An Update between Downtimes

Technorati Tags: Service Provider Hell,Moving headaches,Wireless Hell

 

Tuesday of last week we were warming up to the task of moving to another apartment. We were in touch with our cable service provider, the electric company, my publisher, the new apartment complex manager and anyone else we could think of to keep everything on track.

Well, I was in the middle of uploading the last material to the publisher when the wheels came off. The service provider chose that day to cut off the entire town of Orange Park while they carried out some “Scheduled Maintenance”. For the entire day. Without telling anyone.

After several frantic calls we learned two important things. First, my Belkin wireless router/receiver should never have been able to handle any traffic between the cable modem and my computer, and the estimated time to complete the scheduled maintenance was unknown. And I couldn’t contact my publisher, since my email was down, right along with the rest of my life.

The service provider did say they would send out a NetGear wireless router that was compatible. It arrived two days later. Without a wireless receiver, which they said would arrive some time in the middle of the next week. Which brings us up to today, which really is the middle of the next week.

The publisher now has all of my files and production work on “Hog Valley” is continuing apace. The folks working up the book cover are concerned about pixilation on the cover art. I am hoping to hear from the artist some time soon to get better digital photographs to send to them.

Today, as we know, is Wednesday. I will be breaking down and packing up my computer, along with everything else, to move into a larger apartment Starting Friday. The service provider will meet me at the new apartment Friday afternoon, so this next round of downtime should only be a day, as opposed to a week. Since I am only moving myself and my gear into the new apartment on Friday, the technician may want to connect their modem directly to my computer to verify the data stream. I’m not at all sure what that is going to do to my current setup, since my computer is normally the Client and my brother-in-law’s computer is the Host.

That has the potential to become a real fur-ball.

Never mind moving boxes, clothes, plants and whatever for the next ten days until all three of us are living there.

We’ll see.