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I went out of town kind of unexpectantly and was gone the last couple of days.

I was at Mom & Dad’s house building a new computer and setting up a network.

An odd thing happened during both parts of that.

1. When I put the computer together we discovered that when you plug the power into the CD-ROM drive that the monitor won’t respond any longer. It sits there and flashes like it can’t find the computer. As soon as you pull the power plug it will fire right off. We did a temporary fix by turning the computer on with the power plug pulled and then plugging it in just as soon as the monitor caught. It works fine, but they can’t turn their new computer off now. It’s not a good fix, but it at least works.
2. I wanted to give myself a present in all of this. Mom & Dad still have to dial-up for their Internet access. I think they’re on the only CO there that isn’t set up for DSL and they refuse to get cable service because they love their DirecTV too much.

   So, I have an old SMC 4007AWBR wireless router that could do the job. It is a couple of years old, but it stood me in good stead for a long time while I had to dial-up here in Gatesville until we joined the DSL-enabled hordes. I decided to give it to them and then I could just fire up the laptop when I’m in town and be good to go. Only now its DHCP server doesn’t seem to be working, wireless networking is down, and I can’t reach its internal webserver to look at settings. It will at least route packets, so they have a network, but they have to do Windows Internet Connection Sharing to both be on the ‘net at the same time and I have to hook up using a wired connection.

None of it is earth-shattering, but it wasn’t the outcome I was wanting.