A tech-stupid weekend

Oy...

I'm supposed to know this stuff. I'm supposed to be good at this stuff. It is, after all, a large part of my livelihood. I'm a geek.

Sometimes, however, it's the simple stuff that comes back to bite you in the butt.

Yesterday morning, I was having some quirky problems with Internet access, I rebooted my DSL modem. The problem is that it wasn't actually rebooting. So I asked my son who was upstairs by the modem, to unplug the modem and plug it back in. That usually fixes the problem.

This time it didn't. As a matter of fact, from that moment on, I didn't have Internet access. The DSL light on my DSL modem kept flashing on and off. It's supposed to do that for a few minutes, then light up solid green.

I finally gave up and called Qwest. We went through several diagnostic steps before the tech asked me if I was using a green cable or a grey cable. I said I was using a green one. He asked me if it was plugged into the green "line" port or the grey "phone" port on the back of the modem. I looked. It was plugged into the wrong port. Problem solved. Apparently, my son had unplugged the data cable instead of the power cable. I should have noticed that. I should have checked that.

Boy did I feel stupid.

Then, when I got online, I noticed that my main domain had one of those temporary advertising placeholder sites instead of MY content. WHAT THE??

Then I remembered. I had received notices that the domain was about to expire. I must have ignored them, because, SURPRISE! My domain expired.

Fortunately, it was still renewable. But oy. I'm feeling pretty stupid today.