Classic Rant #407 (December 17, 2010): DAMN!

Former WWE wrestler Ron Simmons' trademark was not a wrestling hold, it was his simple proclamation to the cameras when he found something that irritated him.

"DAMN" he would yell, and then the show moved onto something else.

Well, I can now channel Simmons and say the same thing about my recent computer woes.

My computer odyssey continues, but with a happy ending.

I left for work yesterday with the understanding that my home Internet was being thwarted by a faulty coaxial cable.

A technician was to come to my house and fix the situation today.

All was fine and good when I arrived home from work yesterday. I ate dinner, had time to speak to my wife and son, and decided that after I walked the dog, I would go and clean up around where I have my desktop computer, so that the technician could do his work with being impeded by my stuff.

Well, I walked into the room with the computer--it used to be my daughter's room, but she hasn't used it for quite a while--and I found that the light on the router signaling the Internet was on!

Yes, I put on the computer, and lo and behold, I got onto the Internet without a problem.

I quickly programmed the other computers in the house, and after a few false steps of my own--putting in the wrong key code--I now had every computer in the house hooked up to the Internet.

How did this come about? How did the situation change so dramatically in such a short time, a matter of hours?

I called my Internet provider today to cancel my service appointment. I told the person on the other line the whole story, and he said the solution was a simple one.

When hooking up a new router, there is some type of lag time between when you hook it up and when it allows you Internet access. According to him, it takes some time for the new router to authenticate all the various codes it needs to be able to provide Internet access, and that is probably why I couldn't access the Internet immediately the night before.

I thanked him and ended the call.

Now, my question is, why didn't the call I made to my service provider the night before yield such an explanation?

If the guy I spoke to would have told me there was some type of lag time, I would have shut down the computer and let it go for 24 hours.

Instead, I wasted more than two hours trying to find out the problem.

Heck, they even ran a diagnostic on my entire system, and they came to the conclusion that the coaxial cable was at fault.

That being said, the end result of this mess is that I am happy. I have home Internet access, and I seemingly don't have to worry about this anymore.

But of course, I am not going to count my chickens before they've hatched. I will monitor the situation each day to make sure that it really is fixed.

But I would have saved a lot of time--and prevented a lot of anxiety--if I would have been told the right story by my service provider.

And thanks to you out there too. You've had to put up with this talk of computer stuff for the past few days. Now I can move onto other things.

Let's see, what is Lindsay Lohan up to ... ?