Feesh and Cheeps

I spent several hours on the phone yesterday with tech support from both with BT and Netgear. As helpful as they try to be (and, perhaps naively, I still like to think they're trying to be helpful), I just can't understand the really thick Indian accents. I wonder if they get as equally frustrated with me channeling Marjorie Dawes, "Sorry, say it again?"

I'm sure the Netgear guy was just about ready to say, "Don't you have any Punjabi friends I could talk to?" We really did need an interpreter.

My broadband went out a few days ago, and the phone line has been wonky for a couple weeks now. The BT guy figured out my modem/router had corrupted, which was in effect shorting out the phone line. Since the BT modem/router was more than a year old, there was nothing they could do.

Fair enough, and easily fixed. I went to the Apple Store and got a new Netgear modem/router that would complement my existing Netgear wireless setup. I set it up in about 10 minutes. Very easy and I'm back up with a wired connection.

So now I know the DSL works, and it seems BT guy was right on the money. So now all I have to do is hook up the wireless, and it was already configured so that should be a snap.

Or so I thought.

When I hooked up the new modem to the wireless, I would get no internet. The problem was, which the Netgear guy didn't tell me until after 45 minutes of fumbling verbal intercourse, was that both Netgear machines had the same IP address and that was causing the conflicd. He worked with me for a while, trying to get me to change the IP addy for the new modem via its brower interface. No go .. not with Firefox, Safari, nor Explorer.

He put me on hold while he talked with his supervisors. I watched Italy win. He came back.

"Italy just won," I told him.

"Yes, I saw." Okay, so he's working hard.

"You're going to have to get a Windows machine to get it to work," he finally told me. "Apparently you can't change the configuration on a Mac."

"Okay, I should just run out and buy a new PC so I can change the settings?" I asked.

He thought that would be a good idea and wished me luck.

Ended up upgrading the firmware on the old wireless router, restoring it to its original settings, changing the IP addy, and then running the setup wizard. Presto, Internet up and running on a new wireless network called "I hate BT."

Now I only had to get the Airport Express to work on the new network. You'd think that wouldn't have been too hard. After fighting with that for about a half hour (reboot, scan with Airport Utility, find nothing, reboot, scan again, etc.), I did a Google search and found that Simon Brown had similar problems. Ten minutes later, my Airport Express has the long-anticipated steady green light and now there's wireless music again.

Other than that, a fairly low-key weekend. Well, except for that impromptu pub crawl with Eduardo to celebrate the end of Rose Tyler (I knew she wouldn't "die" ... never believe an allegedly dead narrator's prologue) that ended up at the White Swan, which is totally my new favorite watering hole. And so conveniently located!

Thank heavens for the Dr. Who-like qualities of our livers ... they just keep regenerating.