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AOL Is My ISP And I Needed To Reconnect

Read more articles on Life and The Thoughts Of A Writer In New York City and Computers and Internet.

September 1, 2006

Posted by neillevine

About This Editor: I am a writer. Have been writing for other sites, but expect to do most of my future work HERE! My expertise extends from the esoteric such as burning hydrogen to the unpredictability of the stock market and my writing makes me a jack of all trades and exasperated master of none. I have had some influence over national wildfire and water policy and there are hints of a change in energy policy, BUT as Samuel Goldwyn once said, "A verbal promise is not worth the paper it is written on."

         

I had a very bad afternoon yesterday, Thursday, August 31, 2006.

I could not connect to the internet, no matter how hard I tried. After a couple of failed attempts to log on and then a few reboots of my computer, it occurred to me to start checking wires.

So I had to move furniture and look under other furniture and I finally noticed that the DSL modem was not lighting up as it usually did. This I finally figured out meant that either a wire was loose or there was a problem with the phone line.

I kept checking wires into and out of the modem. They seemed okay though I wasn’t sure since I haven’t looked at the gizmo since it was installed a long time ago.

Next I checked the wire connecting to the telephone line in the wall. That appeared to be okay. Then I began to look at other things. I pulled plugs out of the electric socket. The computer shut off. Of course. No juice. I reconnected those lines.

My computer rebooted. Then I found a loose hookup in the back of the computer.

After pulling it and a second link out and then re-installing them, all the lights on my DSL modem were lit.

But the remote computer did not want to recognize me. So I kept trying to reconfigure my ISP connection.

I also started looking for an AOL boot-up disk and found two that I was saving for just such an emergency. One was in Spanish and I had problems with the Spanish connection and the other was for gamers, but I finally was told to use the telephone connected to my Dell, not the kitchen line.

I finally got a friendly technical support fellow, named Craig, online as I started my computer up one more time and I explained to him the previous four hours of drama I had to deal with as I tried to coax my good old year and a half old Dimension 2400 to connect to the internet.

The computer was warming up as I explained to this nice man that I grew up in the age of vacuum tubes, where you plugged a television set into the wall and turned it on and you could watch Captain Kangaroo or Kukla, Fran and Ollie or Uncle Miltie or even George Burns.

While I was explaining my problem, my automatic dialer appeared to have been successful and it appeared I had a good connection.

I explained this to him and he waited for me to check my new home page. Success. I was online and connected to the world.

Now hoping the next ordeal is when I move to the suburbs or somewhere with fiberoptic connections and breathtaking views of the real world.