We’re Now Officially 100% Settled In

or How I Triumphed Over Our Internet Connectivity Issues.

We had a number of things to take care of since we arrived including buying a car, getting it insured and finding chests of drawers for our clothes. As of last week, we had taken care of all of those things but we were still having problems with our internet connection. Sharon has the router in her place next door and due to the thickness of the walls, the connectivity in our place was sporadic at best. I decided the best way to deal with this would be to get a wireless repeater which connects to her router and then rebroadcasts the signal on our side of the wall. This seemed fairly straightforward so I ordered one which arrived within a few days.

Step 1 was to update the firmware (the internal software of a hardware device) on Sharon’s router since it was out of date and exacerbating the connectivity issues. I found instructions on-line on how to do this including warnings that if not done properly, could mean ending up with a brick (dead piece of hardware). So I thought I followed the instructions but apparently not because after my first attempt, the router would not boot up. This scared me quite a bit since not being able to fix it meant having to buy a new router. Well, I consulted the internet some more (using another router of Sharon’s which had it’s own set of problems) and eventually found someone with the same problem and a solution. Sure enough, following these steps brought the router back to life and I was able to upgrade the firmware to version 2. The latest version of the firmware, however, is version 3 so I figured it was best to bite the bullet and upgrade to that. I should have known better since this upgrade didn’t cause the router to die but led to other problems which meant I couldn’t get it to connect to the ISP. The above took over four hours and admitting defeat, I decided to call it a night (actually, Will dictated that I call it a night, but he’s usually right in these situations, so I complied).

The next morning, I managed to change the firmware back to version 2 which works a treat. The next step was to get the wireless repeater to connect to the router. Again, there were some instructions on-line but all of them said that you may need to repeat the steps many times to get it to work. So I was prepared for a bit of a battle but didn’t expect it to be as painful as it was. I won’t bore you with the details (too late, you say?) but I am happy to say that after 8 hours of fighting with the damn thing, I eventually got it to talk to the router and now we have connectivity all over the house.

The last thing to sort out here was to find an indoor pool where I can do some laps. My french being what it is, this took quite a bit of searching the web until I figured out exactly what I needed to google to find indoor pools (there are many outdoor pools but they only open during the summer). Anyway, I found one in a nearby town and went there for the first time today. It’s only 25 meters but it’s certainly adequate for my needs. To get there, I drive down a narrow 1.5 lane road which winds its way through a forest. When you pass someone, you need your outside tyres on the edge of the pavement or else you smack into the oncoming car. Thankfully, I only passed two cars each way on the entire 10 mile stretch. This is the first time I’ve been swimming in over a month but managed to do 1.3K (~0.8 mi) so am feeling virtuous.

It’s started raining again and temps have returned to the low teens (~ mid 50’s F) but it’s still pleasant enough for an occasional walk. C’est tout pour aujourd’hui.