Technological Meltdown

I hesitate to even spend any time typing on this computer at the moment, worried that something may happen to it, thereby shutting me off from the modern age completely. We are experiencing what appears to be some severe technological meltdown in our household, and I feel that it's a miracle that I still have a CD player and a computer (with its multitude of parts) that work.

It started on Friday when we had a brief thunderstorm that wiped out our power for 0.3 seconds, but destroyed our router forever. It was an old router that needed to be replaced anyway, so Les rolled with it and ran out and got a new one and had us back up and running by the end of the work day (I was working from home that day so it mattered a little more than normal, but I still had a lot to do offline, so it was no biggie). After he got the new router installed, he couldn't get it to communicate with our wireless printer unless there was no encryption on our network whatsoever (not a workable solution). After spending three hours on the phone with technical support and another hour or two just messing around, he gave up and went to bed.

Meanwhile, our DVD player also stopped opening or playing, although it was on and pretending to try to open or play. I took it apart to get out the disc that was stuck in there and finally pried the CD out, just barely. Even after taking out all the screws, there were parts that seemed to be melted together or something. Thank goodness for slightly-bendable plastic.

We tried fixing the network again the next day to no avail. On Sunday we dropped in at the Apple store to see if they had any advice for us. They suggested that we purchase the Apple router, saying that it's really easy to set up and we should be up and running in 20 minutes or less. Personally, we would have been happy with anything under five hours, so our expectations were low. It couldn't successfully communicate with our printer either (which is under two years old and an HP and not particularly tricky or anything, but it does have a built-in wireless card that we paid extra for -- hence the drive to try and get the wireless thing to work). Now, we had two new routers that didn't work and no printer unless we connected up wired, which doesn't work great for our crowded house.

Les decided to take the printer down to his mom in FL who doesn't actually need a wireless printer (in case we can never get it to work wirelessly again), and we'll return one router and buy a new printer and a new DVD player.

Then today my ipod stopped working. I got the dreaded (so I hear) "sad ipod" face on my screen. Fortunately, we bought the extended warranty and it's covered until September, but it feels like a close call. I'm actually pretty careful with my ipod (okay, I have dropped it a few times at the gym, and actually fell on it on cement another time . . . so maybe I'm not exactly that careful with it), but I did unplug it from the charger without disconnecting it from the computer first, so Les thought that's maybe what happened.

We're beginning to wonder if there's a message here. I grew up in PA around the Amish, but didn't actually learn much about living "off the grid" other than the fact that many Amish horses are retired racers and if you're an unmarried man there is some flexibility about how much technology you can own and use. Les is basically out of luck there, but maybe that's how he would like it anyway after this past weekend.

If you don't hear from me again, you'll know what happened at least.