Shambolic

I had a dream last night where a colleague of mine was telling another colleague how his credit card had been mistakenly charged. Somewhere in his remarks he mentioned a word which I didn't know the meaning but could only guess. The word sounded to me like schamboly. Mind you, in my dream I heard, not read, the word, so I just made up the spelling.
When I woke up I looked up the word and the closest I could get was shambolic, which was what I guessed what it meant in the dream. I'm not sure how I could have guess it correctly. I try to rationalise that by thinking that perhaps I have heard and understood that word before then forgot it but somehow it has sunk in my subconscious memory. Maybe, maybe not. As of now I have hardly any recollection of my first real encounter with that word.
Isn't it strange what dreams can do? A friend of mine told me about his dream. He dozed off in his sofa. In his dream the phone was ringing and when he picked up the phone it was his sister in another country half around the globe. He woke up, the phone was ringing and when he picked up the phone it was his sister in another country half around the globe. Sorry about the sentence repeat, but for a moment it was life imitating dream. Now, he told me that the sister usually called him once a year or something. Was it merely a coincidence that he guessed it right in his dream?
By the way, shambolic means chaotic or disorganised according to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shambolic. The root is shambles and apparently is a British slang. In my dream, that colleague of mine was American and he didn't look like any of my colleagues I know. Weird.

Is it a modem, is it a router? No, it's a modem router

I recently signed up for ADSL2+. I could hardly wait for the blazing fast Internet connection after years of wireless speed. Don't get me wrong, wireless Internet is good. However, the speed just can't cope with information bandwidth nowadays.
Five days of waiting was now over. The modem arrived from the ISP and they confirmed my line was now activated. Goodie, goodie, goodie. I wired the modem to my laptop Ethernet port, turned everything on, the modem lit up and several seconds later I was part of the world. It was blazing fast. Now, next step, let's go wireless!
Ok, I didn't mention one thing before. I had a wireless router. I bought it a while ago and had been using it happily with my soon-to-be-departed wireless modem. When I signed up with the new ISP I decided to buy just a simple modem and I would just link it to this old wireless router. After all, any Tom, Dick and Harry can connect a modem to a router.
Well, I wouldn't be blogging this if there was no drama. The wireless connection was temperamental. Dialing up PPPoE was always successful but there wasn't always Internet connection. Sometimes only after several connects did it manage to connect to the cloud. Some days of frustration later I rang up the ISP who, after running diagnostic and seeing no issue, advised me to contact the wireless router company since the ISP didn't support devices not purchased from them. She did notice one thing, that is she saw 2 connections coming from different IP addresses. She also mentioned something about setting the modem into a bridging mode. I had no idea what that was about.
I then rang the wireless router company. The technician advised me to upgrade the modem firmware. He also mentioned about bridging the modem. Adding one and one together I then did some googling and found this link http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=814956. The epiphany was that I didn't just get a simple modem when I bought it. It was also a router.