So, I've got everything ready to go for convention. I've been cramming the Blue Book so that I'll have at least a passing familiarity with the legislation as it goes zipping by my mind in the next two weeks. I've gone through as many website things as I could in the time I had left. Everything is going just fine. And then I installed a Broadband Card.
You see, the hotel where I will be staying (*cough* Hilton *cough*) wants $12.95 per day for wireless internet connection in my room. Since I'll be there for almost two weeks, that's quite a chunk of change. Being nice, they offer a package where I can buy three days worth for $30. Better, but still... And then the Convention Center wants $12.95 per day for wireless. This convention could end up costing me my life savings just in wireless fees!
So, I found out that Virgin Mobile has a deal where you can buy the broadband usb card, and purchase a certain number of Megabytes of transfer without having a contract, obligation, or commitment. And the cost of the card plus the transfer is a little less than I would end up paying for just the hotel wireless. Sign me up!
I installed the card and everything was great. Until it came time to reboot the machine. Then all hell broke loose. The Dell Control Point Manager, which I'm not even using to manage my wireless connection seems to have an issue with the Virgin Broadband2Go software. Or vice-versa. Either way, my computer will not shut down without pressing the button, and it won't restore to a previous time because of that. So I cannot fix the problem. The closest I've gotten to a fix is to take the auto start off of the DCP Manager, and physically turn off my wireless connection. Then I can use the Virgin card. I'm not looking forward to the fix to make the entire system right.
But the real problem is that this happened yesterday morning. The day before I left for convention. I was faced all day yesterday with the prospect of not having any internet connection at all. Right now, things are working. But I know that could change at any moment. So, if you don't see blog postings over the next two weeks, that might be why.
