Yesterday night, after discovering that our new HomePlug AV didn’t work, my dad and I decided to investigate.

We brought my trusty laptop downstairs, and plugged it in. Because our last experiment supposedly had involved some waiting, we waited a whole minute for the Internet to come through.

But it didn’t.

Once again, we began blindly testing. We went back upstairs and tested the plug.

I remembered what had happened that afternoon, in my mom’s words:

I got up and tried to go on the Internet to experience some of the goodness of being able to use the computer downstairs, but… it didn’t work!

This was strange.

Suddenly, the computer came to life. It had worked upstairs.

We brought it downstairs once more, and tested again in the room. It still didn’t work.

We brought it out of the room, and it worked. Hmm.

I went back into the room and tried it again, on another plug, to no avail.

Looking around, I found a plug behind a dresser. I unplugged a touch-light we had (I figured we could live without it for a while) and plugged it in.

“Time to eat dinner!” my mom called out. Impatient, my dad exclaimed, “It won’t work.”

“How do you know?” I replied.

It worked.

My dad snorted, and we tried another plug in the room. One we had already tried before. It worked.

I snorted, and went to eat dinner.

During dinner, we ate in silence. Suddenly my dad slammed down his chopsticks.

“I’ve got it!” he pronounced. My mother and I looked on, as if he were mad. “It’s the touch-lamp!”

I snorted (because I love to snort).

He told me to go and try it out.

First, I plugged in the lamp and tried it. It didn’t work.

Then, I unplugged the lamp and tried it. It worked.

It worked!

I couldn’t believe it until I had heard the science.

Apparently, the touch-lamp was meddling with the circuits, broadcasting its own and confusing the HomePlug system.

My dad unplugged the light, and it worked once again. He went upstairs and got a switch.

So now, a few days later, whenever he wants to go to bed, he flips the switch. The light gets power (even though it’s not on) and can be turned on and off. When my mom wants to use the Internet, she turns the power off.

Brilliant, and yet to think… it was all caused by a light…