Sunday, September 21, 2008

i am woman...

Okay I have to take a moment to say how freaking proud of myself I am!!! After too many years of delaying (and jumping on other folk's internet connection), this past Friday I FINALLY bought my own Linksys router!!! WOO HOO!! And wait on it, I even connected it myself! Now for those who know me, I am absolutely technologically challenged. So in retrospect, that might not have seemed like a huge deal to many, for me it was the stress equivilant of picking an outfit for that first date with a cute boy.
Naturally, because I am a living breathing exapmle of Murphy's Law, I followed the installation CD, hook it up, it works for all of 20 minutes (read: long enough for me to throw out the box) and then na-da. No signal in the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, not even on the living room sitting beside the freaking thing. Only some cryptic message saying that the network address wasn't established. I was in total denial. I assured myself, "oh no there's just a blip in my building. I'm sure it'll be on first thing in the morning." Let's just blips don't happen. SO I tried to simply disconnect everythign and re-install the CDs. Nope. Now the computer is saying that the router needs to restored to its original settings. WHAT?
So now, I'm sitting there thinking I have the worst techie karma in the universe. I send out a frantic email "I'm about to kill myself if you don't stop what you're doing and help me" email to my boy James who builds websites (or something fantastic like that ). Mind you, he was on vacay. And proceeded to work myself up into a panic attack- "Oh god, why do I always have to buy the faulty equipment? This is what my lazy butt gets for trying to do work and watch Oprah," on and on I went.
I am not ashamed to admit that I spent a good 20 minutes feeling sorry for myself before it occurred to my dumb butt to simply READ the printed information that they provide with the router (we writers can be a little dense that way). AND voila! At the very bottom of the page, there was an 888 service number with an ACTUAL customer service person on the other side! A wonderful woman had walked me through fixing my router in a little under an hour for FREE! Cause you know they tried to coax me into letting their computer tech remotely access my computer and do it for me for $10- CROOKS.
Long story short, I'm nowcoming to you live from the middle of my bed. Eat your heart out folks!

2 comments:

  1. I wanted to tell you I went out and bought the same rounter you did thinking "If Mitzi can hook it up then I know I can". WRONG! It still wont work and I don't have time to call tech support. Maybe I will have time in a few weeks/months but for now I will just continue stealing someone else's connection. :)

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