First off, our power went out. A quick survey of the neighborhood showed it was out all up and down the street, and a call to RG&E revealed that it was a tree down over a power line.
Then while I was taking a break in the back yard, unable to work because of the lack of power (although in retrospect I probably should have mowed the grass since I’m going to have to work tomorrow to make up lost time), I got an email from a member of the flying club asking why my email address (and a non-functioning email address at that) was listed as a technical contact for their domain, and can I help them transfer the domain over to their control. Doing what googling I could do on my phone showed that the current registrar are notorious domain hijackers. Oh oh.
Once the power came on, the main router was flashing a green “power light” and not connecting. Again, doing what limited web searching I can do on a tiny smartphone screen shows that this means the firmware is corrupt, and it can happen if the router loses power (which seems like a pretty shitty failure mode – you’d think the firmware could only be corrupted if it were in the process of updating the firmware, otherwise it’s not exactly what you’d call “firm”, now is it?) The solution is to download the latest firmware and reflash the ROMs, which is difficult if you don’t have an internet connection. Fortunately I have two of these routers, one at the other end of the house to act as a wireless repeater. So I grabbed that one and did a factory reset, and then reconfigured it as best I can. That was a bit of a hassle because at some time in the past I changed the name of our wifi from either Robinson_Tomblin to Tomblin_Robinson or vice versa, and I couldn’t recall which, and so when I got it wrong the iPad and iPhone happily connected to it, but the printer, the TiVos and the Nexus 7 wouldn’t.
With network connections re-established (sort of – every router configuration change seemed to involve losing it again for a time up to a minute or so), it was time to download the new firmware, enable tftp in the Windows laptop, and flash it. Amazingly enough, it actually worked. Then I reconfigured that router, and everything was back in business.
Except now my security camera isn’t working. Down to the basement to unplug the POE cable, plug it back in, and it’s working.
Now it’s time to look into the flying club business. Thank goodness for searchable mail archives – the club asked me to transfer the domain to them in February 2011, and I did. And they were using that infamous domain thief as their registrar. And at the time I pointed out that they’d need to reset all the various contact email addresses. I also gave them a list of email forwards I had set up for their domain, and they decided to turn them all off. So phew, it’s not my problem and not my fault and if they can’t remember how to log into their registrar account and change the email address, too bad for them. I feel sorry for them, and I don’t wish them ill will, but the relief of it not being something I have to help fix is overpowering all that.