Abigail M. Schilling

Our wireless router is on the fritz and can't keep a connection for longer than a few minutes. This is obviously THE MOST ANNOYING THING IN THE WORLD, something I intend to do something about once I clean my room enough so that I can actually access the modem et al. without hurting myself. My room is a man-made disaster and I've lost my balance trying to navigate it three times in the last 24 hours. All three times resulted in noticeable injuries. AND I know that it's more than just rebooting the router because I've tried that. The router was only $30. It probably wasn't supposed to last more than a year anyway. But I'm scared to get a new router because remember last time? When I bought this router (this fritz-y router that wasn't even worth $30 after all) and it took me five weeks to get working internet? I'm scared of that happening again.

Boo.

The trouble with the shitty router that can't hold a connection:

a) Instant Messaging is consistently getting interrupted without notifying me or anyone I'm messaging. This results in a lot of dropped IMs. This obviously gives me the rage.

b) Aside from the glorious invention of YouTube (that allows videos to load before playing), most videos on the interwebs are 100 percent streaming which means that they will just STOP if the connection is lost. Then you can never get them to play again. Do you know how many cast members of The Office are trying to communicate with me via online videos? AND I CAN'T SEE THEM.

c) My work-email client is software that needs a steady connection (obvs). Once it disconnects (without notifying me) it doesn't save any emails I've been working on or anything. So my working-from-home has been reduced to zero.

This has all been going on for about three months. I know, your head just exploded, right? See, I had a cheater method: from a corner of my house I could pick up an unprotected connection from our next door neighbors. Despite the fact that they had the exact same ISP as us, they did not have the World's Worst Router and so I could stream videos from NBC.com, stay connected to my work email, and have multi-sentence chats all from the comfort of my very own laptop. I felt guilty just outright stealing 'net from them, so I would save up all my Urgent Internet Tabs in a special window and then I would have a session with ChrisPad, the full service wireless network.

Well, looks like ChrisPad moved. For one, they've taken down all their strange-o hanging plants and the house looks awfully quiet. And for two I see no unprotected networks in my radius and I CAN'T WATCH THE VIDEOS FROM TODAY'S UPFRONTS.

At least the DVR still works. Can you imagine if that started fritzing too? I can't even think about it.