Make Room for the Mesh

Wireless Thing

My wife, Christine, works in Information Technology for a Fortune 500 company. She’s been our family process improvement advocate and troubleshooting tech person ever since our first computer over 25 years ago. I have no patience for that kind of thing, especially waiting on the phone to talk to some dude in a country with marginal indoor plumbing about what I should try next.

Tech Guy: Ok, see the tab that says “Advanced?”
Me: Yeah.
Tech Guy: Click it. Now, see the box that says “Two's Compliment?”
Me: Yeah.
Tech Guy: Click that. Now, reboot.

As if that’s gonna do anything. Now, Christine is infinitely more patient than me when it comes to, well, everything. She actually develops a rapport with help desk personnel, often asking them about themselves or their family. By the time she arrives at a solution to her problem, she often has another Facebook friend.

New Wireless Thing

Recently, she decided to purchase a booster for our wireless network so that we could cover the far reaches of our house, namely the bonus room. I’m not sure what's needed because I hate that kind of thing, but I’m sure it involves another $500 black box with little stubby antennas and an array of LED lights that flash Morse code. We have a bin full of cables, but none of them ever work with the new piece of equipment. We’ll certainly have to buy new cords because the ones that come with the new black box will be too short. So off we went to big box, techno land.

At the store, a less than fit, pale faced, guy named “Doug,” who sported a scraggily beard and a ponytail, launched into an impromptu lecture on “mesh networks,” focusing on why they were better than Christine’s booster. I was so bored, I sat on the floor and began perusing the internet via my phone. Christine and Doug had a spirited, deep conversation focusing on the benefits of mesh technology. To me, it sounded like dolphins would get caught in the mesh network. I really wasn’t paying attention anyway while scouring the many videos of cats and images of people’s dogs. By the time Christine and Doug had reached consensus, I got a cavity from too much Imgur.

After hooking up three new electronic "towers," comprising the mesh, we waited for all the LED lights to glow green, the universal color for “go for the moon." As we readied ourselves to be blanketed by the mesh, Christine checked her phone, certain she would have three bars. Unfortunately we got "Challenger go for throttle up" as she realized that she had only one bar. She spent the next hour wandering about the house holding her phone aloft as she checked the strength of the signal.

I’m not sure how many wireless devices we already have competing for the airwaves in our house. There’s the phones attached to the landline which no one uses, the thermostat, the system that monitors the chemicals in the pool, the security system, the Bluetooth in the cars, and of course the internet which is now a mess. I mean a “mesh.”

After disappearing for quite some time as she chatted with some dude in India, Christine emerged from her techno cocoon with a partial solution. As she toiled away at optimizing our mesh, she had to unplug the cable to the TV so I wasn't able to get lost in educational shows like TLC's Doctor Pimple Popper or the many nature shows with titles like The Pronghorn: Reindeer of Peru. Instead, I had to watch a show I taped. I know "record" is the more accurate term since we no longer use tapes to save our favorite shows, thankfully. I thought I recorded a PBS documentary, The Lobworm: Natures Little Farmer, but discovered that I had a live, fundraising concert entitled Stomp instead. I was ten minutes into a bunch of theatre people beating on garbage cans when Christine emerged to explain that she got the main mesh tower working properly, but to diagnose the poor signal,

Shitload of Cable

we would need to purchase a 200 foot, Category 6 cable. I thought the whole purpose of wireless was to get rid of cables? She explained that she needed to wire up the separate towers to show that the poor performance was due to the physical separation.

A few days later, a package arrived with Christine’s wire so off she went laying her transcontinental house cable, connecting up the mesh towers. Later, while watching Disney on Ice which I taped eight years ago, she emerged.

"I know what the problem is," she explained.

"All fixed?"

"No, there are three internal walls and two external walls to the tower in the bonus room which weakens the signal. We'll need to get a cable to the third tower."

So that is how this round of internet access upgrade unfolded. I need to run a cable. We still don't have an internet signal in the far reaches of our house, but I know the new hardware is an upgrade because none of the wireless printers work, and I can't get email anymore. I did manage to get a better signal to the Xbox so I experience less network lags while playing online games with my sister, Jeannine, who recently asked,

"Have you noticed a difference with the new network?"

"Yeah, the lump on my neck is bigger," I answered.

I don't have a lump on my neck, but all these wireless electronic components sometimes worry me. What if all these gamma rays cause me to grow in size when I get angry or I start exhibiting precognitive ability to sense danger or worse yet, I discover that I can control antimatter?

I don't want to be a superhero, now that I'm getting ready to retire.

Editor's Note: Originally published on January 8, 2019. Robert installed the cable to the tower in the bonus room and underground to an outbuilding. We get five bars now everywhere.