If it ain't broke . . .

Why can't I ever learn that old, old lesson? Why must I tinker?

Okay, here's my tale of woe.

Today (Saturday) was actually cold and blustery here in South Texas, so no golf for us wimps.

What's that? How cold was it, you ask? The temps never got above 51 in the mid afernoon, and the wind was blowing out of the north at 20-30! Brrrr!

Yeah, the sun was shining brightly.

Yeah, I know. I SAID we were wimps!

My excuse is that it had rained most of the night and the course would have been pretty soupy. It's not much fun cleaning mud off the golf ball (and your club) after every shot. Not to mention wiping it off your face if you take a little too much divot.

Heck, maybe tomorrow we'll brave the elements and play. It's supposed to be in the upper 50s with less wind, and the ground ought to be a little drier then.

All you folks suffering through single-digit temps are probably ready to take a swing at me for continuing to rub it in about our climate here, but you'll get your revenge next July and August.

Okay, back to my topic.

Since we didn't play golf, I got to messing with my wireless router. We have a little home network running here, and I had brought home a laptop from work to play with work on this weekend and wanted to tie it in to the home network using its wi-fi card. All I had to do was find the router's security key, type it in, and I'd be connected.

I accessed the router from my desktop and started browsing theough all the security settings looking for the key. Hmmm . . . not there. Maybe over here . . . nope. Click on this selection -- Oh no! I hit "save" by mistake. Wonder what I changed. Well, I'm sure I can fix it.

At that point Carol's laptop could no longer connect wirelessly, and she was less than pleased.

Don't worry, I assured her, I'll have it back up in a few minutes. Let's see; where are the docs for that thing? AH! Here's the CD that came with the router. I'll just re-install everything, and . . . The darn CD won't let me run the Setup.exe file. Why not? This makes no sense.

I'll try the Linksys web site . . . oh, I can't get online through the router since it's not working right. Well, I'll just bypass it and plug the network cable from the cable moden directly into my computer. (mutter) (mutter) Why are these cables tangled up and so hard to get in and out!?

Okay, finally I'm back online and logged into technical support. But where do I go from here?
(a half-hour passes while I read different Q&As and tech manuals with no help. Carol is fuming nearby.)

Ah! I'll download this "Easy Link" wizard which should automate the process. Okay, it's dowloaded. It's running. I'd better unplug everything and start from scratch.

I follow the steps of the wizard. It creates a new WEP security key, which I copy onto both MY desktop and Carol's (so NEXT TIME this happens we'll know where to find it!)

Finally, Carol is back on the internet and all is well.

Gee, only 3 hours have elapsed from start to finish.

And yes, I can even get the laptop from work to connect now! I mentioned that to Carol with some pride, and think I heard a muttered "Well, big *!!%**#! deal!"

But hey, I DID get it all fixed! (Even if it "weren't broke" to begin with. No, I guess I'll never learn.)