Wherein I am stupid, yet triumphant.

[changeling]

So, that worked right up to the point that I moved the PC back to its rightful place at the other end of the house. This is when I discovered that, oh, yes, I still had the modem directly connected from when I installed it. Oops.

Anyway, thanks to winikoff and non-LJ user=My_Dad for offering to help, but I fiddled around more this morning (another 2 hours gone), and talked to urbanfae who is AWESOME and made me remember to use some brainmeats. I looked answers up on my router's homepage (after I spent part of this morning reading the modem's PDFed manual, which was USELESS).

Long drama short:

1. I had the modem set to USB instead of ethernet when I first installed it (I wondered if that was going to be a problem)


2. The ethernet cable provided by Motorola DIDN'T ACTUALLY WORK (good thing I had ONE spare from the modem Nat's mum supplied that we couldn't use)


3. Sometimes modems and routers just need to go to sleep for a bit and are a bit picky about the order in which they wake up. Sometimes they need several sleeps. Especially if you have been changing their settings

Our router is also now called Fred. This amuses me.

In other, more stupid news, I was having leftover pasta sauce for breakfast, so I boiled some water on the stove in our kettle. It has this handy-dandy feature that stove-top kettles generally have, which is a piercing whistle that can be heard from (as in my case) the other end of the house. Unfortunately, saucepans have no such useful accoutrements, so if you happen to be in another room, ooh, let's say updating your livejournal and fixing your wireless network, and you forget about your pan on the stove, that's it. Two-inch long spaghetti with unpleasant crunchy burnt ends for you. Sigh.

Comments

[watersusurrus.livejournal.com]

Oh love!

I am pleased we have internet. I look forward to WRITING MY JOB APPLICATION this weekend.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Yes!

I look forward to finishing my article.

[urbanfae.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm glad you figure it out.

I never would have thought that the ethernet cable didn't work.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I only worked it out because the troubleshooting manual was all "BTW, you're not allowed to use both cables in the back. Only one. And since you have to use the ethernet cable to connect it to your router, you'd best set it to that one, bitch." Then when I tried, my computer couldn't talk to the modem. Since the USB cable worked fine, I switched it over, and voilà, instant internet.

Well, almost.

[watersusurrus.livejournal.com]

I asked one of the techies at work and the first thing he said was "try another cable"... so maybe it's a more common problem?

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

It probably is to techies, who have usually set the whole thing up competantly in the first place. ;)

[watersusurrus.livejournal.com]

I went and told him it was all well and good and he pleased. And then we talked about keyboards.