Mr. Troutbend has been out here in Nevada with his new laptop and I kept getting reports from him that he'd go days without receiving emails because of 'server problems.' This didn't make much sense but I couldn't deal with it long distance.

He also mentioned that he was able to log into our home wireless network without a password, so that was a bit of a concern since I didn't want to be sharing our network with the neighborhood.

So last night I undertook to put better security on the network. What a bucket of worms that turned out to be. It soon became apparent that his computer was not seeing our network to even try to log into it. After a few hours of research, setting up various passwords, renaming, changing the security protocol and several times getting shut out of the administration part of the router, I had all four computers going, and his was the only problem. I barely had to do anything for the other computers to magically connect, and there sat his, trying to get into some neighbor's network called 'Dont_touch_my_junk' that doesn't require a log-in.

Finally. Finally, I figured out our router has the two available frequencies - 2.4 Ghz and 5.0 Ghz, and was set at the 5. Apparently his network adapter can only pick up the 2.4. So once I reset the router, Bingo! Now it's connecting to our home network, his signal is much stronger, and all is well.

But I'll never get back those three hours of my life.