42
The Worst
Case
Scenario
!IHt?HtM
Ed Word
Please send feedback and
Boston cream pie to
[email protected].MARCH 2006 MA XIMUMPC
I
’m sure there are worse things that can happen,
but from where I sit, this is pretty damn disastrous.
It’s 1:00 in the morning, and since I got home, I’ve
gone into my computer room no fewer than 14
times. I turn the corner, take a quick peek at the
lights one last time—no change. I want this to be
my last check for the night, but I know it won’t be.
As I write this, I’m on day eight of the longest
broadband outage I’ve ever suffered through, and I
don’t know how much longer I can take it. As long
as I’ve had broadband, I’ve subscribed to one of the
smaller, boutique ISPs, simply because it doesn’t
prohibit me from running servers on my connection,
and because I’d rather deal with a smaller company
when I have problems than a hulking multinational,
like the phone company. Over the last six years,
I’ve had really good luck with Speakeasy—no
unscheduled downtime longer than a few hours,
and great speeds in both directions. But this outage
might break me.
On day two of the outage, I played some single-
player games, did a little work, and watched some
movies. On day three, I started walking around my
apartment with my laptop, trying to fi nd the perfect
place to hook onto an unsuspecting neighbor’s
wireless network. On day four, I read up on the
basics of cracking WEP encryption. On day fi ve, Igave up, vowed to move to a monastery, and never
use technology again. It’s gone downhill from there.
This downtime has really brought my
dependency on high-speed Internet access into
sharp relief. My desperate need for bandwidth isn’t
just a monkey on my back—it’s a 20-foot gorilla,
and he’s riding me like a pony every moment
I’m disconnected! Everything from my day-to-
day banking to paying bills to my phone service
happens over that twisted-pair of copper wires. I
really can’t function as a contributing member of
society without a steady stream of data.
Supposedly, an authorized phone company
representative will grace me with his presence
sometime between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm tomorrow.
With a little luck, I’ll be back online in time to pay
my bills and engage in online bloodsports by early
evening. If he fails me, I’ll be the guy wandering
around downtown San Francisco, with a laptop and
a directional antenna, muttering about unprotected
hotspots, uneven loop lengths, and ILEC diffi culties.
It seems like a hassle, but at least I didn’t have
to call the phone company.(^36)
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