I woke up extra early today so I could get a number of things done for my biggest client. Of course, this was the day the random bug happened.

The situation: I could visit all Web sites on the Internet, except, of course, for this client's. OK. Troubleshooting is actually fun for me, mostly because in college I worked in campus computing support. This support team was directed by someone who taught us the troubleshooting framework I still use today, 12 years later. Ruling out variables in network failures becomes a fun game (as long as the problem is fixed).

But the way this unfolded was downright odd. My Internet connection seemed to work, because I could visit all other Web sites and send and receive e-mail. The next logical question was whether the client's Web site was down. Nope; it worked fine not just for people on their site but also for others I quickly polled. I could also FTP to the client's FTP server. But I still could not reach its Web site or that of its Web host.

I invoked the "when in doubt, power cycle" rule and reset my cable modem and computer. No dice. I have experienced any number of other problems where unplugging and plugging solved the problem, but not this time.

Finally, I got to the other useful rule: eliminate intermediaries. For me, this meant removing my Airport Extreme base station from the Internet connection and instead connecting my cable modem to my laptop directly. I didn't think this would do the trick, because again, the Internet connection seemed to work with the exception of just one Web host. (I typically run the connection through my Airport base station so I can remove the laptop from my desk and use wi-fi without rebooting.)

This did the trick. I'm not sure why. My guess is that a bad setting got "stuck" in the base station. It's strange that this bad setting affected only one destination. Of course, this was the one destination I had to visit, but it was nice to see the problem solved.

Incidentally, this is not ironic. It is true that the one inaccessible Web site was the one I needed to visit. But that is merely an unfortunate coincidence; it's not irony. It might be ironic if the cause of the problem were a piece of equipment specially designed for visiting the one Web site that didn't work.

Anyway, my Airport base station is still sitting idle, unconnected. I think maybe it needed a rest. I've been around technology long enough to know that even machines can get moody and sometimes just want to chill for awhile.