Saturday, December 22, 2007

Routing round the house

In a moment of impetuosity that surprised even me, I went out and bought a wireless router the other night. In New Zealand, for some reason, we pronounce this word the same as the Americans: as in router as in outer. The English, curiously, pronounce it rooter, like hooter, which isn’t a good idea, given that the word root has some very ambiguous meanings.
Be that as it may, I managed to fit the thing together (in spite of the instructions) and within half an hour our laptop ran off wireless in another room. I felt quite humbled by my own expertise.
The instructions in the book then went on to say that I should set up the security. This involved opening a certain IP address. I put the numbers in. No joy, even though the Internet was working perfectly. I did this again and again, always getting the message that perhaps the site was too busy and so on. It was only when I rang my tame geek that I discovered that they had the number wrong in the book (!). Not only that, when I did get onto the site it was nothing, absolutely nothing, not at all in any conceivable shape or form, like the instructions in the book – which had pictures of the pages I would see as I progressed through the process. Piffle.
Anyway, as I say, the thing is working, and that’s all we need until the tame geek gets here tomorrow and sorts out the security – which he will do without blinking an eyelid, or following any instructions.

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