My friend Mary Rhein died today after a two year battle with cancer. She was, by my reckoning, about 48. I am proud to have known her. I know that her spirit lives on in me, and in the many students whose lives she touched. I’ll miss her.

We had quite a wild thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, and when I got home I found that none of the lights on the wireless router were on. So, step 1, I find a compatible power adapter and try that instead of the router’s usual power brick. That brings many of the lights on the router back up, but still no live link between the cable modem and the router. I try another old hub, and it has no problem talking to the cable modem. So, the wireless router is fried. I buy a new one, but we get home late from the Harry Potter party at Barnes and Noble, so I wait until this morning to hook up the new toy.

This morning, I start to hook up the new router, but it says that I should have the internet connection working with my computer first. So, I try to get that going for quite a while with no luck. Finally, I talk to a tech at Adelphia who concludes that either my cable modem is dead or they are having a signal quality problem. He schedules a service call for Tuesday. Unwiling to wait until Tuesday to fix my high speed internet unless absolutely necessary, I go out and get a new cable modem. This fixes the problem, after which I am able to configure the new router.

So, the thunderstorm cost me $120 in new equipment and several hours of troubleshooting. (I did try the old router again with the new cable modem. Still no dice.) I should probably invest in some better surge protection equipment.