You know, I have had better weeks.

To give you an idea, this afternoon, I realized my wallet was missing. Missing somewhere on the busiest street in the West Side. Missing with all my cash for the month in it.

One of the homeless people I see a lot said, 'Hey, I'd have taken the cash, but I'd have given it back to you, if I found it.' Honesty, at least.

Managed to get home, where I had a drink, and then decided that perhaps I should just stop there and go hit the heavy bag in the backyard for a while. So I did. Then I thought I'd check my email, which usually is quite simple, but not tonight. No. No, at some point today, every device in the house which connects to the Internet decided to duke it out for supremacy, and the router finally threw up its hands and said, 'Okay, you guys, no one will get a DHCP address! Since you can't play nicely, I will take all the addresses away, and no one gets to go outside into the Internet!' And the devices said, 'Fine! Be that way! We'll just sit here and sulk!'

Man, did I ever fool my network devices. They thought just because I'm an art director, I don't know the supreme principle of network engineering troubleshooting: Always Check The Physical Layer First. See what happens when your best friend is one of the best network engineers in the country?

Well, I have done enough time in the IT trenches to know to follow that rule: a.k.a. check to see if things are plugged in. They were. So I unplugged and replugged them all. No love. So I decided that of all the devices, the Windows box was the most likely culprit to be hogging all the DHCP love. So I smacked its connection into submission, and now, a couple of hours later, have Internet again. Got to love percussive maintenance.

Now, if only I could smack my wallet back into my possession...