My normal beat is local politics. If I can, I like to throw in a splash of state and national items and some backdoor philosophy and kibitzing, but this time of year is what I call the political doldrums. The elections are over, the holidays are around the corner and everyone in the public eye is just tuckered out. Professional and college football dominates the news and the NBA is embarking on their meaningless regular season. I call it the longest set of exhibition games in the history of humanity. It's difficult to get worked up about anything political this time of the year, so I thought you might be interested in how I write my columns.
I'll explain exactly how I wrote this one so you'll get the idea. Late Wednesday afternoon I started annoying myself and I did that by allowing my wife to share my misery. Me - "I have a column due tomorrow and I don't know what to write about." She - "You'll think of something." That was helpful.
We went back and forth like that for a few hours until I just decided to start typing so I could see what my stream of consciousness would bring forth.
A few ideas came to me as I typed and I punched up the Internet to check some facts when the wireless network in the house crashed and burned like a Formula 1 at Monte Carlo in the rain. Note: The term, "like a Formula 1 at Monte Carlo in the rain" it added, or shall I say padded, 10 words to this column and this little explanation added another 31.
My immediate thought went to the day several years ago when I installed and coded the router - now just where could I have put those instructions. No, there was no chance that I was going to find the instructions or remember how to do it, so I went to my wife's wired computer and got to work. After a couple of frustrating hours and several aborted attempts I got the wired computer to get the wireless network up and running - that is everything except the wireless printer.
No problem, my infallible memory told me all I had to do was press the security button on the front of the router and the networking button on the printer and - yep, I crashed the entire system again. Now the situation was serious. I had invested a big chunk my ego into getting this modern marvel working again and I would not take no for an answer. By now I had entered the 10-digit gibberish machine generated WEP security code - whatever that is - so many times, I had it memorized.
There is a moral here, something about man's overreliance on technology or maybe just the fact that you really have to take care of the software CDs and instructions because you're never going to remember how to fix all of this unless you do it every day. At moments like that I often think of Enrico Fermi greeting the dawn of the nuclear age and clocking its birth accurately with his tiny little pocket slide rule; meanwhile I'm trying to decipher the stylized icons on my printer so I can decide what button does what in the middle of the night.
Naturally, all these futile attempts at networking had scrambled the brains of my laptop and it was returning senseless machine prompts to my every query. It wasn't long before I was talking to it as if it were alive. After the appropriate number of threats and more than a few words to the Supreme Being, I wiped out all the old information and started over again. I used my wife's computer to download all the instructions, I rebuilt the network step-by-step, and sure enough, I got it all up and running at 1 a.m. Now all I had to do was write the column, but what in the world could I use for the subject on such a dead news week?
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident. His column runs Fridays. Reach him at cwo4mgr@yahoo.com.
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