I Tremble With Rage

This is what I've been trying to post for the last few days:

Figures, soon as I resolve to spend more time blogging, my internet goes out.

At first I took it as further proof that Comcast (and other ISPs) are evil. But diligent tracking down of the problem has revealed that it's my router that's the cause.

It's pretty old in electronic equipment terms, so it's not exactly a surprise. Basically, what happens is that the network is still there, all my computers are still connected and can talk with the router as well as one another, but it's not able to receive any traffic from outside of the network - pages won't load, data won't arrive, and so on. Which means, in practice, no internet connection.

My fix - which consisted of flipping the power switch on and off while alternating praying and hitting things - seems to be holding for now but that's what I thought on Saturday night, too. And Monday.

Yeah, so spending a few sweltering hours trying to figure out the latest reason the networks gone down only to find that it's gone out again just when I want to actually use it doesn't do wonders for my desire to blog, I'll tell you.

Anyway, the problem hasn't cleared up and it's become much more frequent. It's a matter of hours now before the network conks out. Fortunately, my router's still under warranty so I'll be getting a replacement soon. Unfortunately, that involves packing up the old one and shipping it off to the manufacturer and waiting for the new one to arrive.

My workaround now is the simple expedient of jacking directly into the modem - which works fine so I can at least check my mail from time to time. But since I'm not the only one in my home who craves the internet, I'm not going to be able to hop online as often as I'd like. Writing in advance and scheduling posts, though, should mean that the blog shouldn't suffer from much more neglect. But the way things are going, who knows? I don't expect many more outages but I make no promises.