Adventures in Networking, Parental Edition

My Mothers' Day treat was last night at Rendezvous in Central Square. *Today* we went to my parents' to give Mom her present: Make Netflix work on her Wii again, for the first time since they moved to a new apartment, months ago. The first 30 minutes we spent trying to make the Wii "find" the WiFi network. Eventually we realized that we had to MOVE the router into the middle of the bed room. After 20 tries the network finally appeared in the list.

The next 1/2 hour Jason (and I at his insistence) entered the PIN instead of the network key. Tried this security setting, tried that one, but always with the PIN. Three times he told me not to bother calling Nintendo for help because they won't be available on a Sunday. And if you want to get along with your man, you don't argue about this. You let him try until you can say, see? YOU NEED HELP!

The next 30 minutes we spent working with the Nintendo guy, who picked right up when we called and was wikkid helpful. Once we entered the *network key* like we should have attempted originally, it STILL didn't work. We would have had to call anyway for the guy at Nintendo to tell that us the key had probably been changed from the factory default, and that we could find this password on my parent's desktop. Only my Dad had accidentally kicked the power cord out of the router. 90 minutes in and the desktop stopped accessing the internet. I thought Dad was going to freak out.

About 10 minutes of stress, Jason finds the cord is out and powers the router back up. Dad hovers now at the computer because we have to WAIT for the internet to come back up and he is now sure we have completely FUBARed his desktop so bad only my brother Dan can fix it. Once it is working again he says, "DON'T DO ANYTHING MORE!" Because he thinks the loss of his desktop connection was OUR fault. So I talk him down and get back to the computer. The network key HAD been changed to something very short and easy, probably at Dad's request, but there was no way we could make him understand what we needed in his increasingly senile state. (Believe me, we tried) Within 5 minutes we the Wii internet settings working and have Netflix running.

But Mom had disconnected her account, since she hadn't been using it. And she needed to put in a new credit card, the one in the system was no longer any good. Only we don't use American Express, so we keep putting the wrong security code in and keep getting rejected. My Dad is so high strung about people touching his stuff and our annoyed tones of voice, he is ready to insist we give up after nearly two hours. He leaves, not quite storms out, to take a walk. He is back nearly instantly.

So now we have to call Netflix to figure out what we are doing wrong, and the girl there tells us not to use the Wii to reinstate, but use the website. Back to the desk top. Only Dad sits by and hovers and we wait in the living room. We can hear Dad asking Mom to give up and send us home, so I send Jason in (because Dad won't yell at him) to see if he can help Mom. On the Netflix site, there is a little question mark one can click on that explains what we are doing wrong with the security code (What? We haven't used American Express in over 20 years!) And finally, Netflix is working on the Wii on my parents' big-ass flatscreen. Yay.

This is when Dad announces that Netflix sucks and that their selection is crappy. I tell him with a smile of course, "Well, it's Mothers' Day and we are here to please Mom, not you!"

For the last 15 minutes I show Mom how to use the Skype app on her iPad to get ahold of AJ, who is ALWAYS on Skype. She video calls him, coos over his curls and is happy. Two and a half hours of WTF and we finally have Mom hooked up and happy. We kissed them, listened to Dad grumble and Mom thank us profusely, then left.

We stopped at the package store on the way home for some MUCH needed wine. The end

Epilogue: *sips wine*