Questions you want answered.

Robear wrote:

Strange - I'm tempted to conclude that your wife's system has an old or incorrect picture of the network, but I don't know enough about the MS detection abilities to really say.

So how many switches do you have, how many ports do they have (each) and how many are you using? The first thing that comes to mind is to say "plug it all into the same switch". But then if they are older switches, that might be a bad choice, traffic-wise. The thing is, if you have gone from a few devices plugged into each switch - maybe the switches were just put in to lengthen the reach of the Ethernet or something - then you might be generating too much traffic at times for your *router*, leading to the same issue I described above for the hub. You'd need to have, say, several streaming tasks going on at once, or a big download or something.

One thing I will note is that when a switch starts to die (or is overheated), you could see it stop working periodically like this. Any chance they are more than, say, three years old?

We kind of need to pull in Malor, he's good with this stuff.

OK. Tell me what you mean by switch? The physical pieces of hardware that connect me to the internet are the wireless/wired router and my computer and my wife's computer.

Are these switches supposed to be physical boxes existing outside the computers? If so there are none. Just the router and the two wired-to-the-router computers.

And I have no idea how old the router is.

Oh right. Since my post at 2:25 p.m. (West Coast time) there's been no hiccups on my end. Perfect net connectivity so far. And this is after disabling IPv6 as per Oily's suggestion. Does one have to do with the other? I have no idea.

Ah, okay. In that case, I suspect your router is dying or occasionally overloaded. I saw similar issues with mine when it was old. Can you find a make and model on a label on the router? We could figure out how old it is. At least with Verizon, you should be able to get them to drop in a replacement at no cost, which will almost certainly be newer/better/faster, if you tell them it's dying. Especially if it's been there a few years.

Or you could figure out which ones are compatible with your provider and just buy one yourself. I know Verizon lets you do that.

I can't see any reason why ipv6 would cause your router to periodically stop responding.

Robear wrote:

I can't see any reason why ipv6 would cause your router to periodically stop responding.

If the router has old firmware or is just old in general, IPv6 alongside IPv4 can interfere with things. I've seen it a few times.

If you go back a couple of days, you'll see SB posted before and after ipconfigs, his IPv6 was connected while it was good and disconnected while not.

While the IPv4 seemed to be okay but with bad IP. I think Oily had the right of it. SB let us know if it takes a dive again.

Cayne wrote:

While the IPv4 seemed to be okay but with bad IP. I think Oily had the right of it. SB let us know if it takes a dive again.

Sure thing.

OK. The net dropped out again but before I could run a ping test or anything the connection went back up. I knew I shouldn't have changed providers from Telus to Rollercoaster Inc.

As you've obviously got a complicated issue, I humbly suggest you move it to the tech and help section.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

As you've obviously got a complicated issue, I humbly suggest you move it to the tech and help section.

Yeah. My Net Nightmare TM has been moved over to this thread. If there's an existing Internet/network issues thread I'm all ears.

concentric wrote:

Does a fly buzzing around keep anyone else awake?

Were you asking the room you were in when this fly was present?

Strangeblades wrote:
concentric wrote:

Does a fly buzzing around keep anyone else awake?

Were you asking the room you were in when this fly was present?

This is one of those questions that is designed to drive us crazy as we try to think how to could possibly make sense, when it fact it can't possibly?

Cayne wrote:
Strangeblades wrote:

OK. So my net connection dropped again, this time with my wife's cable linking my rig to the router. And my wife's computer, hooked to the router with my old cable, is working fine. Dang.

Did I screw something up when I reinstalled Win 7? Prior to that I did unplug everything and clean out my CPU's heat sink, video card and mobo with blasts of compressed air.

Uninstall/Reinstall the drivers for your ethernet card, or see if there is a more up to date one.

another thing to try is running a CMD window and using the tracert command to see where in the network you lose connectivity. at the local, the router, the modem.... OH!!! something else to try switch the port your plugged into on the router.

UPDATE: With my wife's cable, still plugged into the same router port, my net connection on MY computer dropped and then reconnected itself a few minutes later. I don't think it's the port(s) on the router that are the issue. I'll go back to switching to another router if other stuff doesn't pan out.

1) Ran the tracert in the CMD window but everything comes back nominal. I guess cause my internet's back up?

2) Screen grabs of interest.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/6vHQXMW.png)
The response back from the tracert. Note this is when my net is up and running.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/X44zulJ.png)
My network security map report from my Norton.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/unXHD3L.png)
Local area connection status when my net connection was down.

Silly question.

My dog feels about my hair the same way River Tam feels about Shepard Book's hair. It's been six months and every time I comb it out she takes off and hides.

Has anyone else ever seen this (maybe of your wife/mom's hair rather than yours)? If so, what did you do about it?

So Dragon Age 3 looks pretty neat so I am wondering if someone can point me to a good story overview for the first two games? I bought and wasn't able to get into the first two games so maybe third time will be the charm.

Rykin wrote:

So Dragon Age 3 looks pretty neat so I am wondering if someone can point me to a good story overview for the first two games? I bought and wasn't able to get into the first two games so maybe third time will be the charm.

There's always the plot section of the Wikipedia pages.

DA:O
DA2

Youtube has some good playthroughs of DA 1 & 2 ... like mine for example !

momgamer wrote:

Silly question.

My dog feels about my hair the same way River Tam feels about Shepard Book's hair. It's been six months and every time I comb it out she takes off and hides.

