Getting wired

Only connect!
--E. M. Forster

One dirty little secret about computers -- a secret that the manufacturers don't bother mentioning to us -- is that they get slower and slower as time goes by. Eventually, no amount of virus and spyware eradication, weekly defragging, and registry clean-ups seems to help. Just as another tune-up finally won't keep your 1980 Chevy running like new, and sooner or later you have to buy a new car.

Now, you would never guess it from gazing at the highly polished, stylish -- dare I say dazzling? -- appearance of this blog, but I have ground it out week by week on the computer equivalent of a dirty, never-oiled 1915 typewriter. And I persisted in sending it to you over my dial-up access to the internet. But, I was finally forced to admit, the time had come. I bought a new computer. And I also induced a sigh of relief across techno-savvy Seattle as I became the final citizen in town to switch to cable.

My new computer was delivered amazingly quickly. But the fun had only begun. Behind the gray bulk of my stately old computer was concealed a mass of wires and equipment similar in complexity to that of the New York subway system. The sight was so scary that, for years, facing the need to wire in a new peripheral had demanded more courage from me than parachuting from a plane -- or even cleaning my refrigerator.

Gingerly, I disconnected one wire after another. What, I marveled at times, had ever possessed me when I connected these circuits the way I had? There were long-forgotten unplugged electrical plugs and transformers serving peripherals that I hadn't used for years. There were 20-foot extension cords coiled around in tangles and used only to provide additional electrical outlets. There was a lengthy telephone wire running from my computer to a telephone jack in another room. There was a cable connection from the cable company to my television that ran through a little-used VCR player, and a complex of wiring and a modem (unplugged) hooking my TV to a DVD player. These latter connections were independent of my computer, but also had to be disassembled, not only to connect the computer to cable but simply to help untangle the whole ungodly mass (mess) of wiring.

By the time I'd finished deconstructing my old wiring schema, I had wires and peripherals and modems completely covering the floor of the room -- and my head was pounding with confusion and frustration and the effects of forgotten cups of coffee. But piece by piece, I re-wired my new computer into what seemed to be a simpler system. I conclude "simpler," if for no other reason than that I had several wires and cables left over at the end whose original purpose was never clear to me and -- in fact -- seemed totally unnecessary.

And then I proceeded with the "easy" self-installation of my cable modem and the hook-up to my TV cable. After several hours of following the instructions over and over, and a call to the cable company's service department, with no cable signal in the modem, we -- the nice female technician and I -- decided over the phone that the problem wasn't with me but with the external cable. There was a "filter" on it, she suspected, and please don't ask me what a filter is or what it was doing there. Yesterday, someone from the company came, climbed a precarious ladder to the top of a power pole, and removed the purported filter.

I'm pleased to announce that it was all worth it. I type this post on a new, shiny-black, Dell computer and send it to you over a high speed cable connection. I have joined the 21st century.

At least for a year or so.