OmegaMom

When we moved, we lost our cordless phones.  (No, we’re not on wireless.  We couldn’t receive wireless at our old house, so it wasn’t worth the price.)  (Though I suppose we might be able to receive wireless where we are now.  Hmmm.)  Anyway, we purchased a (lousy, crappy, useless) dirt-cheap corded phone from the grocery store to tide us over for a while when we first moved in.

Then the tabby doohickey that sticks out to ensure that the phone actually, say, hangs up when you put the receiver down broke off.  When it broke off, I we had no earthly idea what it was for, so I we threw it in the garbage can.

Thereafter the (lousy, crappy, useless) corded phone was iffy, at best, about when you had really, truly hung up.  And if you weren’t in the vicinity to hear the beep beep beep noise that the phone company so carefully provides you to alert you to the fact that your phone is off the hook, after a while the beep beep beep would turn off and the phone line would go dead.  Thus, when folks, say, called you up–what a concept!–all they got was a busy signal.  Or, after we got our new phone service, a voice mail box.  We on the other hand would go merrily on our day to day lives, not realizing that (a) our phone was actually off the hook, and (b) other people were actually trying to contact us and leaving phone messages…until one or the other of us picked the phone up to make a call.

Since we’re not wild and crazy social guys, that would happen every few days or so.

Then we bought a cordless phone set.

Woohoo!  Entering into the modern age, we thought!

Then a few weeks later, OmegaDad, while reaching for something in the old iteration of the office (read:  cramped, messy, filled with poorly balanced heaps) knocked the main base off the desk.

::  All your base are belong to us!  :: some kozmik kritter proclaimed.

Our base no longer worked.

Our two related cordless phones no longer worked.

One of our corded phones didn’t work.  This particular clue makes me think, in retrospect, that it was not OmegaDad knocking over the base unit that did it, but that some Evil Coincidental Voltage Spike did it instead.

Only our (lousy, crappy, useless) corded phone that was schizophrenic about whether it was actually hung up or not (thus having a hang up on hang-ups, eh?) was "working", in the sense that we could place calls and receive calls–when it was hung up.

So OmegaDad finally purchased new cordless phones this weekend.

We plugged them in and started charging those puppies up.

Last night he did all the proper registering and what-not of the phones.

Everything seemed hunky dory.  Maybe–just maybe!–this time our phone situation would last longer than a week or two!

This afternoon, OmegaDad, being a loving and sentimental fella, gave me a call.  In a graceful, swan-like dip, I reached over, grabbed the cordless phone, pressed the "talk" button, and started talking.

As I was talking, I noticed that the network had gone out on my computer.

"Hunh!" thought I.  While talking to OmegaDad, I started fiddling with various network things on the computer.  Nothing worked.  I announced to him that the network was down.  I hung up the phone, fiddled with some more networking things, and the network got back up, dusted itself off, and started working again.

I gave my computer the hairy eyeball.

That was mighty coincidental, I said to myself.

I picked up the cordless phone.

I dialed OmegaDad’s office number, watching the networking indicator on the computer.  Ring, ring.  Nothing happened.

Then OmegaDad picked up the phone.  A second later, the network went down.

I gave my computer the hairy eyeball once again.

"Dude.  When I talk to you on the new phones, it kills the wireless network."

OmegaDad thought it was the cabling (our phone lines are carried over the cable network).  I was sure it was telecommunications interference of one sort or another.  I hung up.  The network came back up.  I read the phone manual.  They made sure to tell you about other things interfering with the phone, but not a word about the phone interfering with other things.  Grrr.

I flexed my Googlemeistra fingers and typed in "wireless phone computer interference".  After reading a variety of things, it turns out that our (cheap!) cordless phones, which transmit on 2.4GHz, interfere mightily with various 802.11 wireless networking protocols, because they, too, are on that frequency. 

The OmegaFamily was very, very close to dumping the new phones.

Then I found something that talked about being able to assign a frequency to the wireless router.  Specifically, that while the majority of the bands used by the wireless router are overlapping channels, 1, 6, and 11 are unique and don’t overlap.  I logged into the router.  I fiddled with settings.  I found a way to select channel 11 (the one I remembered off the top of my head as being unique).  I saved.  I picked up the phone.  I dialed OmegaDad.  He picked up. 

And lo and behold, the network didn’t go down.

Let that be a lesson to you.  Googling rulz!

(I thought about titling this post "What’s the frequency, Kenneth?!"  Does this date me?)