Has anyone else ever seen this (maybe of your wife/mom's hair rather than yours)? If so, what did you do about it?

Depending how your hair looks when combed out you may be giving an unintentional dog signal of fear or aggression.

How often do you comb it out? If it's daily try to do it at the same time for a while so it's part of her known routine. Beyond that actively spend some time with her to show her that you and the situation are still okay until she gets it. If it's a rarer event then take a picture and show her more often, IIRC dogs can recognize and distinguish images in pictures so perhaps seeing it more often would help her get acquainted.

It's also possible the dog thinks she will be brushed when you brush your hair, and doesn't want to be. One of our dogs won't sit on the couch with my wife, because he associates that with serious grooming.

I do it at least once a day. I do it every night before bed, and when I have to leave the house. My hair is waist-length, and when it's not tightly confined it's quite wavy. Think Galadriel's hair, only gray. I often refer to the task as "releasing the kraken".

I have been petting her and talking to her with it down. I've tried giving her treats while I do it. I don't think it's that she's afraid of grooming. She loves to be brushed. I have a Zoom Groom and she'll stand there and let me scrub her as long as I'm willing to keep at it.

Maybe she's afraid of the hairbrush itself? I just thought of that.

(And on another note, why does my spell checker know the word Galadriel!?)

momgamer wrote:

I do it at least once a day. I do it every night before bed, and when I have to leave the house. My hair is waist-length, and when it's not tightly confined it's quite wavy. Think Galadriel's hair, only gray. I often refer to the task as "releasing the kraken".

I have been petting her and talking to her with it down. I've tried giving her treats while I do it. I don't think it's that she's afraid of grooming. She loves to be brushed. I have a Zoom Groom and she'll stand there and let me scrub her as long as I'm willing to keep at it.

Maybe she's afraid of the hairbrush itself? I just thought of that.

(And on another note, why does my spell checker know the word Galadriel!?)

Spellcheckers are made by nerds

They are also used by geeks. Maybe I've done this somehow?

(...starts typing Tengwar into window, to see what sticks....)

momgamer wrote:

They are also used by geeks. Maybe I've done this somehow?

(...starts typing Tengwar into window, to see what sticks....)

It's possible you added it yourself..

MeatMan wrote:
Rykin wrote:

So Dragon Age 3 looks pretty neat so I am wondering if someone can point me to a good story overview for the first two games? I bought and wasn't able to get into the first two games so maybe third time will be the charm.

There's always the plot section of the Wikipedia pages.

DA:O
DA2

In preparation for 3, I would also recommend you read the books, or the wiki pages for Asunder and The Masked Empire (though it's kind of suggested in Asunder that the Masked Empire precedes it... and the events of Asunder bear that out). One of the companion characters comes from Asunder and I suspect your interactions with both the mages/templars and the Orlesian empire will have at least a couple of characters from the books.

Demosthenes wrote:
MeatMan wrote:
Rykin wrote:

So Dragon Age 3 looks pretty neat so I am wondering if someone can point me to a good story overview for the first two games? I bought and wasn't able to get into the first two games so maybe third time will be the charm.

There's always the plot section of the Wikipedia pages.

DA:O
DA2

In preparation for 3, I would also recommend you read the books, or the wiki pages for Asunder and The Masked Empire (though it's kind of suggested in Asunder that the Masked Empire precedes it... and the events of Asunder bear that out). One of the companion characters comes from Asunder and I suspect your interactions with both the mages/templars and the Orlesian empire will have at least a couple of characters from the books.

Gotta borrow my wife's kindle. She's got them both.

I should catch up on the DA books ... I liked the one that came out around the time of Origins.

Dakuna wrote:
momgamer wrote:

They are also used by geeks. Maybe I've done this somehow?

(...starts typing Tengwar into window, to see what sticks....)

It's possible you added it yourself..

Possible, but I don't think so. I'm very careful about this after getting bit years ago by accidentally adding a bunch of Star Trek words to a dictionary and getting some interesting stuff passed through in a specification I was writing. Thank goodness the room was full of other heinous geeks who caught it. There was no Tholian module anywhere in the software we were writing.

Need to find out if the Firefox one can also learn from the user just by them using it.

What internet browser should I be using, and why?

Dakuna wrote:

What internet browser should I be using, and why?

Whichever one you like unless your favorite doesn't work so well on a site then use the one that works best for the site you are viewing. Why should be obvious: because it is the one you like/the one that works best for that site. I have three installed on my home Macs: Chrome for most browsing, Safari for a java site I have to use from time to time (and you know it ships with the OS), and Firefox for one of my student loan sites that don't support the other two (and doesn't work right when I change the User-Agent in Chrome). At work I use IE and Chrome because most of our work related stuff works best in IE and I can do personal stuff and web searches in Chrome.

Dakuna wrote:

What internet browser should I be using, and why?

I'm on Windows.

For me it comes down to how tabs are pinned. I like to keep my most frequently used sites open at all times so I can just bounce back and forth between them. Chrome puts the tabs at the top of the window. Firefox has that little badge menu thing above the tabs, which I don't like. Internet Explorer uses the frickin WINDOWS TASKBAR for some insane reason.

As far as I can tell, Firefox and Chrome have nearly identical features. IE does things a little differently.

I still use all three browsers for various reasons, but Chrome is my main one. The reason why may seem silly, but there it is.