Complexities

The simple life has disappeared, slipped out the side door when nobody was watching. There is now absolutely nothing that we can accomplish in fewer than fourteen steps. A case in point: our stereo system is tied to our wifi and plays music stored on several computers. One of the speakers is in the back yard, under the windmill, next to the helipad. (Okay, it's not actually a helipad, it's just a round patio that looks like a helipad.) The stereo is controlled by one of the pcs or by the I-pod. The problem: the helipad, and the tree house, are at the edge of our wifi coverage. That means we must go all the way to the house to change a playlist! Unacceptable, totally.

Research on the web told me that there was a simple (hah) solution to the problem. All I needed to do was re-purpose (wonderful term!) an old router and use it to extend the range of our household network. I happened to have an old router (who doesn't?), so I decided to give it a whirl.

In only four hours I managed to find the password for the old router, reconfigure it, hook it into the system, and introduce it to our backyard laptop and my I-pod. As I completed step sixteen of the process, the webpage I was following disappeared into cyberspace; it was kind of like sliding into home plate in the sixteenth inning to win the game.

Lucky for me that I had a whole morning free with nothing else to do but fiddle with passwords and wires. Lucky for me that most mornings are free. I got through the re-purposing without actually smashing anything and now, I am happy to report, I'm sitting up in the treehouse writing this post. But somewhere, in the back of my mind, a little voice is whispering, "Four hours?".