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The Router and Blanche Dubois
Jun. 7th, 2006 09:36 amThe official countdown to the end of the world started yesterday according to the Book of Revelations. Avoid animal tattoos especially on your forehead. Be on the lookout for Patient Zero astride a pale horse. The Mayans, of course, using complicated astronomical calculations say the world will end in 2013. Who you gonna believe, St. John the Baptist or Quezacoatl?
My money's on Quezacoatl. The Mayans invented hot sauce after all.
In other news, my To Do list for last week involved setting up wireless Internet and luring part-time employees into the store.
Ben left me complicated instructions for installing DSL and a router. Ben is very good with computers and there was a time I hoped he would turn that talent toward actual revenue generation, but alas! it was not to be. Still our house is rigged like a Rube Goldberg cartoon if Rube Goldberg had been a founding BMUG member.
I'm only a half-assed geek. In 1994 for six months my job title was Sysop for all the mighty Time Inc universe but really, IT bores the shit out of me. I forget it as fast as I can.
I looked at Ben's instructions. I thought: I can do it if somebody holds a gun to my head, but being abandoned by your husband is not quite the same as an AK-47 to the temple however much you snivel about it. I got through the DSL installation okay but kept crashing and burning on the router.
Still the router was necessary if I ever wanted to regain some semblance of normalcy in my life. I have been waking up early – hideously early – to keep up with the Cirque du Méprise stuff and I like to sleep, goddamit!
I followed Ben's directions but I always fell apart on the step that involved uninstalling the SBC DSL software. Whenever I did that, I couldn't connect to the router's own admin page. An insurmountable Catch 22.
Well, somebody can do this obviously, I finally thought to myself. That's why IT people get the big bucks. If I have to pay, I have to pay.
Multiple Choice Question: Money is:
a) A renewable resource
b) Seashells
c) The root of all evil
d) The secret of all earthly happiness
I'll take d) for $2000, Vanna.
About three years ago I was standing in front of the bank withdrawing dwindling cash reserves from the Magic Money Machine aka the ATM when a guy drove up. At first I noticed him: tall, buff, gorgeous in preppy work clothes. Then I noticed the truck: At Your Service Computer Repair in neat lettering with phone and business license.
Nice set-up, I thought. Ben could do something like that.
So I made so bold as to strike up a conversation with the guy who was very friendly and forthcoming and not at all proprietary about the details of his business. His name was Michael, he gave me a bunch of his brochure and promotional materials which I took home, and used over the course of the next few days to design my own brochure: Computer 911! Warning: It's dangerous out there. The Internet may be a great place to study & shop but it's filled with viruses, Trojans, 'bots & spyware that can damage your equipment, snoop through your files & make web surfing a bad dream. It gets worse – often the same companies that promise to correct your pop-up nightmare are the ones that infected you to begin with…
As with all plans that start with We need money! and end with Ben, this too fell by the wayside but three years later when I was playing Yellow Pages roulette in the store, it was this very same Michael who picked up the phone at the other end.
So he came over and within fifteen minutes had my wireless connection up and running. Refused to let me pay him, which meant I had to scurry around the store and load him up with hot sauce since if it's barter, it's not charity, right? And even in my chastened state, there is such a thing as pride.
The wireless network worked brilliantly for five days.
On the sixth day – yesterday – it didn't.
I started playing with settings (without paying too much attention to what I was doing) and before long had fucked it up completely. Panic-ville!
I called Michael – he was literally one foot out the door on his way to a two-week Mexican vacation.
This was Tuesday, which meant I could safely expect that absolutely no one would come into the store, right? But no! a steady stream of customers strolled through the doors, all of them wanting to be diverted and entertained by the eccentric Chili Queen and her vast store of arcane pepper knowledge ("Did you know that a single red savina habanero may weigh in on the Scoville scale at 500,000 units?") It was all good: they bought stuff. Still. I couldn't fuck around too much with the reset button because I didn't want to disable my credit card processing capability.
By three I had become demonically possessed. I didn't want to leave when Max came in to take the late afternoon shift. For one thing, Max doesn't sell as much as I do. I noticed this when Ben worked too and it argues badly for the overall business plan – if people buy stuff purely on the basis of my charming personality (and there's evidence that they do), then the business is not a retail business at all, it's a Psychic Reader scam. But my real reluctance was masochism – I wanted to spend more hours torturing myself with the router.
Stuff to do, stuff to do. Grocery shopping – I can subsist indefinitely on parmesan rinds and moldy apples but children are such spoiled creatures, they demand meals, they demand snacks. Quick detour to the bank which had fucked up my deposit the day before in such a way that on paper at least I had money to burn. Home to scream at Robin about missing homework assignments from last week and force him away from the Playstation off to karate. ("What if I take two classes tomorrow?" he whines.) Prepare the evening meal, which this evening is a simple Pasta Alfredo (except the fettuccini is not quite al dente) and an elaborate salad.
