Wednesday and Thursday were days filled with frustration for me. Having returned home from vacation, there was naturally a mountain of work to accomplish, most of which had to be accomplished online. There is quite a bit of writing (blog entries and reviews) that I could work on as well, but even for those I have the internet “on” in the background, to check out maps, fact check, etc.
August was at Aikido on Wednesday, and I went to pick him up with Ciárán. The three of us walked home, approximately 10 blocks (see, I just looked up the distance on the internet) and then had lunch. After getting the kids situated for the afternoon, my wife and I noticed some issue with the modem. Actually, it’s a combination modem and wireless router, but I’ll just stick with referring to it as a modem. The power light was red instead of its usual green, and a number of other indicator lights were lit green when normally they wouldn’t be lit at all.
Trying to get online was fruitless, and I spent a while attempting to reboot the modem. Unplugging everything, powering things down, hard resets, pretty much every trick one could think of. Then I call technical support. Qwest has this voice navigation system to weed out serious complaints or whatever, but all it does is frustrate me. Eventually I got through to a human being and discussed the issue with him. After going through the usual steps, it was determined that my modem was dead.
Alright, so I needed a new modem. Qwest would send one out. I needed to get transferred to the Qwest business service department, which wound up taking a much longer time than necessary. Thankfully they would overnight a new modem free of charge. The issue, unfortunately, was that by the time we had gotten to this point, we missed the window for when the package would arrive at my location the next day. I was looking at being internet-less at the very least until Friday.
Unfortunately, I was committed to some other obligations Wednesday evening, so by the time the issue of my modem was properly diagnosed it was time to fix dinner, get the kids on their evening routine for bath and bedtime, then head out. I wouldn’t be able to do anything on my own about this issue until the next day.
Thursday morning would have gone a lot better had I not needed to put the van in the shop. It was a scheduled maintenance visit, since we had driven the vehicle to Mt. Rainier and the Olympic Peninsula and were about to drive to Spokane and back (on the other side of the state) on Saturday. It’s a good thing too, because the rear brake housings were leaking brake fluid. I started out first by walking to Fred Meyer in search of a new modem to purchase. I decided that I didn’t want to wait until Friday to get my internet back up. Fred Meyer didn’t have any modems. Radio Shack, just over a mile away might have what I am looking for, so that was where I walked to next. Unfortunately, they had only one DSL modem, and it wasn’t a combination wireless router, which I required.
Upon returning home (by foot) it was lunch time and I helped get the kids situated for the afternoon. Then I decided to go to Best Buy, knowing that store would have what I wanted. Unfortunately, since our vehicle was still getting looked at by the mechanic, I had to take the bus. Not wanting to get into the details of the bus schedule, I’ll sum up by saying the bus was 45 minutes late. This was problematic because it’s not like I don’t have other things that I could be doing (like writing) but mostly because I really needed to pee. Not wanting to miss the buss if it came while I was using a restroom, I stuck it out and by the time the bus did arrive, I really felt like I was going to burst. Naturally, the bus doesn’t go from my house to my exact destination, so I got off (Is the correct term disembarked?) the bus and started walking – rather briskly, because I really needed “to go” by this point.
While I’m walking to Best Buy from the bust stop, I hear my name being called. I look, but don’t see anybody, so I continue on. I hear my name again, and again. Finally I find the source – in a car pulling out of a parking lot behind me is Lara, my niece. She asks if I need a ride somewhere (she has the day off and just happened to be at a place where our paths would cross. I took her up on the offer to quickly get to a restroom (Target, which is right next to Best Buy). Then she offered to give me a lift home, which again I was glad to accept.
At Best Buy (after a relieving trip to Target’s restroom) I picked up a DSL modem and wireless router all in one package that is branded with Qwest, which I suspect would be the same product that was big sent to me. I purchased it, and we headed home. Upon returning home, my wife informs me that our oldest, Kyle, who is at Gonzaga for summer quarter, needs help with his final paper which is due the next day. He wants to email it to us, get our feedback, and possibly help with revisions – which would require us sending him back his paper with notes. Looks like the internet really did need to get set back up on Thursday instead of waiting for Qwest to get the modem out to me.
Setting up the modem took longer than it should have (much like this blog post) and I wound up having to contact technical support again. Apparently all that was needed was a speed test from Qwest to get things working properly for some reason, as I had done everything correctly when setting up my new modem. With this new modem in place and the internet restored, I was free to get back to work. Well, not really. First I visited with Lara a little and she accompanied the family to dinner (where I had 3 margaritas to help as a “stress reducer). Returning home from dinner, we got the younger kids through their evening routine and into bed. Then we spent the rest of the night (through to about 10:30) working with Kyle on his paper that was due. Thankfully, since the internet was restored, we were able to email the paper back and forth to help him.
Friday morning saw a bit more work done on the paper, as well as getting August ready for Aikido and Déla ready for tap dance. After all of this, I’m finally able to get to work doing what I should have been able to do on Wednesday.
P.S. As I type these very words at close to noon on Friday (after having posted this blog entry) the replacement modem from Qwest which was sent “overnight” has yet to arrive. Yesterday was frustrating, but worth the effort.