While I worked on getting things done, revisions, reading, networking, I had commissioned Joseph (See the post from 8.31 below, the younger brother of my teaching colleague, Daniel, with whom I taught at the MaaSae Girls Lutheran Secondary School) to go to Arusha and buy a WIFI router for me. He graduated this spring with a bachelor’s degree in ITC, and he was eager to help out. (He currently is looking for a job, so all pray for a job for Joseph! He is a hard working guy with a good, positive spirit!) I thought this would be mutually beneficial. I have an ethernet cable in my house, so I wanted a router that had an ethernet plug in, like I’ve had elsewhere. I learned online, that many routers work by SIM, which is a great way to get Internet access to people where there isn’t the wiring.
I did take a break when the colobus monkeys were grunting to each other! I discovered about 8 monkeys in the trees on the south side of my house.
This is taken with a smartphone from my front porch!
Their jumping from limb to limb is wonderful to see the long white fur catch the air. Yes, things are different here as monkey grunting distracts me from my work mode.
Back to the WIFI router. Joseph diligently returned. This WIFI router is different! It requires a SIM card! But I can plug in my ethernet cable to the router, then connect the router to my laptop, and I can access the set up website (so, there is connectivity), and while my laptop recognizes the connection, it says “no internet.” What?!? The router must have a SIM card! I did try it with my phone SIM card, and yes, then I had Internet. But, if I have an ethernet cable with my rent, why pay for WIFI just because the router needs a SIM card?
Joseph believes he can work on the configuration to bypass the SIM card, and he said he did this kind of thing when he was doing an internship (unpaid) here at TUMa. So, providentially, he is connected with the IT department folks here. He’ll come by tomorrow and confer with the IT head tomorrow. I hope it works. Yes, I will survive without WIFI, but it means eating up data on my phone for tasks that required phone activation (Swedish authentication, which doesn’t seem to work due to a low bandwidth), picture download from my iPhone, and just the convenience of having a Internet access in other parts of the house. I’m also thinking when friends come, it would be great to have WIFI for others without passing the 1 ethernet cable around–if they brought a laptop, as their smartphones can’t connect.
Now, if you happen to be a techie and have tips for me in how to increase my capacity with my devices, just let me know!