In the middle of all this I decide to call Ben. It's reflex. I call him a couple of times a day. I rehearse the conversations in my mind, their intent varying with my mood. Sometimes they start out, You fucking bastard, you pathetic imitation of a human being – Other times it's, Please call your son, please call your mother. They love you, they miss you. And I'm still your friend –
I call him a couple of times a day, but he hasn't actually picked up the phone in two weeks.
Except today he does.
"Is this Ben? Ben, it's Patrizia –"
"I know your voice –"
"Ben, I'm calling because I'm having trouble setting up the router and I feel like I'm going out of my mind and I'm going to go back to the store and try to trouble shoot it and I need you to call me there –"
"Of course."
He hasn't called in two weeks, he tells me, because in Bumfuck, Wyoming, his cell fell into a river and the battery got destroyed –
"Oh, is that all? I figured it was just too painful talking to me –"
"Well, that too."
Boys wander home. Feeding occurs in stages. I like to sit down to a dinner table, but sometimes that's just not possible and anyway I haven't felt much like eating in the past eight weeks, I've lost about 20 pounds. It was weight I could well afford to lose. Still, I wouldn't recommend the diet plan to anyone. Tonight I have to force myself to eat. Food is fuel! I tell myself. You can't run a car without gas.
Finally, I drag myself back down to the store. Steinbeck Plaza is pretty this time of night with the distant lights shining from the other side of the bay and the muted sound of happy diners from various restaurants. My little store is pretty too, chili lights aglow.
I settle myself down at the two computers for another few hours of hair-pulling, hysterical fun punctuated by a phone conversation with my estranged husband when suddenly the door opens.
"Oh, I'm sorry, we're closed," I say but then I recognize the customer. He's one of my regulars. "Oh, it's you. You can come in."
"I don't mean to bother you," he says. "It's just that I'm entertaining a friend from India and I wanted him to taste the pure habanero –"
I fix him up a snack – habanero in a soufflé cup and a plastic bag of pretzels.
"Oh, this is very nice of you," he says and looks over at my laptop. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to get my wireless network to work," I say from between gritted teeth. "You wouldn't know anything about wireless networks, would you?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," he says. "Let me take a look at it."
It turns out that Jason is the fabulously well-paid Director of IT for some Atlanta-based financial consortium that allows him to live in Monterey and telecommute, and within fifteen minutes has got my network up and running.
The kindness of strangers…
My money's on Quezacoatl. The Mayans invented hot sauce after all.
In other news, my To Do list for last week involved setting up wireless Internet and luring part-time employees into the store.
Ben left me complicated instructions for installing DSL and a router. Ben is very good with computers and there was a time I hoped he would turn that talent toward actual revenue generation, but alas! it was not to be. Still our house is rigged like a Rube Goldberg cartoon if Rube Goldberg had been a founding BMUG member.
I'm only a half-assed geek. In 1994 for six months my job title was Sysop for all the mighty Time Inc universe but really, IT bores the shit out of me. I forget it as fast as I can.
I looked at Ben's instructions. I thought: I can do it if somebody holds a gun to my head, but being abandoned by your husband is not quite the same as an AK-47 to the temple however much you snivel about it. I got through the DSL installation okay but kept crashing and burning on the router.
Still the router was necessary if I ever wanted to regain some semblance of normalcy in my life. I have been waking up early – hideously early – to keep up with the Cirque du Méprise stuff and I like to sleep, goddamit!
I followed Ben's directions but I always fell apart on the step that involved uninstalling the SBC DSL software. Whenever I did that, I couldn't connect to the router's own admin page. An insurmountable Catch 22.
Well, somebody can do this obviously, I finally thought to myself. That's why IT people get the big bucks. If I have to pay, I have to pay.
Multiple Choice Question: Money is:
a) A renewable resource
b) Seashells
c) The root of all evil
d) The secret of all earthly happiness
I'll take d) for $2000, Vanna.
About three years ago I was standing in front of the bank withdrawing dwindling cash reserves from the Magic Money Machine aka the ATM when a guy drove up. At first I noticed him: tall, buff, gorgeous in preppy work clothes. Then I noticed the truck: At Your Service Computer Repair in neat lettering with phone and business license.
Nice set-up, I thought. Ben could do something like that.
