I've said it before and I'll say it again... I continue to run into funny little road blocks when it comes to tech issues. I've been complaining about my AT&T U-Verse wireless connection for some time now. I've googled like crazy and the best work around seems to be to connect a separate wireless router on the back end of the U-Verse gateway. Seems simple doesn't it? Well ... never the case for me! Tonight I purchased a Belkin F7D3302 802.11n router - not the fastest on the market but I didn't want to pay a ton of money since it's more of a test at this point. Now, I know something had to be done inside the U-Verse box, but AT&T wasn't about to tell me (well maybe for an additional fee) so I decided to call Belkin. Over the next three hours I spoke with three different techs (all in India and very hard to understand) who were unable to assist me at all. Try this, try that, are you sure your user name and password are correct? I mean COME ON! YES IT'S RIGHT!!

In the end of it all I figured out it all out on my own. Add the MAC address to the allowed devices in the U-Verse gateway. Voila!
Next up was getting the iPhone and iPad connected. The Belkin is an "n" and apparently (after more googling) the iPhone and iPad only work on the "g" and "b" ... my current settings on the router indicate multi-band, so all devices should work, but nothing. I call support again - they have to escalate and send me to 2nd level techs who won't call back till tomorrow night.

So... I simply changed it to "g" and I'm all connected. OK, so maybe I'm not getting the speed of the n, but it's miles above what I was getting with the U-Verse gateway... miles!! To summarize - it looks a little something like this. AT&T tells me to call Belkin, I call Belkin they tell me to call AT&T, I tell them I was just on the phone with AT&T and they cannot provide support for secondary equipment, Belkin then tells me to call Apple. Now really? What the heck is Apple going to do? So then Belkin says on to second tier support. Why do I even bother calling these boneheads? ~ gadget girl

Finally got a new hard drive today. Paid the genius bar a visit last week and they "couldn't replicate the problem." I seriously hate those words. I know it's not easy trusting that people know what they are talking about when it comes to computer problems. But, I do think it's possible to qualify them a bit given the information and troubleshooting they do prior to coming in.

So, this time I took a photo of my error screen and that seemed to do the trick. No question when there's photographic evidence!

Let's hope time machine has a good backup to restore. It's been working for a little over two hours. Eek!

... via iPhone ...