LOVE AND THE INTERNET HOG

He came easily by his hoggishness, the Hawg did.

He used to explain it by blaming it on growing up in a large family. As the oldest of five siblings, he had learned what it meant to "do without" and to make sacrifices for the common good. In fact, he had learned so well that he had spent most of his adult life grabbing as much as he could, just to make up for past deprivations. It didn't matter whether these were real or imagined, his course was firmly set.

The Hawg always said "Sure!" to offers of favors he was expected to politely refuse. If invited to dinners where the hostess said, "Oh, you don't have to bring anything," he rarely did. In a carful of people, he never took the middle seat. And the Hawg never ever waited more than half a second at 4-way stop signs!

After an obligatory first marriage, he met and fell in love with a girl from Iowa, where the only kind of hogs have four legs and live to be eaten. The Hawg lived to take, so in many ways this was a match made in heaven. In a world of polite no-thank-yous and I-don't-minds, the Hawg was king: "Would you like another slice?" "Don't mind if I do!" (heh-heh)

And so it went, for a very long time. . .

All things either turn bitter or mellow with age, and the Hawg was no exception. His greedy excesses wore thin with increasing frequency, and the Hawg was compelled to learn the fine art of apologizing. Eventually, however, even this was not enough, and the world let him know in no uncertain terms that past slights were no excuse for being a jerk.

When the Internet came along, the Hawg was shaken: here was a whole new world, a banquet spread of goodies! Opportunity, power, notoriety, and fame beckoned at every link. Here was a chance to reinvent himself, to have a second life, to be a real hog all over again! He who grabbed the knowledge first would rise to the top and be able to lord it over everyone who didn't know they were supposed to care about such things. He would have a Web site and a fancy computer before anyone else he knew: maybe now they'd notice what a brilliant fellow he was. People who'd never heard of him before would be talking about him at parties and telling stories to their children!

After so many years in the wilderness -- not the uncivilized wild reaches of nature but the howling outback of artistic self-employment -- it was a ferocious thrill when the Web work "clicked." The Hawg had an actual job that he liked, and the Iowa girl became even more accommodating:

"Are you online?"

"Yes, but I can get off. Do you need to make a phone call?"

"I kinda wanted to see if Diane got the message I sent earlier today, but that's all right."

"I can get off, no trouble at all! Or would you like to see if she sent you an email reply? I have to go zap my coffee anyway."

"No, I don't want to interrupt your work. I'll call her after supper."

"But -- all right, whatever you say. . ."

Before long, all of the old character traits came back into play, and our subject became the "Internet Hog"! The temptation was just too great, his wife too self-sacrificing, and besides, he hadn't checked his email for a whole ten minutes! In response, the Iowa girl became a Web sneak, a furtive creature of the early morning hours. While the Hawg slept in nearly every day after staying up till 3:00 a.m., the Web sneak would rise with the sun and tiptoe over to the 8600 with a cup of tea. Sometimes the groggy Hawg would hear the soft "bong" in the next room and rouse himself to see what mischief was afoot: had the scanner been turned on first? If there was trouble, had the error message been written down?? (Never!) The very worst thing of all was having a pleasant dream interrupted by the "beep" of a computer problem followed by a soft, barely muttered, feminine " shit!" This would bring the Hawg to purposeful consciousness in a few seconds, causing him to throw the covers off, stagger naked into the room and demand lovingly, "WHAT HAPPENED?!" Wiser readers will note that "Good morning, lover! Need some help?" is an infinitely better salutation in these situations, especially since the response inevitably went like this:

"I did something and it wouldn't let me on."

(AAAGHHHHH!)

