I had an appointment to see the doctor today. I was also expecting the landlord to come over for an inspection (in my absence). I have a cat door that I installed as a seperate piece in a sliding glass door (that prevents the door from closing all the way) and through that separate piece is a hole for the network and telephone cable that leads out the the "shop" where I work at my computer.

We're not supposed to have cats, so I wanted to hide the cat door, which meant disconnecting the network and phone cables. Which I did. And I removed the cat door and went to see my doctor.

When I returned, I plugged the network cable back in and got...nothing. I could access the other computers on my LAN, but could not reach the Internet. I thought I was looking at another act in the Computer Circus, so I took some time to troubleshoot.

After rebooting the modem and the router, I realized I had a good connection. I could ping IP addresses, but not names (like google.com). I presumed that perhaps something was wrong with the DNS. I could ping the gateway, but neither DNS address responded. So, I presumed there must be something wrong with the service provider. I called them up, and sure enough - they reported that both DNS servers were having problems.

Whew!

The problem was not mine! OH - and there's more good news! I won an auction for a replacement router - one exactly like the one I had that died a while back. Finally! This one should work, and it has a return policy attached to it, so I should be back in business. Well, not that I am out of service now, but I just don't like the way this "new" router works as far as the configuration interface and the information it (doesn't) display.

Anyway, at least I got a taste of what it is like to be at home OFF THE COMPUTER for a little while today. My doctor suggests that I do that more often - like at least three times a week. So I have to figure out what I like to do that is aerobic. Perhaps I will take up tennis, since there are courts just half a block down the hill from here. In fact, I think I'll pick up some tennis balls tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket!

We'll see.