Saturday

I was fairly glib yesterday about my inability to make the wireless router to work with our ISP. If I cannot make this system work it will be a crushing blow to the family, I'm afraid. As it stands, Sunshine has to gather all her stuff, and come into my office to get online. She sits at the opposite side of my desk, running another data cable over my lap to the extra port in the DSL modem. This is not good for a girl who is writing a book; nor is it all that productive for me. I have to make a place at my desk for one thing, putting away either the external hard drive, for example, or the scanner. These things aren't actually on my desk yet, but my goal is to have room for them some day. Having Sunshine's cable running over my lap seems to make me sit up straighter, though. The reluctance the internet seems to be having flowing through the harmless wireless transmitter doesn't inspire my confidence that I'll be able to coax it to work successfully with my VONAGE modem, either. That hardware actually steals side signal from the provided bandwidth traveling between the wall and the DSL modem. If I cannot eventually get the VONAGE up and running, then it will seriously cramp my ability to ever talk with the western world. At something like a buck a minute, outbound long distance telephony is going to have to be pretty rare (though I guess I can buy the same phone cards I encourage others to get). I imagine all I really need to do is talk with the guy at the desk. Some upgrade must be in order: I know there are other wireless systems operating in the building. [Cavin]