There is a saying in preparedness that is turned into of a nursery rhyme. It ultimately starts to get ridiculous but I think I can build a reasonable use case today. It goes like this “Two is one and one is none, three is for me…” Apparently, it is a saying from the Navy Seals.

As promptly as I noticed my desktop working last Saturday, it stopped working again. I was able to post on Monday and I was back to the laptop yesterday. There was an update Monday night that I purposefully ran and then things stopped working. That of course re-ignited my quest to resolve the problem for a number of reasons. The first was that carrying two laptops was heavy. The second is that we are off to to Texas on Friday and I am going to be working several days while there, so that means two laptops again.

The truth is, I could probably get by using my issued computer, but I don’t really want to do that. All of my linking to One Drive and other services I use to make this work would mess with my business configuration. I still suspect that this problem is something to do with WordPress for reasons I will outline below.

So what does two is one, one is none mean in this scenario?

DeviceOSBuild
DesktopWindows 10 Home21H1Not Working
LaptopWindows 10 Home20H2Working
iPhoneIOS14.8.1 Not Working
iPadIOS15.1 Not Working

The reason I am thinking the problem is with WordPress is the apparent ‘random’ behavior of it working. Doing nothing over the course of a week and it works, after not working for two weeks prior. Then running an update and it stops working.

The real reason however is that it works on one device and not three others. Device problems should manifest as working on three out of four devices or working on one operating system and not the other or working with one browser but not another. There are of course other variables that I have also tried

  • WAN connection type
  • Browser
  • Hardware configuration
  • Other installed applications

Looking at my list of variables, I do have some things that I haven’t tried. For instance, I have tried wired and wi-fi but I haven’t tried cellular. Although, for my one device that is working is on wireless. Low and behold, when I switched off of wi-fi to cellular only, I can login to the post editor on my phone.

That potentially rules out operating system. It also narrows down my focus to something to do with the internet. I have already rebooted my equipment, refreshed my DNS setting and cleared my browser cache, but I will keep looking in this area for the answer.

End Your Programming Routine: I am sure the Navy Seals meant that if you didn’t have an extra magazine and the one you have is broken, you are ‘f’-d. In this case, I am trying to convey that without extra devices and connections, I would never be able to troubleshoot, let alone continue to post. Maybe, I would put more urgency if I only had one device but I have tried pretty hard already. I do think I am getting close.