Grooming Your Semi-Public Image

Dave Kellett with one of the least-pressing issues of our time: What to name the router. 

And yet, not only is he right, but he is, as so often is the case, funny.

You have to name the router. There is no reason the name has to be clever.

All that is required is that, when you log on with a new computer, or after having repaired something incredibly stupid that you did to your old computer, or with a computer that makes you so paranoid that you store nothing on it, you need to know which router is yours.

And yet the compulsion to be creative is overwhelming.

It's like when you're filling out a form and you get to "Sex."  Just answer the damn question -- you're not going to come up with anything new in the way of humor.

And for godsake don't try to be clever if you're being asked the question in person, though I do recall a time when I was volunteering at a Board of Realtors blood drive and one of the screeners failed to skip an irrelevant entry and asked a handsome-and-courtly older man (somewhere between Ricardo Montalban and James Mason) about pregnancy.

Without missing a beat he said, "Well, I'll have to make a few phone calls ..." and sent her into a fit of the giggles.

Trust me. You're not that fast or that good-looking. 

Where I'm going to differ with Dave is in that I think "Buford T. Tiggins" is a perfectly good thing to name your router if you happen to be Buford T. Tiggins, though I would probably only use BTT or Tiggins or something.

But as to the issue of security, ol' Buford may have some obscure password that nobody is going to guess, while I suspect that, the more inventive the name, the more transparent the password.

Specifically, if I were trying to hack into a router named "Hal," I would start with "sorrydave" and then try variations on "daisydaisy." Half an hour, tops.

Which reminds me of another "You're not so clever" issue: Hilary Price not only came up with this wonderful-the-first-time gag, but then used it on the cover of a book. Cartoonists should stop stealing it.

The issue with router security is that you don't want someone to hack in and freeload on your account, which is probably a bigger issue if you live in an apartment building in the city than in a farmhouse out in the country. 

I'm in the middle of a small town and the neighborhood apartments are in houses, so the number of apartments within range of my router is pretty small. And, since I'm on Comcast, I wouldn't be able to tell if someone were riding my coattails anyway, because the service already slows down all the time for no discernable reason.

My only gripe is that I wish the post office and the library could swap places, because I can see the library's public server but only get about half a bar. I could save some coin if it were just a little bit closer.

And I'll admit, okay, my router has a geeky name and, if you were a complete nerd, you'd crack into it fairly easily. 

My level of giving a damn about that is about equal to my level of connectivity to the library.

(But here's a holiday memory: Remember the days of dial up, when you couldn't get on line for the two weeks after Christmas when the kids were all home from school and playing with their new computers? Not only were all the access numbers busy, but, once you did get through, everything was snailed down to nothing. And this was before anyone dreamt of streaming video: You were already accustomed to hitting a new page and then going to get a cup of coffee while it loaded.)

 

Professional cartoonist on a closed course:

Speaking of humor you only think you can pull off, Keith Knight has spent years properly positioning himself to make this incredibly lame gag work. Do not try this yourself.

 

Comments

[MaggieZ]

The Keith Knight cartoon made my day! Thanks!

Merry Christmas, Mike, and a happy new year. Looking forward to your 2013 posts.

[Sherwood Harrington]

Router security at Ft. Harrington: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sherwoodh/8270275221/in/photostream

[Mary in Ohio]

I was finally able to access Rhymes With Orange for 12/20 an see the comic she was apologizing for. Bless HP for her sensitivuty to this issue, but if I had seen it in my paper, I wouldn't have given it a second thought, so I hope she isn't beating herself up too much. What a sad,sad sign of the times.

[gezorkin]

In high school I worked at a grocery store as a boxboy, now called a courtesy clerk.

The job title in those days was 'wrapper'.

I tormented my kids, telling them 'I used to be a wrapper.' ever since rap music became popular.

[hildigunnur]

My router name is Vodafone G0c and I'm even a nerd... Basically only companies name their routers up here, us public just go with the name the internet server company provides.

I also remember not being able to call anybody, in the dialup age, since the home phone and the modem were on the same single line and mobiles weren't all that common.