Earworm? You’re welcome. This isn’t going to be a long post, as I’m in need of something to eat, and perhaps more importantly, drink.

I’d like to say that this is the moment I can look back on the day and laugh at my misfortunes, but no. I’m still irritated. Allow me to elaborate –

I awoke this morning with the expectation that I’d have a leisurely cup of tea, logon, and then go about running some reports, running some imports, and then in the afternoon exporting several megabytes worth of data for an acquisition that’s happening this weekend (so, quite important that it be done in a timely manner).

What actually happened was – I had the leisurely cup of tea, logged on, then discovered that my network connection was down. I discovered that it worked fine if I plugged my desktop PC directly into the modem, so, tried plugging in one works laptop. It didn’t work. As my router is fairly ancient (the setup software won’t operate on anything more recent than Windows XP), I decided perhaps it was time to replace, and that would solve the problem. Purchased new router from Argos, came home, unpacked, went to plug it in. No. In my haste, I had purchased an ADSL router. Cursed at myself for my stupidity, and high-tailed it back to Argos, where, I was pleasantly surprised, they exchanged for a cable modem (and a cheaper one at that, refunding the difference). Came home, unpacked, plugged in, switched on, lights started flashing. All good. No. Not only would nothing connect via wi-fi, plugging directly into the modem no longer worked even for the desktop PC. Tried rebooting the modem, connecting via wi-fi, plugging in directly. No. Nothing doing. Reset the modem completely, went through the setup. No. Phoned the helpdesk and I’m very glad to say that, once the operative and I had managed to find something close to a common language, the connection was restored, and I had network access.

I won’t go into detail, but then followed two hours of wrestling with Excel which I’m quite sure shortened my life by considerably more than two hours, and, an hour late, I began the data export. I’m then very glad to say that about half an hour ago, the client confirmed that the data looked good, and I now await confirmation tomorrow evening that all is properly well with it.

Not so irritated now that I’ve shared the above. Although, there is still some irritation in the fact that the router in my Virgin Hub now seems to be working quite happily, thus negating the need for a separate router at all. We shall see when I try using my laptop downstairs though… an episode of Westworld that should have lasted only 58 minutes was extended by something in the order of 20 minutes last time as the signal kept dropping out, thus driving me to reinstate the separate router in the first place. Anyway, drinkage is calling.

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