6/29/10 Wireless router box, recycledToday's downsize prompts two commentaries:
1) Even though I have been downsizing for 233 straight days, it still isn't always automatic.
When we got a wireless router about five years ago, I carefully saved the box and the original packaging. Good thing I did. When it came time to move, I found the box and packaged up the router, confident it would travel safely. And it did.
Today, I set up the router in our temporary apartment and, out of habit, put packing materials carefully back in the box and stored the box away in our one, little living room closet. This was foolish because A) Our next move will be, literally, a few blocks away. I ought to be able to transport the router there without bashing it to smithereens. And, B) We have very little storage space in this apartment.
Still, my reflex was to save the box. Have I learned nothing? I pulled the box back out of the closet and put it with the recycling.
2) My life requires the internet. I've been without my own high-speed internet since May 26, almost exactly a month.
What a horrible way to live.
The only way I've been able to ensure daily blogging is because I've been able to use my iPhone in a pinch. When I have used my computer, it's been by cobbling together connections through hotel rooms, Starbucks, and -- more often than I should admit -- "stolen" WiFi signals.
I find my own dependence on the internet rather unsettling, but I am equally amazed that we have reached the point in America where it's pretty easy to get a wireless internet connection almost anywhere.
Here's the case-in-point:
The day we drove from Connecticut to Ohio, nursing babies, tending to cats, and nearly losing the front wheel of my car along the way, we arrived at my grandmother's house late at night. Clearly, my grandmother doesn't have internet, but I figured in a pinch I'd use my iPhone signal to throw up a simple blog before midnight. At about 11:45PM I turned on the iPhone to discover that I had no service. (Guess those Verizon ads were telling the truth.)
What, me worry?
I walked over to the window, leaned against it, and tried to find a wireless internet signal. I figured I had at least a 50/50 shot that her neighbor had wireless, and I could grab it.
Bingo. I could get just enough of the WiFi to write the post standing there at the window, finishing it literally one minute before midnight. (I'm a stickler for consistency with the blog.) As amazing as it was that that little trick worked, what's perhaps more notable is that I wasn't even that surprised. For the rest of the time in Ohio, any time I needed to use the internet, I just walked out on my grandmother's patio and could grab that signal pretty clearly.
I've did the same thing here last night, sitting on the swing in our courtyard grabbing the one unsecured wireless signal I could find. (Thank you "allshouse" for the complementary use of your internet.)
Such tomfoolery can end now, as the Comcast service dude arrive today to set up the cable and internet modem, and I spent the afternoon getting my own wireless router working.
Now that I've rejoined the twenty-first century, the last month of the blog should be a breeze, even without that box to store my router in.
Ah, the USA. Here in Germany it is illegal to have unlocked WiFi, so no "borrowing" signal when changing vendors for us!
ReplyDeleteAnother reason why this is called "The Land of the Free"!
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting that the WiFi needs to be locked in Germany. Is that true at businesses, like coffee shops, too?
My prediction is that free WiFi is going to be so prevelant in the US within the near future that you'll be able to get an unlocked signal in almost any populated area. In fact, I think sharing of signals, even by private citizens, is only going to grow.
Yep, the land of the free.