Null Modem

I didn't intentionally vanish from the blogosphere - my DSL modem, which had been getting wonky for quite a while, gave up the ghost earlier this week. I was only able to get online for a minute or two at a time. I could check my e-mail - barely - but any web-surfing or posting was out of the question.

That problem has now been (partially) solved. The nice folks at my ISP sent me a shiny new DSL modem, which has the added benefit of being much smaller, therefore taking up less desk space.

I was pleased that the folks on the tech support line didn't even argue with me. I told them that the modem was on the fritz, and they took my word for it. The lady I spoke to first took one token shot at getting me to run a bunch of tests I didn't need; however, as soon as I told her that I'm also behind a router, she abandoned the idea. She said "You'd have to disconnect your router and connect a PC directly to the modem for these, and you probably won't want to do that." Not in a negative tone, but in the tone of a doctor telling a patient that they probably won't want their leg amputated because of an ingrown toenail.

The "(partially)" qualifier in the paragraph before last is because I haven't hooked the router back up yet. Ironically, I'm now online by plugging a PC (Rueben) straight into the modem. The new modem appears to have the same default IP address as my router, so I'll need to tweak some settings to get things back to full normal.

The bad news, depending on your perspective, is that I did not use my enforced offline sabbatical to stockpile blog articles. There will be no deluge now that I'm back.

I note, however, that I've only been blogging since early this year, and I've posted over a hundred articles (this is # 103). That means that even if I stopped now, I'd still average about two articles a week for the entire year!

Anyway, I'm back, so there's reason to hope / fear that semi-regular posting will resume shortly.

Once I catch up on all my websites.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a cartoon that pretty much sums up the situation.