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 COLUMN
Click here to deflate ego A FEW WEEKS ago, I wrote about the problem of widespread usability issues for technology consumers (see July 2). As I explained in "A CTO's frustration," these issues affect not only the average technology Joe and Jane but also the CTOs driving the technology vision of well-known companies that produce products that our wives, uncles, and grandmothers use. I have to admit that I quietly snickered at the bad luck of those who battled these technology demons. I would never feel their pain.
On a daily basis as CTO of InfoWorld, I valiantly strive to slay technical dragons in the workplace, and when those beasts are vanquished, I go home to the second shift. At home I serve as the CTO, systems administrator, and network administrator, where the CEO (my wife) drives the overall vision -- and I leverage technology to help her achieve it. Like any good CTO, I provide the CEO with recommendations on the latest technology -- so I recently lobbied for a wireless network within our home, noting that it would contribute to our enterprisewide priority of keeping things neat and tidy. My relationship with my wife over the course of our marriage has been marked by long telephone lines stretched across floors, and with the advent of broadband, thicker and even more unsightly long Ethernet cables. This was the time to show her that the forward-thinking mind-set I had developed at work could actually apply to building a happy and wire-free home. She approved the budget with high hopes and the project began. I had been thinking about wireless connectivity for my home LAN for quite a while. Fortunately, I have a state-of-the-art Toshiba Tecra 8200 with built-in 802.11b wireless Ethernet support. All I needed was a wireless access point, and I could use my laptop anywhere in the house. Simple enough. I bought a Linksys Etherfast Wireless Access Point+Cable/DSL Router with a built-in four-port switch. The box promised "instant broadband" and I was expecting less setup hassle than George Foreman's Lean, Mean, Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. Throw in my CTO credentials, and I was thinking I would wrap the whole thing up during a TV commercial break. Wrong, wrong, wrong. To make a long story short, after five nights of installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling drivers on my Tecra, upgrading the firmware on the Linksys, and tweaking the configuration of both my laptop and access point, I now have a laptop that won't do any networking -- wired, wireless, or otherwise. After discussing the details of the situation with our systems administrator at work, he suggested that I consider trying to edit the Windows registry to make it work, or convert the laptop to Linux so I would have the option of hacking the driver source code if necessary. (No thanks -- I love hacking as much as the next CTO, but I do have a day job to perform.) For now, this column is being written on a nonnetworked PC, and after completing it, I will be copying it to a floppy and walking it to a networked PC so I can e-mail it to my editor. (No wonder you were late. -- Ed.) My, how the mighty have fallen. After several weeks of trumpeting the role of the CTO in business, this CTO has been severely humbled by the interminable sounds of elevator music while on hold on tech-support lines. Being on hold so much did produce at least one positive outcome: I had time to run a few 100-foot Ethernet cables into each room of my house and one special cable that reaches comfortably to the couch, where I will be sleeping. Chad Dickerson is InfoWorld's CTO. Contact him at chad_dickerson@infoworld.com.  RELATED SUBJECTS  NetworkingMORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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