Last Monday’s fix didn’t last long, since the cable was apparently also damaged past the portion which was replaced then. Still, that fix did solve the issues for the moment and it worked with no problems until shortly after 4 PM on Friday, when I noticed a brief outage that I didn’t pay particular attention to since resetting the switch sorted it out and when I checked I saw that the computer had been running for just over a week, it said seven days and a few minutes, so thought there may have been some need to send or receive some network information after that time, since I have the settings done manually. However, it’s far more likely that it was in fact a sign of things to come.
Worked fine over the weekend, but at about 3:45 PM on Monday there was another outage and resetting the switch resulted in the signal appearing intermittent again, though the periods when it was missing were about as rare as those when it briefly appeared after the blizzard. Another reset fixed it, but only until 4:15 PM, when it again required two resets of the switch to work until 4:35 PM. Then I tried to plug the cable directly into the computer and noticed that the computer didn’t see any signal, though I left it there until 5 PM, when I plugged it back through the switch. That made it work until 7 PM, after which it became increasingly harder to make it work for any length of time and I had to try everything, whether resetting the switch, unplugging and plugging back the cable in the switch, doing the same in the UPS, as it once again passes through that, or switching ports on the switch. One of these, at some point, made it work a while longer, probably because a sufficiently clear connection could be established after I did it, but it failed again after less and less time.
After 10 PM any connection only lasted mere seconds, so I gave up for a while, and when I checked again, around 11:30 PM, it worked again, after having apparently fixed itself. Also had a successful update at 11:10 PM, so was working then too. Failed again at 5:15 AM, and logs tell me it wasn’t working at 6:35 AM, but dad said it was working at 7 AM, when he woke up, and it seemed to continue to work until 10:35 AM. At 10:40 AM it failed again, but unplugging the cable from the switch and plugging it back in at noon fixed it, and it didn’t fail again until at some point between 12:20 PM and 1 PM on Wednesday.
I only actually got on the computer at 4 PM then, but attempts to fix it only offered me a few seconds the first time and a couple of minutes the second, after which it completely refused to work again, though plugging the cable directly into the computer made it see that there was a signal again, just that it wasn’t one it could use. Strangely enough, later in the evening the computer couldn’t directly see the signal at all anymore, but plugging it back through the switch gave me about 15 minutes of working Internet access around 8 PM, then initially brief but increasingly longer periods after 10 PM, allowing me to be on-line much of the time until I went to bed.
Did call the guy managing this network around 5 PM on Wednesday and, after checking to see that the other computers in this building that are in this network are on-line, he concluded that the cable must need to be completely replaced and said he’ll do that the next day, after 11 AM, also complaining about the quality of the cables used by the network I used to be in, and which he took over, and saying he already replaced four in this building. And that complaint was obviously fully justified, as the cable used after theirs were cut, a year and a bit ago, was a particularly soft and flimsy unshielded UTP cable that even the guy who worked on it complained about, repeatedly and pointedly, when he came to attach the jack. Probably meant that someone else decided what to purchase and he had to make do with what he had, despite his better judgment.
Either way, we were actually called at 10:15 AM on Thursday and told he’ll be on top of the building in ten minutes, so I rushed to quickly do something, as I had managed to kick it back to life after waking up at 10 AM and meant to get some things out of the way, in case the problem somehow won’t be solved that day. Then I untangled the cable, dad removed the window and managed to pull it back out through the wall, and then he also, with difficulty, pushed the new one in through that same hole. After that, the guy came to attach the jack and I checked that it worked and also asked why does it take so long to access my blog since I ended up in this network, since it’s quite clear that the problem isn’t with my host, as others don’t have the same issue. He didn’t have much to say about that though, only suggesting that there may be some connection issue on the way, after also telling me to add the network’s DNS, which I didn’t know existed until then, as primary and see if that changed anything. I didn’t keep that DNS there for long, however, as shortly after he left I found myself ending up on what appeared to be some highly questionable betting site, if not simply a phishing site, instead of where I wanted to go. Which, if done on purpose, is a dirty trick.
The problem now is that this new cable is also a simple unshielded UTP cable, albeit slightly thicker and maybe a little less soft than the old one, and I heard dad also offered to pay him for the trouble and he accepted the offer. Admittedly, the amount probably didn’t even cover the cable itself, even at this low quality, considering the distance, but if we were to pay for something, it should have been for something not so likely to just get damaged again soon enough. After all, we did fully pay for the first one, but that was a sturdy FTP cable, not sure if also shielded or not, and good enough to last since March or April of 2006 and until December of 2014, when it was cut, albeit with the portion where it goes over the top of the building wrapped in insulating tape earlier that year, when it started pissing on my desk. So now I wonder how long till we’ll have to go through it all over again…
As for the new dentist, after chipping my teeth when I accidentally bit into the fork, I thought to use the “opportunity” to look for someone else in the area, after having been unhappy with those I’ve been going to for some time, considering the fillings that kept falling out and the pain I was left with after the last replacement, and also that their site doesn’t seem to exist anymore. This led me to make a choice, though of course I was very uncertain about it, but dad repeated his suggestion, also made when I had previously mentioned wanting to go somewhere else, more than once, and I ended up somewhere else, though admittedly the place is only a couple of minutes away and, according to what I had found as well, they seem to do good work. The problem is that their primary target are children, which of course means they’re particularly careful but also that the environment is one I definitely don’t want to find myself in. Plus, they’re rather expensive.
Still, like I said, I ended up at this place nearby last evening, being scheduled at 7:30 PM for a free check, after which they’d tell me what should be done about the slightly chipped teeth. Only ended up being admitted around 7:55 PM, however, but everyone apologized repeatedly for the delay, and it’s probably a bad sign of how things work around here that I was so surprised they didn’t treat the situation as completely normal. Also, and somewhat as expected, the dentist was very, and I dare say even excessively, gentle and careful, also explaining everything and asking whether she can do what she wanted to do when it was only a matter of blowing some air or, after checking, smoothing the chipped bits a little, which she said she’ll do for free.
What will be paid will be a tiny filling for one of the chipped teeth, where she said the bit that snapped off is a bit more noticeable and may just be big enough for a filling to stick. The other one I knew of and one or two others she also spotted, since I’m not exactly sure which one she was working on at one point, apparently have too little damage to be much of a problem and there’d be no way for a filling that small to stay there. And there don’t seem to be any cavities or loose fillings, though she also stressed the same things my old dentist kept saying, namely that I should have my three remaining wisdom teeth removed and that there’s quite a lot of tartar. And my replies were also the same, namely that I’ll wait for the wisdom teeth to actually cause obvious problems first, and that I’m uncertain about removing the tartar… Which uncertainty turned into another decision to forget it when she mentioned how much that’d cost if done there, so when she saw my look she said it’d be better not to wait too long for it, adding that maybe it should be done at some point within the next six months.
So, yes, the prices are a problem, though perhaps I should be less concerned about it than I am since dad is paying and he picked the place. Also, the doctor did offer me a 10% discount right away, again being particularly nice about it, which was increased to 20% when I agreed to come during the morning, and this 20% discount makes the price be the same as what the place I had picked said a filling for one chipped front tooth would cost, in their reply to the e-mail I had sent. Still more expensive that the old place though, so it’ll really have to stay there for a long time to be worth it in terms of money alone… And I doubt anything would be worth staying in a place with an obvious focus on children, including a coloring table, drawings obviously made by children on one wall and something meant for pregnant women placed very visibly among the promotional materials, and where I’m obviously likely to end up waiting next to children and parents. In fact there was a child there even last evening, though only briefly.
