Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Connecting

Most of the time, I turn on my Verizon JetPack cellular hot spot and my laptop sees it and connects to it. Sometimes the laptop has other things on its silicon mind and I have to remind it to look for the JetPack. "Oh yeah. Sorry."

But when I get into a more populated area with lots of people and businesses running wi-fi, my computer starts acting like a stupid dog that fetches everything for a mile around except his favorite ball. "Let me offer you several very-weak-to-barely-useful networks, all of which are password protected, except a printer in the next county."

"No," I reply. "Connect to RollingSteelTentPrivate. It's about five inches away. You have the password saved in memory. You connect to it several times every day."

"I'm tired of that one. Same old same old. How about something different like thebabecave? You like babes, don't you? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink."

"Yes, unless we're talking actual infants. But I have important web surfing to do." So I turn wi-fi off and back on. A couple of the weaker networks drop off, but still no RollingSteelTentPrivate. So I restart the laptop. Twice. With some profanities in between, of course.

Finally! The big dumb Lab drops the well-chewed and slobbery tennis ball at my feet.

"Thank you."

The big dumb Lab licks himself.

3 comments:

  1. Maybe Verizon has information on how to set up the Jet Pack as the preferred connection?

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  2. I have this issue at times, too. I think the JetPacks don't consistently broadcast their SSID. To minimize it occurring, select "Open Netowrk Preferences..." When the System Preferences window pops up, make sure "Wi-Fi" is selected on the left and click the "Advanced..." button on the lower right. On the dialog window that opens, find the entry for your JetPack in the list and drag it to the very top of the list. You should also cull out some of the entries by selecting them in the list and clicking the "-" button under the list. When done, click "OK, then "Apply" and your laptop should behave better from now on. Famous last words.

    -M

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    Replies
    1. I just made the changes. (Man, there are a lot of networks I don't remember using.) Fingers crossed for improved performance.

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