Grrrr

(See that picture? It represents me punching Comcast in the face. ^_^ )

My new Linksys wireless router is installed... and nothing has changed, my internet service still gets interrupted on a regular basis.

This almost certainly means that it's the modem. The problem seems to be between the modem and the router. Anyway someone on the City of Heroes boards told me two months ago that he had the exact same problem and had Comcast swap out his 3Com modem for a Motorolla modem and his problems were solved. I have a 3Com modem. I tried calling Comcast to have them come out and swap mine out (about two months ago I called them) and they flat out refused to do so because according to them I have no connectivity issues. (As I said... the problem is between the modem and the router, they wouldn't be able to see it from their end.) Well of course this was only one of several very different explanations for what my problem probably was, but now it's looking like it was the correct one after all.

So... I guess I have to take my modem in to their service center now and get a Motorolla. Or just tell Comcast to go to h*ll and get a different ISP. ^_^

Anyway here's a link to the new Blue Diamond Almond flavors (the one I didn't buy and couldn't quite remember is Maui Onion and Garlic).

Tom and I visited Jeff and Jeri-Lynn and had yummy chocolate cake. Tom got his panda suit back, and some other stuff. I gave J & JL a perfectly good Netgear wireless modem and a video card that I'm almost fairly certain is a Geforce 4 MX440 or maybe a MX420, with I think 64mb memory... I think. Maybe even 128mb who knows? Anyway we're pretty sure it's more powerful than what Jeri-Lynn has in her computer currently, which is a Geforce 2.

Things Fall Apart, The Center Can Not Hold...

So having installed my new router last night with a little help from Jeff, I thought I was on my way to bigger and better internet service, but it soon became apparent that this wasn't to be the case, and my cheap 3Com modem was the real culprit. Of course, Comcast is closed on Sundays... their local walk-in branch anyway. Being the impatient person that I am and having money in the bank, I drove up to CompUSA and bought a new cable modem, rather than wait until tomorrow and go get another loaner from Comcast. (Which is really silly since I still need to take the 3Com back in to them anyway).

The Motorolla was $90. The Linksys was $80. There's also a $20.00 rebate on it but I never count mail-in rebates because I probably won't mail them in, and if I do I still may never hear anything back. That's been my usual experience anyway.

I bought the Linksys. For one thing, I figured it would be a good match for my Linksys router, and although I know Motorolla is one of the best for modems, I assume Cisco isn't a bad choice either. And the Linksys modem stacks neatly above or below the Linksys router, I like that. ^_^

I stopped off at the gaming session and gave Kristin and Sky some stuff. Well, really, I only gave Sky something that already belonged to him. I gave Kristin my extra Return of the King box set, and her Tori cd back, and lent her the latest Sarah MacLaughlan cd. And I ate some very yummy food, including but not limited to, Jerri-Lynn's rice and beans, Julie's chorizo won tons, and Michael's chicken vegetable dumpling soup. Yum! Also the typically very yummy Pandora house scones and fruit and veggies.

Then I came home and proceeded to install my new Linksys modem, which required a call to their tech support. I didn't really know this, but they had to get a lot of information about the modem from me to set things up on their end before it would work properly.

The thing is, it didn't exactly solve my connectivity issues... instead of long 5-15 second pauses, I was getting a constant "rubberbanding" effect while playing City of Heroes... so that if I ran towards a tree, I'd run at it at least 5 times, maybe 10 or more... and then I'd run past it several times, and then run away from it a half dozen times before I really was well beyond it for good. Very very annoying. I'm not sure what the problem is, because later I lost all internet service for a good 10-15 minutes, and I'm not sure that this is a modem problem... because service came back later and everything seemed fine again.

My other problem is with my network... some of my computers (specifically my laptop and my 3rd computer, which both run Win98) can't even see the network. I tried rebooting everything multiple times, and I just can't figure out what the problem is, there wasn't a problem before. More mysteriously, my other computers can see one of these computers fine, but none of them can see the laptop. (The laptop is the only machine plugged directly into the router, into the 2nd ethernet port... all the others are plugged into two hubs that I have that are all ultimately connected to the first ethernet port on the router).

Anyway... very frustrating, and maybe also responsible for some of my other problems, I'm not sure. I just wish things would work. Sometimes I feel like I'm not meant to ever have a properly functioning network and/or good internet access.