The Clarks Go Wireless: A Marriage of (In-)Convenience

Today we went out and bought a wireless router.
The cable running from the wall into the laptop in our old apartment was so messed up that if you just barely bumped or moved the computer it would disconnect, so we'd been wanting to go wireless for a while. And in the new place, although the cable stays plugged in and connected just fine, it's so short that you have to sit about two feet away from the wall outlet to use the Internet. So, like I said, today we went out and bought a wireless router.
The short version of what happened next goes something like this [And believe me, if you can read the next couple of paragraphs in less than four or five hours, then this really is the short version]: We come home; I take the router out of the box; I read the instructions (sort of) ...as much as I could in Chinese; what I'm doing doesn't work; I make a phone call; I sound stupid; Cecely steps in; we think we have gotten our point across, only to find that the alternate phone number we've been directed to call is, like, a plumber, maybe? I still don't know for sure.
We call back to the first number; this time we sound both stupid and possibly insane; we make another, oh... say... about 17 phone calls; we send text messages to everyone we know and think might be able to help; we finally get someone on the phone who is able to get someone else on the phone, who comes over but can't figure it out but is able to make a few more calls and get someone else to come over... The next guy comes over, spends about an hour, has to make a few phone calls himself... Meanwhile, I'm scrapping around in our files looking for the original Internet connection receipt so that the guy who is over here now can make another phone call, this time to the Internet company to retrieve my password because I don't know my password because the first time we set up the Internet the guy from the company entered all that in by himself without asking me and... well, another side note, the whole thing isn't even in my name, so this guy in my house is having to say the name under which it was originally registered, which is Wei's husband, who is in the far north of China with her and the rest of her family in Harbin where they will spend the Spring Festival holiday...
And of course, the guy in my house is wondering what kind of idiot doesn't know his own password, but he was nice about it and just made the phone calls and got the information, because, after all, he is going to make 40 RMB off of this if he can get everything successfully connected. So he gets the information, he sets it up--which still took longer than you would think--and I give him the cash, and he goes home, and I am sitting here typing a blog entry from the comfort of our huge leather sofa, rather than hunched over facing the wall.
[Well, I'm still hunched over, but that just goes with typing, I guess.]
The moral of the story: No matter how much I try to get around it, simple technology and the Chinese language will always have the upper hand it seems. Oh well.