March 18, 2002

[General] Connected!

After a long struggle, we are coming to you live from the laptop!

For years, the idea of the laptop has been appealing. I have had them for work for years, and always thought that they were wicked cool. But, there was the issue of connectivity. What I really wanted was a laptop on the network rather than one that I would have to connect via a phone line with.

When we moved into the house, we talked about running cable through the walls into the family room so that we could, theoretically, jack into the network in the comforting blue glow of the TV.

But, as with all the things that we always were going to do and never did, we didn't ever do that. A couple times when I was sick, I would take my laptop and dial in from the couch, but that was rare. We have multitudinous phone lines in the home office, but not in the rest of the house and being dialed in meant that no one could call. Now, for finite periods of time, that's not an issue. I don't answer the phone most of the time in the evenings anyway. However, being logged on for 6, 8, 12 hours in that manner is just not stable, practical or fun.

So I stuck with desktops and spent an inordinate amount of time at my desk, surfing the 'net, checking email, chatting with friends. I even put a TV in the office so I could listen to baseball games and watch a nightime drama. But then, we finished the home theater setup in the family room andas I started trying to learn a little HTML, and started working on the TiVoGoddess site, I realized that I didn't want my life to be spent at a desk all day and a desk all night. I wanted to be untethered!

So I bought a laptop and decided to connect it wirelessly.

On the surface, wireless looks pretty easy. And really, it is. There's this standard, 802.11, and a bunch of manufacturers that make wireless equipment to that standard. You get an access point (base station) and an access card (receiving station) and you're golden.

Unless you have a bad access card. :(

I had a bad access card and so, for me, the wireless thing wasn't so seamless. John, bless him, spent about 5 hours on the phone with tech support over the course of three days trying to get the card to work. Finally, we replaced it with a new card and it took, oh, about 4 seconds to find the network. :)

I had hoped that I would write more once this issue was settled, but I haven't been. I still write in my head in the car and as I fall asleep at night but I have been really tired for a couple of weeks and not inclined to do much of anything except sleep, watch TV and surf. I know that there are some folks that were reading every day and I appreciate that. I'm trying to put together somesort of "notify me when Lori updates her journal" button for the site so that y'all who are reading don't waste your time looking for new entries when there aren't any.

I always think that I need closure at the end of every entry. It's a lot of pressure, to have some sort of witty, in-conclusion-y statement. So, today, I am absolving myself of the responsibility of thinking one up. Today, I am just going to stop typing and go to sleep.

Posted by Lori at March 18, 2002 4:11 PM