipconfig release/renew/flush/register both via Windows and from the command line. Nothing. Deleted the adapter-reinstalled it. Zip. No Internet.

About the only thing about the router that isn't factory default is the IP Address schema which I had to change because of a VPN conflict with my work network. So today I shut down all the computers but for one cabled connection and set the router back to factory default. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! I am posting this via wireless from my deck.

My world is complete.