I Need Wireless Network Assistance!

Today's picture comes from my Mom's garden. She had me water it in my "nothing to do" phase of the day yesterday. The picture looks really good in it's 1600x1200 resolution, because you get to see all the purple water droplets after I sprayed it with the hose. Ah well, this'll have to do for bandwidth and file size purposes. I know the flower has nothing to do with my title, but I thought for those who aren't really techies, you might appreciate the picture as you surf by...

Yesterday was a terrible day on the computer side of things. Maybe a passer-by could give me a little advice, but let me warn you, I've tried a lot of things and am fearing the worst as it is. Don't worry if you have to tell me bad news.

I found a Blog page yesterday that said Microsoft had released a beta version of their new Anti-Spyware. Well, since all my Auto-Surf Hit Exchanges are full of crap like that, I thought I might as well try that out. Ad-Aware 6 wasn't doing the job for me and I needed a change. So, I downloaded the new MS version on my laptop and ran it. It found tons of crap that Ad-Aware wasn't picking up and thought, "yes, this is great!" Upon saying that, I moved it onto my PC, installed it, ran it and it found a few more things and I was a happy camper.

Now, time sort of escapes along the line, but my crappy broadband ISP likes to cut out from time to time from the server. I don't know why and I don't know why I'm still with them (oh yeah, they're the only one in Middle of Nowhere, Alberta... just outside Calgary), but the internet cut out again. Both my laptop and my PC were cut out and I henceforth decided to play around with some settings on my laptop.

You know, my laptop's problems stem back even further, but nevertheless I shall continue. I thought I would go and power down my bridge to the ISP and power it back up to get a connection, whilst bringing my laptop with me to go outside. The bridge is in the garage, for those wondering... so outside was the place to be since it was so nice out. Anyways, I powered it down and back up again and the Wireless Connection still wasn't picking up an IP address. "Oh great," I thought to myself... what have I done? I thought that the Microsoft AntiSpyware program may have eliminated some of the settings or something, although I didn't see anything in the scan that would have proved that theory.

I ended up outside for about 3 hours yesterday, uninstalling, re-installing, unplugging, plugging in, powering up, powering down, restarting, shutting down and so forth, trying to get my wireless card to get an IP address. I even uninstalled the AntiSpyware... nothing!

Now, here's another strange thing... I even tried to connect to the network via the old way of plugging it in with a WIRE. Guess what... it didn't work either. AW SHIT! So, I quickly went inside to check the other 2 PC's in the house. I thought, first I'd check the one that didn't have the AntiSpyware on it... it worked! The network is running and there is an internet to be seen. Okay... downstairs to the other tested PC. Damn, it worked too! With the AntiSpyware still installed, to boot! ARGH!

Alright, so here's the situation... my laptop and it's PCMCIA Wireless Adapter card can see my wireless network SSID. It seems to not be able to communicate with it. Doing a ipconfig /release & /renew, the /renew function times out when trying to contact the router. Why? Anybody? Anything will help...

Okay... there's my tech problem. Done and dusted... until it's solved of course.

Stampede starts today in Calgary. Try and guess who won't be getting any phone calls regarding interviews or job opportunities for the next 10 days. Yup, that's right... that'd be me! How the hell am I supposed to enjoy the Stampede without any money? I'm barely scraping by with the money I still have from England... and I still have to get a lot of that converted over so I can pay my Canadian credit card, which I used to pay for my flight. Crap!

I haven't looked online yet this morning at more jobs. I guess if the companies are still posting, then they might have a look or two at some people... but make it soon... PLEASE!

I'll post more on this later, but my new dream is to do some research and live like the people in the book and film, The Beach. Primitive life on an island would be so good for me. But like I said, I'll probably devote an entire entry to that.

Credit surifing has been leaving me unfulfilled the last couple days. Maybe it's because I've done my first 10,000 visitors. That could be it. I might have to take a vacation from it soon... but since I'm unemployed, that does kill an hour or three each day, if I need it. Ah well... I'll probably just continue to do it anyways... fulfilled or not. It does keep me writing.

How dejected do I sound today? I'm looking at this in the third person and wow... I could use a beer, sex and/or a job... and not in that particular order. It's only going on 10am, but it is Stampede time, so a beer isn't out of the question. Hmmmmm...

Right... so this is where I'm gonna end my entry this morning. If I feel up to it, I might go on the London bombing a bit, but I'm not too sure. Everyone I know who works in London are alright, except I don't know about Maz, 'cuz Barry couldn't get a hold of her yesterday, but the odds are 50 in 8,000,000... so, I'm not terribly worried.

Buy into the Tales of the Opiated Sherpa on BlogShares... I'm listed! It's growing on the market place. $0.31 a share at the moment and steadily rising...

Cheers all!