The Ethernet Battle

I ran into some technical difficulties this week. It's just that my internet connection has been a comedy of errors recently. I started out with a netgear wifi router I bought for 30 bucks at Futureshop. Well, 30 bucks after I get the rebate out of those con artists. The router was only really worth about 10 bucks anyways, as it had a habit of fucking up its DHCP gateway address every 6 hours. In non technical terms, my internet connection would kill itself at regular intervals because all the numbers that the router was told to save as "456" turned out to be "789" without explaination.

But, this problem wasn't about to phase me at at all. I do this sort of bullshit for a living - a stupid wifi router ought to be fixable. So the handyman that I am decided to update the firmware. It still wouldn't agree with me, so I figured I'd mess with every setting on the stupid thing. Satisfied that I had tried every bloody combination of numbers in every stupid option box, I saw my only course of action was to screw with the firmware again. Since there hadn't been a new release of firmware within the last 24 hours, (stupid netgear slackers) I figured I may as well try a firmware downgrade. Turns out the new software doesn't like to revert back very much. My downgrade put the router in a total identity crisis, there is a wifi network, but it has a weird network ID and refuses all connections. Trying to connect through a wired connection is impossible cause the router truly has no idea what the hell is going on. After I realized I gave the router's stupid electronic brain a perma-high and rendered the product worthless, I gave up the sheldon vs. the router battle. The router won this round...

I returned depressed to my previously wired connection. Mid-MSN conversation, however, the stupid wire broke. One of the 8 wires in the ethernet jack had snapped out of place. So the very pissed off handyman that I am decided fixing the cable without a crimper or any appropriate tools was a good idea. Looking into the drawer beside me I managed to find an Exacto knife. Figured I'd peel off the cable covering, take the tiny wire and shove it back into place, and win an award for being the only cheap asshole to actually accomplish this. It seemed like a realistic endeavor before I firmly planted the rather dirty blade into the tip of a finger on my left hand. Stubbornly the attempt continued for about 5 more minutes, when I realized that I didn't need to bleed to death for internet, I had MSN on the other computer!

After the war wound sort-of healed, I tried once more to shove the stupid wire back into its casing. Then I figured, who the hell cares if it is actually in its connector? The wire only has to touch the other wire in your ethernet card. In my genius I pulled the stupid wire out of the jack, stripped it, taped it to the outside of the jack with scotch tape and shoved the whole thing into my laptop. Routers remain a realm of mystery, but when comes to ethernet cable hack jobs, I'm king.