the passionate ailurophile

It’s all back the way it was now. Thank DOG for the widget thing in WP, otherwise, I’d have had to piece together all the sidebar crap back the way it was. As for the header crap, all I had to do was find the directory that housed the images, delete the ones that were there so they’d not show up in the rotation…after all, this blog is called “The Passionate Ailurophile“, and therefore MUST have cat pics in the header!  And then just find where on this computer I had the cat banners saved, re-upload them, and that was it.  The little kitty thing in the upper left was something I made and gave the same name as the green flower thing that was there before, so I just uploaded that and told it to overwrite the old one.

All is well.  So far.  If I log back in here later and see the*default* crap theme again, and I have to rename stuph, I’m gonna scream.  Because I KNOW I’ll forget I had to do this AGAIN, the next time this damned thing tries to demand that I upgrade.

At least it was easier than all the crap I’ve been dealing with over trying to set up wireless around here; I am convinced now that it will NEVER happen.  This damned modem/router thing that Verizon gave me when I first got DSL is a piece of junk.  Srsly.  Works fine as just a modem, but the router part never worked, no matter what I tried.  I gave up, until Mike’s boss started nagging his ass again about the need for him to be able to connect his stupid work computer to a network, for snow days and all.

“Buy a new router”, someone said.  Yeah, but it will fight with the old one, I said.  I finally figured out, with a lot of effort, how to turn of the router part of this piece of junk and make it just be a modem.  I bought a new router, hooked it up EXACTLY as instructed, and it says that there is something wrong with the modem.  That is why the little flashy modem light on the router means, so says the Belkin router manual.  Too bad said manual doesn’t tell you how to possibly fix it.

So I went and signed up for some forum that is supposed to provide tech support to DSL users.  Some of their posts have helped me in the past, so it was worth a shot to sign up and post my issue there, right?  I spent a good part of an hour writing a detailed post about my issue, telling them exactly what I wanted to do, what I have done that hasn’t worked, what equipment I have (complete with brand names and models), what operating systems are on the computers involved, how much of my hair I’ve torn out trying to get this crap to work, what kind of beer I drank when it didn’t work, how many times I had to get up and pee while in the middle of all if this…the whole floopin’ nine yards.  I honestly thought that if I gave that much detail (okay, not really about the parts about the hair, beer, peeing), someone would be able to help me.

But NOOOOO!  I got exactly two responses so far.  The first guy told me to call Verizon tech support.  Sheesh, if I thought for just one second that Verizon tech support would have been remotely useful, I’d have gone that route first.  I already know their tech support sucks.  A lot of people on that forum said that Verizon tech support sucks.  I thought that was why someone created that forum, because most ISP’s tech support sucks.

The second guy must have been either Beavis or Butt-head in real life, because his response made no sense, he clearly did NOT read my post well enough, and asked why I was doing what the instructions told me to do.  Floopin’ USELESS.

I had to disconnect the new router and reset the stupid Verizon Westell 327w Versalink piece o’ junk to factory defaults, just to get the thing to work properly enough so that I could stay online longer than five minutes.  The stupid Belkin router is sitting here, unplugged, doing nothing.  And flooping Staples now has $45 of my money for something I can’t get to work, and NO ONE IN THE WORLD can help me.  Either they tell me to do shit that I already tried a dozen times that didn’t work before, tell me to buy a new router, which I did, and I just told you how THAT went, or they send me to the Verizon website directions for network setting-upping.  Which also didn’t work, although I followed it to the letter.

I swear, I could probably find an easier way to how to reduce belly fat, while still drinking all the beer I want, before I get this damned wireless crap to work.  Oh, and before anyone says it, it is NOT either laptop that’s at fault here, not Mike’s work computer, and not my netbook.  Both of them have wireless cards that work in other places that have WiFi, such as hotels.

I give up.  If Mike’s boss is that insistent on having a home network here, let him send the damned IT guy over here to set it up for me.  The jerk obviously lives under the ASSumption that everyone knows how to make everything work just the way they want it to.  As it is, Mike HAS asked the IT guy for help, to at least tell him what needs to be done, but he won’t.  Jerk.

I should call Verizon and demand a new modem/router, for free, being that I’ve been a DSL customer of theirs for so long, and this old one is shit.  One reason I don’t want to call them is because they seem to be obsessed with trying to sell me a whole FiOS package…DO NOT WANT.  I supposed I could hint that if they don’t give me what I want, I’ll switch to Comcast…but what if they call my bluff?  I hate Comcast more than Verizon, but they are the only other game in town for high-speed internet.

Screw it.  I give up.  Anyone want to buy a barely used Belkin router?