Desiderius Price

@Wilde_Guess You’re now referring to my setup as “not ordinary”, showing my age as I’ve still got them separate.  (ie, don’t want the cable company controlling that bit running my internal home network, just give me that internet connection, I’ll manage the rest).  Got a 100’ bit of ethernet cat 5e running between my living room switch (where my modem/router are) and my bedroom “home office” switch, it’s almost all wired, though the phone uses the wifi.  Been meaning to sink the cords into the wall, but haven’t, so it’s fairly loose (though got staples over it to keep it in place).
@kagome26isawsome Distance is bad when it comes to connections (1/distance^2).  So is stuff because it’ll degrade/block the signal, the bigger the more of an obstacle it becomes.  (Metal’s worse than wood.)  There’s also limits on how much a wifi connection can do, so too many devices might be degrading, and the closer devices with stronger signals will “win” in a contest.  Wires, though others frown on them as “obsolete” are usually better for going the distance and being “stable” – well, unless the squirrels start chewing through them.

@Wilde_Guess I’m obviously showing my age here as well, but all my home desktops (4 of them plus two floating connections) are hardwired, as is my daft one’s desktop at our summer cottage. My laptop connects via wifi here or at the cottage, and is new enough not to have issues like my old one did.
@Desiderius Price The daft one likes his own router rather than the preconfigured ones the cable company supplies, and given his background in electronics, he’s remarkably adept at making all the cat 5e cables and connections we could possibly need.  

@Wilde_Guess You’re now referring to my setup as “not ordinary”, showing my age as I’ve still got them separate.  (ie, don’t want the cable company controlling that bit running my internal home network, just give me that internet connection, I’ll manage the rest).  Got a 100’ bit of ethernet cat 5e running between my living room switch (where my modem/router are) and my bedroom “home office” switch, it’s almost all wired, though the phone uses the wifi.  Been meaning to sink the cords into the wall, but haven’t, so it’s fairly loose (though got staples over it to keep it in place).
@kagome26isawsome Distance is bad when it comes to connections (1/distance^2).  So is stuff because it’ll degrade/block the signal, the bigger the more of an obstacle it becomes.  (Metal’s worse than wood.)  There’s also limits on how much a wifi connection can do, so too many devices might be degrading, and the closer devices with stronger signals will “win” in a contest.  Wires, though others frown on them as “obsolete” are usually better for going the distance and being “stable” – well, unless the squirrels start chewing through them.

Hi, @Desiderius Price.
I understood her to be saying that the equipment was all in the basement, and that when she used her parents’ office on the first floor that she was one floor over it, where she was normally (presumably) on the second floor or higher.
As far as that goes, while having a separate cable interface and router is still quite possible, you don’t really see it anymore in an “ordinary” home environment, and I haven’t seen it that way in an ordinary home environment in over a decade.  

Wait, if the modem’s next to you, why is the wifi router in the basement?   Also means there’s already an ethernet wire between the two, move the wifi-router, get an ethernet switch for the basement, and now it’s close enough that you can likely use a wire yourself.  (Wired connections are usually better than wifi if possible)

To test out the wifi idea, move the laptop to the basement.  Because more stuff in between the wifi router and you, the worse your signal will be.  Suppose another idea… change the wifi password in case neighbors are leeching off of your connection.  A super long ethernet wirte might also be a good way to test (assuming your laptop has the old plugin ethernet port and there’s a spare socket on your router/modem).   For me, I actually do the super long ethernet cable so it’s already there.
A glance to the website fubar (com), I’d suspect they might need tighter latency too, something a hard-line ethernet would be good for.  Something like AFF, latency’s less critical so long as it doesn’t time out.

To test out the wifi idea, move the laptop to the basement.  Because more stuff in between the wifi router and you, the worse your signal will be.  Suppose another idea… change the wifi password in case neighbors are leeching off of your connection.  A super long ethernet wirte might also be a good way to test (assuming your laptop has the old plugin ethernet port and there’s a spare socket on your router/modem).   For me, I actually do the super long ethernet cable so it’s already there.
A glance to the website fubar (com), I’d suspect they might need tighter latency too, something a hard-line ethernet would be good for.  Something like AFF, latency’s less critical so long as it doesn’t time out.

sorry i havent been on. work was getting ready for inventory so ive been busy. so my laptop isnt that old. its like 2 years. it is a lenovo thinkpad 11e chromebook 3rd. not sure if that helps any. i did back it up already. its on google docs on my phone. it connects with my phone as well. as for the internet. I am upstairs in the house usually and the spectrum equipment is in the basement. I am not the only one having internet issues. My sister does and she lives in the playroom. they have issues connecting from time to time. oh and its not this site if you all wanted to know. i have no issues with this. it is a site called fubar that i have the issues.

