Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

This weekend I took a trip to Nashville to attend a wedding. I booked a hotel room with Internet access for Saturday night, and figured I would use my AirPort express to wirelessly surf the net from my bed. Things didn’t work out the way I would have liked.

First of all, the wedding was for my friend J and his new wife Sheila. I have to say that everything was just about perfect. The ceremony was long enough to get in all the important parts but not so long that my butt became numb sitting in the wooden pews. The reception was somewhat informal and everyone was free to mingle and enjoy the booze and tiny steak sandwiches the waiters would bring to you. The wedding really couldn’t have been any better.

So anyway, when I checked in at the front desk of the hotel, the lady asked me if I would need an “Internet cable”. Why yes, in fact I would. The case I carry my PowerBook in is durable but small, and I don’t have much room for extraneous items such as “Internet cables”, so I didn’t bring one with me. The cable she gave me wasn’t in the greatest shape, but it would have to do.

When I arrived at the room and unpacked, I decided to check my e-mail. I plugged the “Internet cable” into the wall, plugged the other end into my AirPort Express, and plugged the Express into the power socket. I started up the AirPort admin tool, created a new profile for the hotel, and reset the Express so the new settings would take effect. After the reset, the Express still showed the yellow light, and the admin tool showed the Express’s IP address as 169.254.x.x. The Express wasn’t getting an address from the hotel’s DHCP server, I presumed, so I unplugged the Express from the wall in order to plug in my PowerBook directly to see what was happening.

When I went to take the “Internet cable” out of the Express, I couldn’t Ñ it was stuck. Really stuck. I have no idea why it was stuck, but I couldn’t get it out. I spent several minutes wiggling the cable and tugging on it trying to remove it from the Express’s port, but it wouldn’t budge. Then I got pissed and did something that wasn’t too smart Ñ I gave it a good jerk and the cable came right out. I immediately looked at the Express to see if it was ok, and as far as I can tell there is no damage to the Ethernet port. Whew!

After having the cable stuck in the Express, there was no way I was going to plug it into my PowerBook, so packed away my computer and got ready for the wedding.

This morning I checked out of the hotel and the lady at the desk asked me if I had the “Internet cable” to return to her. I didn’t, I told her, because I left it sitting on the night stand. “Did the cable work for you?” she asked. Hmmm… What an odd question. Have they had problems with the “Internet cable” before? Could it be that my AirPort Express wasn’t getting an IP because they gave me a cable they had suspicions about? Well be suspicious no more, because that cable was a piece of crap.

So my first chance to use my AirPort Express in the real world was thwarted by a crummy cable. The moral is, I need to get a new bag to carry my PowerBook and accessories in so I don’t have to use the “Internet cable” from the front desk again. I’ve been looking at some of the cool bags at RadTech and when I acquire one, perhaps I’ll post a review.