Look Ma, no wires!

Computers are such strange little beasts. Last Thursday, I brought home my shiny new laptop and my spanking new wireless router, eager to disconnect from all the cables and cords overpowering my living room. As you might recall from the blue screen of death phase last fall, my old laptop had a corrupt wireless device, so I just stuck with dsl on that one. It's never been that big a deal as I'm usually sitting on my couch and my laptop was set up to hover in that area. But every once in a while, I wanted to be able to take my computer up to the bedroom, which was kind of a hassle if I had to take not just the laptop, but the modem and all the cords. That and the ethernet cable had an annoying tendency to pop out, so I was constantly having to reconnect.

Nothing went as smoothly as I'd hoped, though, once I got all my new toys home. I couldn't get the wireless to communicate with the computer, even though my computer recognized my network and its excellent signal strength. I bought a new modem to see if that was the problem. (It wasn't.) I tinkered and futzed a lot over the weekend, to no avail. I got offers of help from multiple people, including the IT guy at work. This evening, while waiting for IT guy, I decided to go ahead with some software updates. The connection manager program that installed with the wireless router wanted me to get an update that would improve my wireless home audio stability. So I started the download. While that was downloading, IT guy e-mailed to say tomorrow would work better for him.

Once the download was complete, I installed the new version of the connection manager. Then I thought, what the hell, I'll just try to go wireless one more time. And it worked. No waiting, no error message, no failure to communicate. It just worked. I guess my wireless home audio really was unstable.

So now I'm wireless. I'm free, liberated, and, as soon as I get around to it, I can get all those darn phone lines and power cords out of my living room. The next time I post, I just may be blogging from the comfort of my double pillow-top bed!