Information Technology · 27 June 2002
This is almost entirely true. I was having problems with the Airport base station.
Since last year, our little setup here (my G4 PB running OS X, and the slightly grizzled iBook using 9.2.1 that belongs to Herself) has been linked together and to the internet by an Airport wireless hub; it has thus far run fairly smoothly. Provided there’s no radio interference, it runs great.
A couple weeks ago it started acting up: kept refusing to connect, and bumping offline when it did. After a while it would mock me, showing a strong network signal in the AirPort info (no interference), but reporting that its Status was Not Available. It would just hang, spinning its wheels; not assigning IP addresses over DHCP, not connecting to anything. And so I tried to fix it. And kept trying.
—I can’t connect.
—Yes, darling, I know.
You need to understand that this was days and days of trial and error, of a hundred thousand restarts and resets and uploading of AirPort firmware, stripping down all TCP/IP resources on three different systems, completely reinstalling one system, talking to the AirPort via telnet, Googling and searching in vain through Apple’s knowledgebase and discussions, after downloading 20-meg and 40-meg updates (available only through Apple’s lame-ass Software Update control panel; what fun that is over a modem).
—It’s saying ‘Status Not Available’
—Yes, I know.
But at last, late the other night, after endless false starts, things seemed to be working. And seemed to keep working. I reclined, laptop on lap, and glided through a relatively eventless email check (barnyard friends, cum guzzling sluts, Nigerian investment), when it hesitated and, there off in the corner of the screen, Internet Connect was saying Status Not Available.
And here you need to understand that I am not a violent man. But at that second, almost instantly, the powerbook became the human face of all the ruinous frustration, all the stomach-lurching repetitiveness of not getting it to work, and I punched they keyboard a couple times, hard enough to knock loose half a dozen keys.
Fine. My bad. Breathe. Put the damn keys back on. One snapped back into place right away, two and three needed some wiggling. And then I spent the next hour and a half cursing, occasionally yelling, sweating in the airless night, trying to mash four five and six back into place. They would not take. They would not take.
Finally, sick of it all and uttering the words ‘I am irritated’ (‘Yes, I know’ came from the other room) I just let the powerbook fall, open, from my hands to the couch – a distance of maybe six inches. It turns out that six inches of free-fall provides more than enough momentum to snap the fucking screen lid off its mounts, rendering one G4 powerbook frankly, essentially, useless.
And here you need to understand that the next day, while I was learning from an Apple technician in Montpellier that an Applecare warrantly purchased in Canada is not valid in Europe – and that, in addition, repairs of this magnitude will require that the powerbook take a lengthy sojourn in Holland – the server that hosts this site went down for fourteen and a half hours. DoS attack, so I’m told.
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