Technology sucks

Nothing shuts down a job search as quickly as spotty internet access. And few things are as frustrating when you're unemployed. That's been my life the last couple of days. And it's made me want to slam my laptop against the wall a few times.

My wife and I each have a laptop. She also has a big old hulking desktop that serves as the hub. She's a designer, so she needs the power. An external hard drive is also attached to the network.

I guess the problem actually started a few months ago. Or at least that's when I started to notice it. I generally use the wireless connection to get online, so I can sit at the dining room table or in front of the TV or wherever. But one day the connection slowed to dial-up speeds. Basic pages took forever to load; emails took forever to send. Around the same time I noticed I couldn't get online via ethernet without unplugging things and hooking them up in a certain order to fool the router into recognizing my computer. What a giant pain in the ass!

These days, the wireless is even slower and we can't find a frequency that takes more than 1 laptop at a time. And a "working" frequency may drop you at any time or simply stop working all together. I can't get the ethernet to work at all, at home or other places. So who knows what the problem is?

So I've taken to working from a cafe I like, more often than I otherwise would. It's an excuse to get out. But I'd at least like the option to use my computer at home.