The best technical problems are solved by the simplest methods. For instance, my Internet connection stopped functioning sometime on Monday night. This was curious given the history of uptime. While constant outages and connection issues marred the first year of the DSL experience, for the last four years I’ve been connected almost continuously. At one point the modem needed replacement; that ate a few minutes. Otherwise it has been rock solid.

So the no Internet thing bothered me, especially since all configurations have been identical for the last year. And that was the problem: everything was the same. The exact same router has been running for nearly six years; it gave up the ghost on Monday. Which was perplexing, because even on close inspection it appeared operational. Once it quit talking to the modem correctly, the net result was no Internet for me.

Swapped out the old and busted for a new lovely and everything sang. Rack up one in the “buy to fix” column.

To celebrate my return to connected land, I emailed the agent for his thoughts on the novel…