Two years ago I made a purchase out of necessity. When I no longer needed it, I cast it aside. But now, it has risen from the realms of the forgotten to serve me once more. I speak, of course, of this big blue ethernet cable thingy that's sticking out of my computer now.

When I lived in Tercero, I needed an ethernet cable in order to use the school's DSL line. There's no wi-fi in the dorms, you see. I suppose I could have set up a wireless router of my own, but it was much easier to run a cord into the outlet and enjoy the internet service they provided for me. After I moved out, I went back to using wireless internet, and the ethernet cable sat coiled in the bottom of a box for a year.

This week, however, I pulled it out of retirement. Starting Tuesday, our router went on the fritz. The wi-fi would be working fine, then suddenly cut out. It would blink back on a minute later, then blink back off again after five minutes. After a little while, it stopped blinking back on. Crap.

But wait! I had a recourse! Out came the old blue cable, tangled and dusty from neglect. And lo, I was browsing TV Tropes and Reddit as if nothing had happened! Success! Or so I thought.

We called up AT&T to investigate the issue. Today, they sent in some guy named Jerry to fix whatever was wrong. He diagnosed it as a hardware error, and gave us a new router-box-thingy, successfully restoring our wi-fi access. Except for one problem...everyone was getting the signal except for me. We rebooted my machine, we rebooted the modem, we checked that my drivers were up to date, we fiddled with the settings--all in vain. For whatever unknown reason, my laptop couldn't pick up the wi-fi signal. Crap!

I'm sorry to say that I have no idea what the problem is. Something's gone funky in my laptop, and now its wireless card is as impotent as a Shedinja with a Life Orb. What caused it? No idea. How can I fix it? No idea. How am I accessing the internet in the meantime? My blue ethernet cable is, apparently, a life-saver.