Technology Often... Works.

Technology is great, except when it stops working.

I've had some experience with this, recently. It's been an interesting exercise in deductive reasoning, and deduct-from-your-checking-account spending.

At work, I connect to the Internet via a network. The speeds are unbelievable, usually. Since I moved to this office last summer, I have had no problems with my MacBook Pro, hooked up to an Apple LED Cinema Display, so it mostly acts as a desktop computer. But I can un-hook a couple of cables and pack it off to meetings quickly and easily. While I'm there, I depend upon Apple's AirPort WiFi to connect to the UNL WiFi network. And again, since I got this machine I have never had any trouble doing so.

Last week, something changed. My hardwired Ethernet wasn't working at all. Now, you might think, as I did, that, absent any wired networking, the WiFi would take over and I'd still be "online" but at a slightly lower speed. But that wasn't the case. When I unplug everything and take the machine to a meeting, WiFi works. But as long as it was cabled-up, it thought the wire ought to take care of things.

I did, too.

It took at least six people and six days to fix this problem. Along the way I was comforted, some, by the knowledge that it wasn't just me that was having the problem. Also, along the way, I discovered a bunch of things I was supposed to have done last summer never got quite finished. I had moved the money-accounting paperwork from my old cubicle to my new office. But I had not moved the network-accounting paperwork over. There were other issues, too.

At home, we awoke Tuesday morning to no Internet. Ours comes through our cable-TV folks, and the machinery was all downstairs. So, I went downstairs and turned everything off, then turned it all back on, one unit at a time... First the cable modem... then the AirPort WiFi hub, then I came back upstairs and started the iMac. This is usually all we've needed to do, but no matter how many times I did it, nothing ever seemed to improve. The telephone guy said he could "see" my cable modem and he could see that it could see the AirPort machinery.

Some weeks back, I'd purchased an Apple TimeCapsule backup machine and it featured Apple's AirPort wireless, too. I bought it so I could literally plug it in anywhere, but if you do the math, it can function as a base station, too. So, over the weekend, I plugged it in (upstairs, this time) and tuned it up to act like WiFi as well as backup. That solved my problem and so now I have Internet at home and at work, just like a month ago.

But it was an awkward week or so, there. It amazes me, how quickly new technology becomes necessary, and how difficult it is, to back down to previous technology. What was state-of-the-art just a few years ago, is barely workable, today. I have no idea where I might even buy a modem, today, if it came to that. I'm glad it didn't.

I saw a news story this week saying there is one, one new car available today as a 2011 model, that comes with a Cassette interface in the radio. Kind of ironically, at least it seems to me, it's a new Lexus. The times they are a changin', huh? One day there will be an even better/cheaper/faster way to network our machinery. And one day we will celebrate, with a sense of nostalgia, the last album to be released on CD.

From the Time Marches On desk: Today is my mother's birthday. This morning, my sister Amy stood, with her store-bought foot. What a present for mom, but mom couldn't quite enjoy it because she was in the emergency room. They've put her in a room at least for overnight, and we'll know more tomorrow, probably. But the wheel keeps turning.