So I made so bold as to strike up a conversation with the guy who was very friendly and forthcoming and not at all proprietary about the details of his business. His name was Michael, he gave me a bunch of his brochure and promotional materials which I took home, and used over the course of the next few days to design my own brochure: Computer 911! Warning: It's dangerous out there. The Internet may be a great place to study & shop but it's filled with viruses, Trojans, 'bots & spyware that can damage your equipment, snoop through your files & make web surfing a bad dream. It gets worse – often the same companies that promise to correct your pop-up nightmare are the ones that infected you to begin with…
As with all plans that start with We need money! and end with Ben, this too fell by the wayside but three years later when I was playing Yellow Pages roulette in the store, it was this very same Michael who picked up the phone at the other end.
So he came over and within fifteen minutes had my wireless connection up and running. Refused to let me pay him, which meant I had to scurry around the store and load him up with hot sauce since if it's barter, it's not charity, right? And even in my chastened state, there is such a thing as pride.
The wireless network worked brilliantly for five days.
On the sixth day – yesterday – it didn't.
I started playing with settings (without paying too much attention to what I was doing) and before long had fucked it up completely. Panic-ville!
I called Michael – he was literally one foot out the door on his way to a two-week Mexican vacation.
This was Tuesday, which meant I could safely expect that absolutely no one would come into the store, right? But no! a steady stream of customers strolled through the doors, all of them wanting to be diverted and entertained by the eccentric Chili Queen and her vast store of arcane pepper knowledge ("Did you know that a single red savina habanero may weigh in on the Scoville scale at 500,000 units?") It was all good: they bought stuff. Still. I couldn't fuck around too much with the reset button because I didn't want to disable my credit card processing capability.
By three I had become demonically possessed. I didn't want to leave when Max came in to take the late afternoon shift. For one thing, Max doesn't sell as much as I do. I noticed this when Ben worked too and it argues badly for the overall business plan – if people buy stuff purely on the basis of my charming personality (and there's evidence that they do), then the business is not a retail business at all, it's a Psychic Reader scam. But my real reluctance was masochism – I wanted to spend more hours torturing myself with the router.
Stuff to do, stuff to do. Grocery shopping – I can subsist indefinitely on parmesan rinds and moldy apples but children are such spoiled creatures, they demand meals, they demand snacks. Quick detour to the bank which had fucked up my deposit the day before in such a way that on paper at least I had money to burn. Home to scream at Robin about missing homework assignments from last week and force him away from the Playstation off to karate. ("What if I take two classes tomorrow?" he whines.) Prepare the evening meal, which this evening is a simple Pasta Alfredo (except the fettuccini is not quite al dente) and an elaborate salad.
In the middle of all this I decide to call Ben. It's reflex. I call him a couple of times a day. I rehearse the conversations in my mind, their intent varying with my mood. Sometimes they start out, You fucking bastard, you pathetic imitation of a human being – Other times it's, Please call your son, please call your mother. They love you, they miss you. And I'm still your friend –
I call him a couple of times a day, but he hasn't actually picked up the phone in two weeks.
Except today he does.
"Is this Ben? Ben, it's Patrizia –"
"I know your voice –"
"Ben, I'm calling because I'm having trouble setting up the router and I feel like I'm going out of my mind and I'm going to go back to the store and try to trouble shoot it and I need you to call me there –"
"Of course."
He hasn't called in two weeks, he tells me, because in Bumfuck, Wyoming, his cell fell into a river and the battery got destroyed –
"Oh, is that all? I figured it was just too painful talking to me –"
"Well, that too."
Boys wander home. Feeding occurs in stages. I like to sit down to a dinner table, but sometimes that's just not possible and anyway I haven't felt much like eating in the past eight weeks, I've lost about 20 pounds. It was weight I could well afford to lose. Still, I wouldn't recommend the diet plan to anyone. Tonight I have to force myself to eat. Food is fuel! I tell myself. You can't run a car without gas.
Finally, I drag myself back down to the store. Steinbeck Plaza is pretty this time of night with the distant lights shining from the other side of the bay and the muted sound of happy diners from various restaurants. My little store is pretty too, chili lights aglow.
I settle myself down at the two computers for another few hours of hair-pulling, hysterical fun punctuated by a phone conversation with my estranged husband when suddenly the door opens.
"Oh, I'm sorry, we're closed," I say but then I recognize the customer. He's one of my regulars. "Oh, it's you. You can come in."
"I don't mean to bother you," he says. "It's just that I'm entertaining a friend from India and I wanted him to taste the pure habanero –"
I fix him up a snack – habanero in a soufflé cup and a plastic bag of pretzels.
"Oh, this is very nice of you," he says and looks over at my laptop. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to get my wireless network to work," I say from between gritted teeth. "You wouldn't know anything about wireless networks, would you?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," he says. "Let me take a look at it."
It turns out that Jason is the fabulously well-paid Director of IT for some Atlanta-based financial consortium that allows him to live in Monterey and telecommute, and within fifteen minutes has got my network up and running.
The kindness of strangers…
