Two tech crises in rapid succession have disrupted the HE force field.

The day before yesterday HE’s Sonos player went awry. You don’t want to know the particulars but it took two longish tech-support phone calls over the course of 24 hours to fix the damn thing. The first tech person was an idiot; the second was smart and enterprising.

Shortly after the Sonos issue was resolved the whole wifi system went belly up. After all kinds of Spectrum tech-support agony by way of trial-and-error, it became clear that the Spectrum-provided router (five or six years old) had suddenly refused to sync. These things happen — sometimes a device just gets tired and weary and stops working properly. You just have to man up turn the other cheek.

I was told that the fastest remedy would be to go down to the WeHo Spectrum office and switch-out the malfunctioning router for a newbie. I was given an appointment time (11 am) and an appointment code. When I got there I punched in the code on the welcome screen, and of course they had no record of my having any such appointment. (The Spectrum phone-tech guy had dropped the ball.)

At first the in-store Spectrum guy (Asian, glasses, chubby) said they couldn’t help me unless my name was “in the system.” But I was told I had an appointment at 11am, I said. In any event I’m here, I pleaded, and I have the broken router. There are only four or five customers waiting right now — can’t you just slip me in when there’s an opening? Chubby spectacles shrugged his shoulders, repeated the line about “the system” blah blah.

I went to a nearby Jamba Juice and asked Spectrum tech support for advice, and they said “oh, the chubby bespectacled guy can help you…just sign in as a guest.” Which I did. I was given a new router (more Star Trek-y than the old one). I brought it home, powered it up and plugged in two identical yellow ethernet cables into two receptacles, one marked “ethernet” and the other marked “internet.”

Of course nothing has changed — the wifi is still on the fritz.

I have, however, arranged for a Spectrum engineer to visit tomorrow morning (Friday, 4.8). He/she will presumably fix the whole situation.

Oh, and by the way: The L.A. Water and Power guys turned the water off for eight hours today. That helped.

Friday, 4.8 update (6:10 am): HE is further perplexed by the strange inability of my iPhone 12 Max Pro to load web pages solely on the strength of AT&T’s normal WeHo air. (My usual home-generated wifi signal will be flat until the Spectrum repair guy arrives later this morning.) We all understand that individual carrier connectivity is always a bit slower than home or business-generated wifi, but right now HE’s AT&T signal (three bars) is anemic — it’s like being in the middle of the Sonoran desert.