Monday, June 8, 2009

geek squad this!

Last night I was dorking around on the computer and the wireless internet went dead. Normally when this happens it is because it is windy out or the microwave has been on for awhile or it gets really hot. But it was 10:30 at night, no wind, no one was cooking and it was nice and the device was nice and cool. I went to check the settings and the computer told me that it couldn't find our preferred network, but it wanted to connect me to a different network named "Bruce's Network".

Now, this normally wouldn't make me think twice because I'm used to living in an area that has multiple networks you can steal bandwidth from. But we live in the middle of nowhere. When I say nowhere, I mean the closest neighbor to us nearly a mile away. There's no way we could be picking up anyone's connection, let alone have a full strength signal from them. No one here had messed with any of the settings... I don't think anyone here even knows how to mess with the settings, and there's certainly no "Bruce" here, so something weird was going on. I immediately unplugged the Airport (Mac speak for the wireless router thingamajig) and made my dad go look outside to see if there was some shady person in a car sitting outside our house, trying to jack our connection or hack into our network to get our info or something. Yes, I'm paranoid. He didn't see anyone and I didn't hear any cars and there weren't any signs of a person having been outside our house either. We decided to call it a night and deal with it in the morning.

This morning I woke up and plugged in the Airport, plugged in my computer and still, I was being told to connect to "Bruce's Network". Nope, not going to happen. I don't know who Bruce is or what he wants or where he came from. I called my brother, who is an unofficial Geek, and explained the situation and was informed of the obvious: "That's weird". Yeah, no duh. Thanks, Captain Obvious. So he and I went through all of the obvious steps to try to remedy the situation, but no matter what we did, Bruce wouldn't go away and our network wouldn't appear. After doing a hard reset of the device, we were finally able to get rid of Bruce and make our network appear. And then my brother said, "Wait, wasn't the guy who lived in that house before named Bruce?"

Yes, yes, his name was Bruce, and he died a year or 2 after my parents bought and gutted the house. As far as we know, he didn't ever have internet here. I can't believe that a dude who lived in a house with original 60's green shag carpet, orange counter tops and burlap curtains until the day he sold it would have internet, and wireless internet at that. I also can't believe that the electrical system that was in this house could even support a computer, but that is besides the point.

So unless someone sat outside our house last night, hacked into our wireless settings and changed it to be "Bruce's Network" and then drove off, all in the span of 3 minutes, Bruce is back to visit us. I don't know if he's mad about his house, or just wanted to come say hi, but he's made his presence known. I've lived with ghosts before, but they have never made their names known so this is new territory.

Last night was a full moon and the owls were going nuts all night and one still is even this afternoon, so I'm not sure if he's still hanging out, or if he left, but you can sure as heck bet that I'm going to be watching the kids very closely to see if they start talking to anyone or about anyone new in the house. And I might be sleeping with the kids, with the lights on, for the next couple of nights because the Airport is in my room and that's just a little too creepy, even for me.

9 comments:

supercommonname said...

muwahaha....


p.s. i like the new blog layout/header....bruce likes it too! ;)

Susie said...

BAHHHHHHHH MAKE HIM LEAVE!!!! looks like me you CB and W are sharing a room for a bit. This will be fun.

Jessica Ryan said...

Jo... you have me completely freaked out!

[Lindsay} said...

hey!! yep, i find out thurs what the bean is. i'm hoping it is a girl so i dont have to take 40 billion pics of all the clothes i have - tubes are tied after this one!!! when are you due?

clanelder said...

CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPY! I'm not sure if I want to read the next installment.

Joanna said...

Lindsay, I'm so happy for you guys! Lol about taking pics of the clothes! I think it's time to go grab bag style, if you are having a boy. Good news is that Gymbo boy clothes are just as adorable as the girl clothes ;) Please let me know what you are having once you find out. We only have about 6 more weeks to go here, if they don't come earlier and I am sooooooooooo not even close to being ready! Take care of yourself!

TaraC said...

Eeeek! I had to come read after your comments on FB. I hope there are no more Bruce sightings (occurances?).

Sarah said...

ok, that is just creepy!!! Hope Bruce had a nice little visit and went back to where-ever he came from happy!
weird, weird, weird.

Margaret said...

freaky!!!!!!!!