Ah, the Interweb. The bane of my existence. Love it or loathe it, few of us can live without it, and I pretty much make my living on it. Writing, editing, researching, it’s all done on my MacBook, and thanks to brilliant techie geeks who somehow know how to get all this information to shoot across the universe. I’ve always been one of those people that doesn’t care how it works, as long as it does work.
So, when I found out that my D-Link router (that had served me faithfully for five years) wasn’t working and was no longer under warranty and I’d have to pay for advice to hook me back up to the world-wide spider web, I finally bit the bullet and attempted to hook up my Airport Express. Granted, I’d bought it about three months ago, but on the first try it wouldn’t work and I figured I’d just wait to try again.
Finally that day arrived (thank you D-Link non-free advice people), but still, despite my basic grasp of tech-dom I could not get the Airport Express to work. Now, I’m not a big swearer, but something about losing my link to the computerized world gets me in a terrible state and I find myself using and abusing all kinds of expletives (sorry Mum). I cursed the computer, Apple, Steve Jobs, my desk and anything within cursing range. And finally I called the Mac experts (God bless Apple Care – you should all invest).
And that’s when I met Russell (on the phone of course), and Russell went through all the motions I went through and also couldn’t get it to work. This made me happy momentarily, because at least it meant I wasn’t being obtuse, if even Russell the mac guy couldn’t fix it. Of course, it meant I still had not Internet access, unless – heaven forfend! – I used an Ethernet cable. The horror of it!
And then, Russell suddenly said, “How far is your Airport Express base from your computer?” I said, “About a foot.” And he said, “Try moving your computer at least three or four feet away.” Which I did, and voila, it worked!
Then Russell, mac guru and apparently philosopher said gravely: “When setting this up, the base was just too close to the computer, so it couldn’t tell it was there. It’s like a very tall man looking around for a very small child and realizing that he’s standing at his feet but he’s looking all around instead of looking straight down.”
I’d like you all to know that my very tall man and my very short child are now happily reunited and we’re back to living in Mac harmony. Thank you for today’s philosophy lesson, Russell. May you and your Mac/philosophy skills go far.
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