The Wonders of Wireless

Today’s post is a very special one. It is the first EVER blog post brought to you from “on location”.

Ok, maybe it’s not that special. The location I’m blogging from actually my couch…about 10 feet away from my desk.

Sunny got my laptop fixed as a surprise Christmas gift. (Actually, she had to reveal the surprise a while ago, the guy needed my BIOS password to fix it). Then, thanks to the generosity of my parents, not only did we get the desktop upgraded, we also got a wireless router and wireless card for the laptop.

(Guys, let me give you a good piece of advice. Find an online game that you can get your wives or girlfriends into. You see, this year for Christmas I got quite a bit of computer hardware…and I can honestly say that we bought it for “us”, not “me”. Can you believe the laptop was actually Sunny’s idea?)

If you’re still shopping for Christmas, and want wireless for your own home, I can highly recommend the Linksys Boradband G Router and Wireless card. The whole set up cost a little over hundred bucks. Fifty for the router, fifty for the wireless card.

This thing is awesome, and was actually amazingly easy to set up. Networking is one of the few areas of computing that I know very little about. Setting up my wireless network was as easy as plugging in the wires (with step by step instructions on screen)…then I simply clicked a button on my laptop, then pressed a button on the front of the router.

Then everything happened automatically. With those two button presses, I have an encrypted secure wireless network. If you actually know what you’re doing, you can also set everything up manually the way you like it. As it stands with me now, every time I turn on my laptop it connects itself “behind the scenes”, but remains secure, in that no one else can use my network without my password.

The only thing that could make this setup sweeter is if my laptop was a little better. It’s fairly ancient. I have a Pentium 3 500, 128mb of RAM and a 6 gig hard disk.

I mean, it’s good enough, I only use the laptop for writing and general websurfing, so it fills my needs quite nicely.

In fact, that’s what prompted this post. I installed Skype on the laptop. I was kinda doubtful if it would actually work very well, but I’m please to announce that it works perfectly.

I told Sunny about this with unmatched glee:

“You know.” I said. “Technically, we not have a mobile skype phone. I can talk to my parents on Skype from any room in the house…even outside!”

“So?” She replied.

Is it me, or are wives just completely blind to the wonders of technology?

I have theory on this. At least how it applies to Sunny.

Sunny can work a computer easily…but when it comes to how they actually work, she doesn’t know or care. Because she doesn’t really understand just how complex it is…she doesn’t get how wondrous it is.

Sunny is the same way with computers that I am with cars. I know the absolute basics of how they run…but when my stepsons start talking about “intake manifolds” my eyes glaze over. I know I push the pedal on the right to make it go, and the pedal on the left to make it stop. I’m the guy that make’s the mechanic’s eyes light up at the garage.

He could tell my that my flux capacitor is shot and that my “Wankel Swage Armature” is out of alignment with my “Overhead rotary compensator”…and I’d nod knowledgably and pull out my checkbook.

Anyhoo…

Actually think about this.

My parents sit at their computer in England. They talk into a little device plugged into their computer. Then, at the speed of light, what they say travels through a labyrinth of computers and cables halfway around the world, somehow finds it’s way to my modem, where it travels into my router…and is then securely transmitted to my laptop. This happens in nanoseconds.

It’s a miracle, plain and simple.

Of course, if you try to explain this to Sunny, she looks at you and says:

“Ahhh, so it’s a magic laptop.”

Sigh…women.