Wireless and Metaphors

I fixed two wireless problems today, both of which were obscure metaphorical problems in a way, since I could only visualize and not directly observe the radio waves pulsing through the non-ether. I mention the issue of metaphor because I picked up Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought, which deals some with the topic of metaphor. Well, since I am only in the introductory section of the book, that is the initial takeaway at any rate.

So my problems with wireless were odd enough, even without the rhetorical wind-up of the problem of metaphor. First, my key fobs were recalled by my car manufacturer because they could be reprogrammed by close proximity to cell phones. There is a certain irony to this in that the car also bridges through Bluetooth to provide voice-recognition dialing and general operations. So I could start the car remotely and use the phone, but if I brought the phone and starter device together too closely, the result would be that I could neither start the car nor use the phone.

Finally, though, the manufacturer fixed the problem and it only took about an hour at a local dealership while my wife and I got Indian down the street.

The second problem was weirder, though. My 802.11g router started to fail randomly and oddly. And it started around the same time as when I added an HP wireless printer to the zoo of technology. The symptoms were bizarre and manifested themselves randomly with packet dropping from my wireless camera, different laptops and the aforementioned printer. Since one laptop was initially affected more than others, I started with trying to solve the problem with an external USB wireless adapter. No luck. So, after backtracking to an old 802.11b router and seeing some improvements across the board (and after 10 hours work reconfiguring everything), I replaced the router with a new Linksys model today.

There were moments in there where I speculated my neighbor's old 2.4Ghz wireless phones were interfering with the system, but couldn't shuffle channels enough to make any difference. There were moments when I thought the printer had to be to blame since the problems first started around the same time that I got the printer. But no, it was irrational and ultimately the packet failures didn't match any conceivable model for digital system failures where any chip failure results in total non-functionality. Cosmic rays?

If only I could have seen (maybe with false coloration of UV/IR/2.4Ghz rays) what was happening? If only I could have had diagnostics beyond traceroute and ping that would tell me not just that packets were dropped, but who dropped them? If only I had something more than a metaphor (wireless networking is like networking but slightly different) to work from?

Even tonight, following resolution of the recall, I diligently separated my phone from my key fob. The metaphor of fearful interactions was still lingering.