I woke up this morning to no internet. My home life is so integrated, I couldn’t help but to be affected by the lack of service. I had gotten my wireless working again when I went to bed, but everything was completely down by the time I woke up. Somehow my router had gotten worse overnight, and could no longer detect the connection to my modem. I spent a while trying to bring it back to life, but ultimately gave up so I could get to work.
There wasn’t much going on at work, but I did get to learn a little bit about AppLocker. I stayed late to make up for some time and then drove by my parents’ house when I got off. As I pulled up, my parents were on their way to the funeral home to pay their respects to my fourth grade teacher’s husband. I only just vaguely remembered that period in my life, so I passed on visiting myself.
I really wanted to go to Dixie Cafe at some point today before they closed for good. Growing up, I had a very different version of “home-cooked” or “comfort food” than others around here. Even when we went out to eat, we usually ended up at a Chinese restaurant. There was a lot at Dixie that I never got at home, so it was really exotic food for me. I loved their appetizer sampler with their fried pickle spears, chicken strips with gravy, fried mushrooms, and fried cheese sticks. I always went through a couple baskets of their rolls and jalapeño cornbread. I only had a couple people that would ever go there with me, so it was really nostalgic for me, and now it’s gone forever.
Instead, I came home and warmed up some leftover eggrolls while I worked on my network. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite alone as when I walked into a dark, cold house that couldn’t talk back to me. I’ve grown beyond accustomed to my smart home, and it invoked a real emotional response when I came home and it was completely dead. After a bunch of trial and error, I remembered my pocket aces. When I worked at NEW, I had at one time required a customer ship us a router that he had claimed on his service plan. For some reason, I felt fit to keep this scrapped equipment. It was only one letter off of the model number of my router, so I thought it might be useful for parts. He shipped it to me without a power supply or even the screw-on antennae, but those parts from my fried router fit perfectly, and to my surprise the router booted up without issue. I performed a firmware update and got it running my home network in no time.
After I got my lights and other essential equipment back online, I settled in with my old friend Tom Collins and finished The Avengers. It really was a fun movie, and it reminded me of how far we’ve come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I can’t wait for the next movie in the collection.
No one likes a one-upper.