Reactionary

From the moment I entered my apartment with the package to when I played the first song, it was less than 20 minutes and the hardest part was taking the wrapping off. What am I talking about? Airport Express. The apartment is now wireless. Not because I needed it, but because thanks to some people in California, I can. The phone chord that used to hang from the ceiling to connect to the port in the kitchen is gone. Internet’s wireless, iTunes to third party speakers is wireless, and when the Airport card for my old iBook arrives in the mail Thursday, that’ll be wireless, too. Wireless swapping between the two machines. Fast, instant. No more FireWire disk mode. No more cables. If I ever move the printer to the other side of the room, then there will be wireless printing as well.

It was painless. Painless. I moved the DSL modem to the other side of the room and hooked it up to the other phone jack. That was the hardest part of the whole process. I had to stand on a wooden bunk and detape things from the ceiling for approximately 1.78 minutes. Life’s rough. I popped the Ethernet cable into the Express station, popped the Y cable from the speakers to it (that were already in the auxiliary port of the stereo for the rare time I hooked up my iPod to it), plugged the station to the wall and waited for about 23 seconds until the light turned green. I went to the computer, set it up via the Airport Assistant. That took about 2 minutes. Thinking up new passwords was the hardest part. Then, to test the internet, I reconnected to the Roma concert torrent and it hooked up in seconds. Next, I went to iTunes and tried playing a song. It still played through the computer. There had to be a way to pick other speakers. Oh, look at that. A new little box had appeared at the bottom right of the iTunes screen. A little pop up menu asked for speakers. I went from “Computer” to the new name for the Express station. Then, I went to the Party Mix and chose “Borrowed Heaven” by the Corrs. I don’t know why I chose that song. But that was it. “Borrowed Heaven” by the Corrs broke in the new connection and it blared out of the stereo across the room rather than in my face at the computer. Joy. Granted, this would be more benficial if I had a larger apartment or inconveniently placed jacks and plugs. But it still rocks and will rock even harder when both computers can see each other and swap files and share internet without a problem and without my doing anything. It’s amazingly cool how the computer “saw” the new base station without my having to tell it to look. Bluetooth connects the phone. Now if I could just get it to run my TV and alarm clock, too.

I named the new station Hermes. Things around here no longer run, but fly on Hermes’ winged shoes. Thanks, Steve.

Posted on July 26th, 2005 under Life, Tech •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed