For those of you living in saner parts of the world who might not know, the Irreal International Headquarters are located in Tampa, Florida, which is recognized as the lightning capital of North America. Indeed, Tampa comes from an Indian word meaning “lightning.” Last night, Tampa was living up to its name with more severe than usual thunderstorms. About 10 PM our time, there was a strike right above our house that sounded more like a large gun than the usual thunder clap. Afterwards, all the TVs, cable boxes, and cable modem for the Internet were DOA. My trusty Apple WiFi router was clearly suffering but I hoped it was just unhappy about not seeing the network.
I spent all day today dealing with just trying to get the Internet up again. First I went to Spectrum to change out the modem. Everybody in Tampa was there doing the same thing and it took at LONG time just to talk to a representative. Once I did, though, it was only a couple of minutes to get a new modem.
Then home to plug in the new modem and get things going again. Sadly, the WiFi router refused to talk to the modem so it was off to Best Buy to get a new WiFi router. I’ve heard great things about the Eero routers and Best Buy did carry them. Of course, when I got there they were out of what I needed so I grabbed a Netgear router and went home to hook it up.
The horrors that followed would take a book to relate so I’ll merely say that after much hair rending and some occasional iffy language I did get the Internet back. I still have some configuration to do but at this point I’m too exhausted to do anything but whine in this post.
Right now, we’re having another storm but it isn’t as severe as yesterday’s. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow morning, you’ll know why.