And so it continued, for an amazingly long time (Iowa girls are marvels of consideration and tolerance, to be sure). Life usually allows each of us to exercise our worst tendencies, in the hope that we might someday see the edges of the mess we have made. The denser among us are sometimes gifted with partners who allow us to go farther than most observers would willingly permit, and so it was with our Hawg: even after the Iowa girl had learned her way around early morning connection glitches and the Internet Hog had mellowed a few notches, the hoggishness continued. Sometimes a certain cowgirl of the Western plains wouldn't get to check her email messages until the next day! (He really couldn't help himself, the swine.)

But hark!

God looks after drunkards and fools, and qualifying at least temporarily in one or the other of those categories was good enough to bring salvation to the Hawg! And yes, brothers and sisters, this particular "deus ex machina" really did come from a machine: a little silver UFO-shaped thing called AirPort!

The Hawg was ecstatic! He finally had the iBook and all the AirPort components! How long had it taken, four long months? He had found the iBook and the AirPort base station in a computer store in North Carolina and the AirPort card at Outpost.com, and now he would see what he could do with the gear. Late that night, after everything was in hand, he installed the AirPort card -- without writing down the serial number first, of course -- and after a frustrating two and half hours of iBook freezes [Note: turn on AppleTalk first!], the AirPort assistant finally made it through the configuration procedure. The silver base station sat on the kitchen counter and flashed a bewildering sequence of red, amber, and green lights. He turned on AirPort from the control strip, selected the wireless network he had just set up, opened the application window, and was rewarded by the sight of an orange bar in the signal level indicator. . .ye gods, it was alive!

He carried the iBook over to the futon couch and sat down. How did one actually connect, anyway? He could see the words "Not Connected" in the AirPort window, and plunging ahead, he tried to hook up with Claris Emailer. The active schedule was supposed to check a total of five different email accounts, and as he anticipated, the program seemed to hang at the first connection. Curses! he thought, and looked over his shoulder at the base station, which flashed a few more times mysteriously. As his eyes returned to the iBook screen and the Emailer connection status window, his mouth fell open: incoming mail from the second account! Yikes!! Emailer unpacked the messages and did its "doodledy-doop," but was this a trick? The AirPort window said "Connected," but the Hawg was skeptical. He quickly composed a test message to himself and clicked "Send." There it went, hallelujah! He was rolling now and doubled-clicked the Communicator icon. (You can guess the rest! )

A miracle and a half, no doubt about it. The clock on the wall showed 2:49 a.m., but how could he rest? A happy man is a wakeful man, and not even a long hot bath would do the trick right away. The Hawg eventually did fall asleep (at a scandalous hour!), dreaming of what he could do with that Ethernet crossover cable he'd been saving. . .

The next morning our Internet Hog plugged one end of the Ethernet crossover cable into his PowerMac 8600 and the other into the Airport base station, which he had moved to his desk before going to bed. He created a new TCP/IP configuration named "AirPort" and set it to connect via Ethernet using a DHCP server. That was all he did, aside from first plugging in the base station! He opened Communicator was online in seconds, after an initial message that the home page site could not be found. With no Remote Access icon blinking at the top of his screen, the only way to tell he was connected was to watch the Web pages load and the email messages come in -- but load and come in they did, just as fast as ever.

There was one more test: the Hawg carried the iBook into the living room and awakened it from sleep. He turned on AirPort, opened the application window, and saw the bright orange signal level indicator bar! What, no password to be typed? No clicking? It was true! He launched Emailer and the normal schedule ran without a hitch: "doodledy-doop!" Both computers online at the same time, sharing the same Internet connection! And by now you know what this meant, don't you? Salvation!!

"Internet Hog" no more, though still very much a Hawg, he sat the Iowa girl (and former Web sneak) down at the 8600 and told her to check her email. Cackling like a fiend, he ran back to the living room and sent her a message!

"Oh, I just got something from you!" Oh my yes. Life was going to be different from now on --

And it was about damn time!

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives have links to all past columns and occasional snippets of biographical info.

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NOTE: There's a lot to say about AirPort! Check the daily Apple Computer News for our impressions, and keep your eye on this space as well. . .

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January 08, 2009