I have written before about how the appliances and electronics in my house have entered into a cruel conspiracy against me, but this is going too far.
Here’s the highlight: I took my antique computer modem to a store run by my internet provider to trade it in for a newer model. The guy at the store saw me come in and said, “You’re going to hate me. I may not be able to help you.”
Why not?
The internet at the store was down.
To summarize: The internet was down at my internet supplier’s store.
It all began on a chilly night a few weeks ago, when everything about our furnace appeared to be working except for the fact that the house was getting colder. A repairman came out to inspect it and gave us the sad news that our furnace had had a small electrical fire.
The good news is that everything worked the way it was supposed to, and the house did not catch fire — although the circuit breaker did literally melt.
The bad news is that it was going to cost a small fortune to replace — and they couldn’t put it in the attic crawlspace where the old one was so they would have to install a new unit in the tiny laundry room.
The company didn’t have the parts in stock, so we had to wait a couple of weeks to get the furnace. Fortunately, the temperature was unseasonably mild the entire time.
While we were waiting for the furnace, our wall oven stopped working (Note: This is not exactly true. The oven broke shortly before the furnace, but the story is better this way). A different repairman came out and said the problem was just with the heating element. It would be an easy fix for not much money, and it was not a big deal.
It was a big deal.
When the guy came out to fix the heating element, he discovered that the problem was not with the element but with the computer board, and they do not make that particular computer board anymore. We would need a whole new oven, which would cost another small fortune.
This got us thinking. We have two ovens, one in the wall and one in the stove. I don’t do as much baking as I used to, sigh, so we don’t actually need them both. My wife hates our stove (long story) so instead of spending a small fortune on a wall oven we could spend a small fortune on a new stove.
But I’m kind of a geek about my cooking appliances, so I want a very nice stove. That would mean spending a larger small fortune on the stove than the smaller small fortune we would spend on the wall oven, so we’ll probably just end up with a new wall oven.
Meanwhile, the furnace people showed up and installed a combination furnace/air conditioner/humidifier in the laundry room — and it is loud. It is very loud. It is 737 loud, especially the humidifier. Also, it periodically makes an odd whistling noise that never quite approaches a tune.
While they were installing it, the internet to our office went out. I’m not saying the installers caused the problem. I’m just saying the internet was working before they turned off the electricity to install the furnace, and when they turned it back on it was not.
I live in a shotgun-style house, long and narrow. The computer connections, by necessity, are at one end in the basement. The office, by necessity, is at the other end on the second floor. A router can’t send a signal that far, so we had been using some sort of magical device to send our internet signal through the electrical wires.
I went to the computer store. I asked if they had any extra-long range routers (no). I asked if I should get another magical device to send out an internet signal through the electrical wires (no, because they can break when furnace guys turn the electricity off and on).
The computer store guy said what I needed was a mesh system, which essentially relays the WiFi signal from one part of the house to another part of the house. And while typing that, I just remembered that we previously had a mesh system and it didn’t work very well, so that is why we went with the magical wire thing.
Anyway, I bought it. And it cost a small fortune.
I tried to install it, and naturally it didn’t work. Instead of having internet on the first floor, which we had before I tried to install it, we had no internet at all. Also, we had no phone service.
All became clear. The problem was not with the router, but with the modem. I took the modem to the internet supply store to trade it in for a new one.
The guy at the store said, “You’re going to hate me.”
———
