Wireless

Finally, my parents decided to get wireless, thereby allowing me to use my computer as more than a typewriter-cum-Gameboy and my mother to work without feeling guilty about monopolizing the house's single Internet connection. The Bellsouth/AT&T/whatever-they're-calling-themselves-this-month man arrived this morning to install it, and Mom went off to teach, leaving me to learn the system.

Two minutes after I leave him with the computer and the sealed box containing the new router, he calls me back into the room and asks if we have DSL. "I don't know," I tell him, "I've been basically out of the house for the last five years. Why?"

He had discovered that our computer had Internet access, and wondered what the problem was. I then explained that we had a new component inside Box Number One, and he happily went about setting up our connection.

Ten minutes later, it was time to test a laptop.

Ever since I returned from Edinburgh, my computer had been giving me fits with connectivity issues. Essentially, it would find a network (usually our neighbors'), but would refuse to connect to the network, citing DNS errors or other such nonsense. I tried everything - typing odd strings at the command prompt (always fun), fixing proxy settings, removing firewalls - but still it refused to play nice. I even took the damn thing to the Geek Squad down at Best Buy, but it worked for them and I went home, several shades of red.

After the turncoat Vaio made me look like an idiot, I assumed our neighbors had changed their settings, effectively keeping me off, and waited until the new system went in to worry about my computer. Well, Bellsouth Man and I discovered that the Vaio still had no intention of connecting to the network today. He, too, tried a few things, but made no more headway than I had. Eventually, he gave up, so I said I would keep turning things off until it worked, and sat down to try the oh-so-reliable "monkeys with typewriters" method of computer repair.

A few minutes later, I went back to Best Buy with my tail between my legs.

"Hi," I told Jason the Geek Squad agent, "my computer hates me." I then explained that it refused to find the network, that I'd just returned from the world's most restrictive ResNet system, and that the Bellsouth man hadn't been able to figure it out.

"Sometimes I think they pay them too much at Bellsouth," he muttered, then magically removed my proxy settings - the thing I'd been trying to do for weeks - and gave me his number in case the computer still didn't work.

It does. I'm writing this at my kitchen table while Callie gives me the evil eye for not Throwing the Ball. Best of all, the Geek Squad didn't charge me a thing, again. I love those guys.