High Tech Hyperventilating

Why is it that trouble always comes in twos or threes?

We’ve been suffering from computer problems, network problems, and our condo AC has been half way screwed up since we returned from vacation. The good news is that I think we have two out of three problems solved—we’ll see later this morning.

We’re waiting with pregnant anticipation for the return of Pat’s notebook from its field trip to the Corporate IT Spa in the Atlanta suburbs. I wrapped it up in about ten layers of bubble wrap and slapped it in a Fed EX overnight box on Wednesday afternoon, they gave it a good working over on Thursday, and it’s on its way back here to St. Simons via Fed EX, scheduled to arrive before noon today. The maddening thing is that they couldn’t find anything wrong with the computer. No unusual adware/spybotts and no viruses.

I spent most of yesterday as a computer-less pedestrian since the wireless network is still spazzing out and Pat was using my notebook in the absence of her machine. She had to use our back up dial up connection because our wireless connection through the cable modem is still crawling. To complicate matters, we had to minimize our phone use because we were waiting for a stupid HVAC technician to call for directions.

Is it a genetic defect caused by owing a van or pickup truck full of tools, or is there some kind of special school that you go to that eliminates the part of the brain that causes you to keep appointments? I picked a name at random out of the phone book on Wednesday afternoon after determining that the condo AC was indeed ailing. I avoided the AAAAA listings and went straight to the middle of the category, hoping to find someone interested in actually fixing my AC in a competent and timely manner.

Not wanting to appear impatient, I ended up waiting poolside until 3 PM Thursday afternoon, and then I finally broke down, came dripping back to the condo, and called the guy again. He gave me the obligatory life story of an excuse, and then admitted that he had forgot about our appointment, and promised that he would be by within the hour.

I wandered back over to the swimming pool. Pat called me on my cell phone a half hour later to tell me that the guy had in fact showed up. The bastard didn’t even come inside. By the time I could dry off, toss on my shoes, and saunter the hundred-yard distance from the pool to my home, he was unhooking a bottle of Freon from the condensing unit, grabbing a check from Pat’s hand, and running to his van. Talk about expedient service…$70 worth.

What bothers me is that he did no diagnostic work. I told him on the telephone that the filters were clean, the evaporator fan and condenser fan were working, and that I suspected that we were a little low on Freon. I guess that he took my word for it. I just hope that whatever leak we have is a really slow one so we’re not coughing up another $70 next week.

So anyway, one computer, one AC, now I have to figure out what is going on with the wireless network. What is weird is that when I open the wireless connection window, it shows us running at 58G, but I swear that web pages load slower than the dial up connection at 52K. I can’t get my yahoo mail server to load at all. I’ve heard of an obscure virus that you can get in your wireless router memory and I’m wondering if we don’t have something like that going on here.

Needless to say my Blogging is going to suffer until I have the hardware problems worked out. See you guys later.