A periodic backup should always be a thing.  Laptops die, get stolen (I’ve had that happen to me), hard drives die (common for ages), or you delete the wrong folder and windows asks “are you sure” and you click “yes” before you realize what you’ve done.   I’m using Linux for my desktop, thus the file-deletion command doesn’t even prompt, it’ll happily delete as ordered.  Deletions are unrecoverable on a SSD because that drive will wipe the deleted data in preparation for the next write; old spinning hard drives didn’t do that, so you had a window of opportunity.
My primary backup is a cronjob (scheduled task) that runs every six hours, mirrors my data to a backup hard-drive on the computer.  This very much tackles the accidental deletion, botched edits, drive failures which are the more common scenarios.  Secondary backup for my stories is subversion on my (personal) network drive, this is what programmers use for source control of their code development files, also works nicely for how I write my stories.

I ended up using the ² so it became Harry vs Harry² as a general distinction.  If I ever need three, there’s also the ³

A periodic backup should always be a thing.  Laptops die, get stolen (I’ve had that happen to me), hard drives die (common for ages), or you delete the wrong folder and windows asks “are you sure” and you click “yes” before you realize what you’ve done.   I’m using Linux for my desktop, thus the file-deletion command doesn’t even prompt, it’ll happily delete as ordered.  Deletions are unrecoverable on a SSD because that drive will wipe the deleted data in preparation for the next write; old spinning hard drives didn’t do that, so you had a window of opportunity.
My primary backup is a cronjob (scheduled task) that runs every six hours, mirrors my data to a backup hard-drive on the computer.  This very much tackles the accidental deletion, botched edits, drive failures which are the more common scenarios.  Secondary backup for my stories is subversion on my (personal) network drive, this is what programmers use for source control of their code development files, also works nicely for how I write my stories.

Squirrels, I blame the squirrels, they’re trying to take over.  

Squirrels, I blame the squirrels, they’re trying to take over.  

First… back it up!  Get a couple USB external drives, make a folder on it with today’s date so you know when it was made, and copy the story & all other important data over into that folder.  (which reminded me to do the backup to *my* story too).  Should be doing this periodically, because laptops do die from time to time.
As to the internet… could be the laptop itself, could be where it is in the house, could be somebody using the microwave, or heck a squirrel chewing on the cable line (which happened to me).

If you don’t have any USB sticks available, save the story in Google Docs, which will allow you to retrieve it through your browser. But @Desiderius Price is absolutely right in urging you to back stuff up to an external device like  USB drive. Even desktops can have  failures, so backups are just smart.
The other thing to think about is how old your laptop is. I had an older laptop that worked fine, except for connecting to the internet which it just would not do. The solution for that laptop was to get a USB wireless adapter that let me access the internet, and it worked perfectly.

Usually a sticker or a something.

Grand Canyon eh?  Should fit a bunch of bodies in time for Halloween. 

Might not get a Halloween story in this season, but I can get in some funny adverts 

Human Treats is people!

Also, the ability to make a plan “foolproof” is always outstripped by the Universe’s evolution of fools.

Reaction to manager’s response… hope you’re able to either keep your job or find a good replacement.

Reaction to manager’s response… hope you’re able to either keep your job or find a good replacement.

Yep, with as long as the story was on hiatus, there was a very strong possibility it’d go abandoned too, until I decided to pick it back up a few years ago.  A fast re-read turned into a rewrite, and so it’s now ballooned over that 1.5M word mark.

It’s harsh.  But, it’s far better than the alternative.

He was a very good actor in many things.  It would have been nice if he’d stuck around healthy for a few more years, but eighty-three isn’t young, even now.  All of us who appreciate a well-acted role will miss him.