Huzzah! My internet connection seems to be back up. I called into Comcast like I said I would. A woman answered the phone and I immediately got the impression that she was from the area of Persia - perhaps India or Packistan. She went over the usual steps with me …
- Disconnect power cable
- Disconnect network cable
- Disconnect coaxile cable
- Wait about 1 minute
- Plug in coaxile cable
- Plug in power cable
- Wait for the 4 blinking lights to become solid
The furthest it would get is 3 solid lights and 1 blinking light. I could tell when she told the modem to reset itself because all the lights would go out and we would restart from scratch again. A technitian was scheduled to come out Wednesday morning. I guess it takes a while to get here from India. I went outside to check the cables to see if any tampering was done, but everything looked in order.
Well, since the girls were out, I figured I would pass the time and replace an old electrical outlet. I’m not your average handyman. I’m more of a below average handyman. The girls came in and Angel let me turn off the main breaker. The lights remained on with lots of beeping. Could something be wrong? No - although I’m not an average handyman, I am a major geek. Everyones batteries are hooked up to lights, computers, VCR’s - the works. I even dragged one of my batteries downstairs to plug a lamp into it so I could see the wireing.
The hardest part of the job was seperating the receptical from the wires. They were stick in through the back and wedged in. I’m used to seeing them screwed in the sides, so this was kind of new to me. I don’t know if there is an easy way to get these out, but I eventually got them. I hooked up the new recepticle and told Angel to throw the switch. The true test … FAILED!!!! All that work for nothing.
Well, I called a buddy of mine and told him that I couldn’t help him out with a data mining problem until Wednesday night - since the cable guy was comming that morning. He was cool and let it rest. Apparently he already spent 2 days looking this stuff up and writing it by hand. Most of his data mining jobs are simple. Some are hard … but mostly simple. He usually wants a list of companies and a telephone number in Excel. Nothing a few programming tricks and a nice regular expression couldn’t handle. I still need to see the site before I can tell what I’m up against.
Anyway, I hung up and figured I would start putting things back together again. I had disconnected the UPS from the cable modem, router, and a few computers. I was curiouse about the coaxile cable. I had it hooked up through the surge protector before. I decided I would just skip the surge protector and go strait to the modem. I pluged in the modem and walked out of the room for a moment.
I came back and guess what? I saw 4 solid lights. Could this be? Is it really so? I hooked up the router and ran to my room … I was able to hit the Google website. Ok, it isn’t cached data is it? I ran over to the News site for Google - Bingo! I was online. I ran downstairs to check on my wifes computer. It worked!
So … my problems are finally over. I can hit sites with the speed I am used to. I need to call the cable man in India to let them know that he is no longer needed.
Tags: Internet Connection, Comcast, Persia, India, Packistan, Helpdesk, Network, Coaxile, Blinking Lights, Technitian, Wednesday, Handyman, Electical Outlet, Angel, Geek, APC, Battery, Lights, Computer, VCR, Receptical, Data Mining, Regular Expression, UPS, Google, News
