Vatertag...

It is Ascension Day in deepest Bavaria. I seem to remember in the diaries I had as a kid it would say, "Ascension Day - quarter day in Scotland" or something. I never did work out what that was supposed to be.

Anyway, as the card companies would have it, Ascension Day is also Fathers' Day - and true to form it is a drizzly grey morning ... and anyway I have to get a translation done for tomorrow so I am working away .. yoohoo.

But I don't care ... the main thing is I have my connection back! I have been going nuts over the last few weeks cos my internet connection was constantly patchy and crashy and S L O W.

I have been tapping the WLAN box, fiddling about with the computers, kicking the cat (haven't got one actually... cats ... oooh ... shudder ... but I even felt like getting one just so I could kick it). Everything seemed to be going haywire; even my new(ish) laptop, Lappo was all grumpy and crashy and slow - with very intermittent and unreliable internet.

So I decided on Tuesday evening ... rashly as usual ... to do a Systemwiederherstellung which is what in English? Erm, a "put-your-system-back-to-how-it-was-in-the-good-old-days-when-everything-worked" thing.

This is NOT advisable! I don't know exactly what it put my system back to but it was some place in laptop hell. Suddenly nothing was working! Aaaarrrrgghhhh!!!

So, in between trying to work yesterday, I tried all sorts of virus finders/malware smashers/trojan killers etc etc ...

Finally I went back to something I'd noticed a few weeks ago. I saw that someone in the vicinity was using exactly the same WLAN box as me. I wondered at first if maybe that was causing the problem; same frequency somehow blocking each other or something - but I thought, "nah, can't be - they must have different configurations."

I had a look at the various WLANs operating in the vicinity - there are a good few now - and there they were, the two Fritz boxes, mine and some neighbour's. I, of course, was connecting to the one at the top of the list; it being in the same flat and all. On an impulse I checked the MAC number (don't ask me what a MAC number is but it is something the WLAN boxes and PCs all seem to have) .

Shock ... horror ... enlightenment ...

My box was second on the list. The neighbour's box was giving me a better, stronger signal than mine!!! AND I had somehow been tapping in to that box - hence patchy slow connections???

Anyway, I reset it and ... ka-pow ... connection back/everything works/FAST/and I can use Skype again!!

Just had to get all the bits and pieces on Lappo, which the Systemwiederherstellung killed, to work again.

I finally got that done late last night after scouring the PC forums and using a bit of intuition born of panic and now I have a leaner, safer Lappo ... and it is BLISS!

Best Fathers' Day pressie!

(Only Fathers' Day pressie ? ?)