Use the right kind of protection.

This art "has been commended as being strongly
vaginal, which bothers some men. The word itself
makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina."
(Maude Lebowski) 

Yesterday I went back to the local Apple store with the replacement iPad, which was also wonky in the same way (dropping wifi every few minutes). The store is in a mall and this year's Canstruction is in full swing. Some of it is nice. Some of it is great. One art was so Lebowskian that I had to snap a pic.

Frustrated 3rd techie to work with me/it that day walked off after 15 minutes trying things. He then brought me another new one. All replacements have been iPad1, 32 GB with wifi since that's what I had. He suggested WPA / WPA2 personal instead of WEP security, and I'm like duh. (Turns out he has hacker friends who could hack into WPA-protection in an hour but can hack into WEP in 10 minutes, and hackers like quick and easy so there you go. I giggled to myself since the canned vagina was still in my mind and he was talking about protection. Insert your own joke here.)

He advised to set this iPad up from scratch as a new device instead of restoring from backup. If it doesn't work, I should call the router people. Even though there's only 4 wireless connections at the most at any given time. Even though several others haven't had problems connecting, that I know of, anyway. He also suggested someone may have hacked in and is using my line and bumping a device off, so to check number of devices the router can handle. Besides having WPA2 personal security in the first place, most of the time only the desktop and Wii for Netflix are using the wireless connection, aside from the occasional iPad attempts. I use my iPhone on the home wireless when I remember to take it off 3G, and I have it set to 3G because I don't trust public wifi.

iPad with full bars and no connection.
Every 5 to 20 minutes. ANNOYING.
Oh, and this is the article I mentioned
yesterday. Please think before you pink.

I haven't surfed on iPad 1.3 too much, but so far I have 2 screenshots of THE SAME THING HAPPENING. I haven't even connected it to my computer at all and haven't downloaded any apps from the app store app, so it does appear to be a straight iPad issue. I'm currently looking for router info, and I found a page that actually addresses iPad wireless connection with the home Buffalo AirStation router since the router is AOSS-equipped. Yay! Except for one small detail. The page is in Japanese. I don't know Japanese. Can't read it, can't speak it. At all. Aside from "arigato" and "domo" and "sushi" and "sashimi" and "Genki-kun."

Grr. Arggh.

Thanks to Google translation magic, it looks like they're compatible and that I need to input the router info manually. Which I have done. Many many many many times over. I'll deal with this later though, as I am declaring it to be naptime. We FINALLY have rain going on, for the first time in 5,000 years. We'll still be in a drought for 9 million more years, but at least this is something.