Internet Problems

For the past month or so our Internet connectivity has been somewhat spotty. We have a wireless network here at home compliments of Comcast. We've had it for several years now as it was the only way to save our sanity with everyone wanting to be on the Internet at the same time. Through replacing our computers from time to time and the kids all getting computers as they headed off to college, we have quite the collection of new and old computers connected up. Also, The Son, using his Computer Science degree, has also helped getting the various printers connected up as well. All was running well enough until about a month ago we started having problems with our gateway linking up with the Internet. Over the past month we've had three technicians come to the house to diagnose the problem. All pretty much agreed that the problem was the signal coming in from the street. It wasn't as strong as it should be. The first two also thought that we had too many splitters on our system between the box at the back of our house to our various TVs and gateway. Paperwork was put in to fix the box out on the street, but nothing got any better. Finally this past Tuesday the third Tech arrived. He sort poo poo the whole splitter argument and said the problem was definitely the signal coming from the street. A call was made and confirmation received that paperwork was in the system, but no one had gotten around to looking at the box out on the street. More calls were made and a Comcast truck showed up in short order and voila, a working reliable signal is now reaching our house. It took them all of about 15 minutes to fix whatever was wrong. It's all about priorities I guess. It never affected our TV signal though, which was kind of weird.

Wednesday turned out to be a perfect spring day with temperatures in the 70s. Since I work from home that day, I rushed over to Sandy Run during my lunch hour for a quick row. As I suspected the boathouse was locked up. Most people tend to row before or after work, so I unlocked it and dragged out a rack that holds 5 singles. I grabbed a boat and headed out. Usually when I row I don't have any time constraints and I can row as long as I like, but since I was on my lunch hour, I couldn't be out all that long. So I did a 6 mile row. Given time to drive to and from, get the boat out and row took me about 2 hours. I added an hour at the tail end of my work day to make up the time. Next time I'll try just 4 miles and see how that works. It was a great day to be out on the water though. There was a some debris on the corners of the lake, which is common after heavy rains, but I manged not to hit anything. Even better when I got back to the dock, someone was waiting and offered to take my boat out so I didn't have to wash it and put it away. Score!

Thursday at work was a designated clean up day. A day to get long overdue filing done and generally throw away those old files you haven't looked at in two years. Management went all out for us providing us with both breakfast and lunch. For breakfast it was homemade waffles. Two of the bosses manned waffle irons keeping us full. They also had donuts and some fruit. For lunch they ordered up over 30 pizzas of various types. It seemed like all I did all day was eat. I hardly wanted dinner. Not that I skipped it or anything. I'll need some extra rowing or biking this weekend.

In Virginia we have a requirement to get our cars inspected once a year. This month our minivan was due for its inspection. I was worried it might fail as the van now has over 50,000 miles on it, but still has the original tires. They still have some tread, but it's not like they're brand new. My worries proved unfounded and the van passed so it's good for another year. Yea!