So I just got a new router (WRT54G) and it's rebooting itself randomly. This is happening amid some cable company problems (packet loss, dropped connections), so part of the reason I got the new router was to rule out that the old one wasn't the source of my problem. I've heard of bad cable connections sending some kind of poison signal to routers and killing them, so I figure I'll call Linksys tech support to ask their opinion before the cable guy comes out tomorrow.....
Their web site says that they're only open until 8PM pacific. It's a good thing I'm in central time and it's 6:30 there. But when I call it's pretty clearly a guy in India that answers. Are they really that cruel that they don't let anybody in India work normal business hours relative to their location?
So the first guy pretty quickly forwards me to a "senior technician" when he realizes I'm more technically inclined than the usual caller...
The senior technician asks me what the problem is (again) so I tell him, the router's rebooting itself intermittently. Senior tech asks to open a new internet explorer window...just in the name of being thorough, I ask him if firefox is OK (i told the last guy I was running Linux...they should know better). He tells me I should really use IE, but the fox should be OK. Walks me through some basic configurations, all the while talking to me like I'm his grandma (see that boxy thing that says "ok" on it? yeah, move your mouse over there and press the left button...). During this process, the router crashes at least 5 times, with me cursing and telling him about it every time.
Finally get all the config changes he wants done. He tells me to go to the laptop and make sure I can load a web page (I picked worsethanfailure.com to be my test). Yeah, the laptop connects fine. "OK. now can you please tell for me the exact problem having you are for this laptop?"
Did he not fucking hear me when I told him the router was rebooting itself? Did he not hear me all those times I said "it happened again"? Why did he ever think my laptop was a necessary part of the equation?