Huzzah!  I appear to finally have my internet connectivity issues resolved.  The guy came from the cable company yesterday and tested out the modem and the connections and said they were all fine.  That left the most likely culprit as the router.  So I got a new one today and that seems to have fixed the problem.  To be fair it was a pretty old router.  I'm honestly not sure how long we've had it now, but it's been several years.  

Although that's the thing that frustrates me the most about technology.  It gets "old" really fast.  Considering how expensive these high tech electronic devices are, I don't think it's crazy to expect to get, like, at least ten years use out of them.  But it seems like most of the time you're expected to upgrade them every couple years at the latest.  If I'm going to invest this sort of money into something, I want to get some long-lasting usage out of it.

On that note, the next thing I need to tackle is I really need a new phone.  I've stretched my current one out for about six years now, which is truly ancient when it comes to phones.  Again, I don't think it's at all unreasonable that an expensive phone should last you six years or more.  It's just not how things seem to work.  

All I know is we basically had the same landline phone in my house when I was growing up from as early as I can remember to when I went off to college and beyond.  They used to build things to last, damn it.