iMac Airport Cards & Linksys Wireless Routers

I promise, despite the overly tech-head title of this article, it will eventually apply to all of you. Really.

The last three months have been a veritable blizzard of changing addresses, unpacking boxes, and hooking up various services to our home. The one great holdout has been an internet connection. Easton (as many of you know) hasn't been wired for cable (therefore, no cable modem) and we're too far from the nearest phone "station box" for DSL... so the only choices is dial-up.

Except that the church has a satellite broadband connection... and a wireless router pointed at the parsonage. (I'm sure I've lost some of you by now - let me try to explain it a little better: it's like having a super-fast cable modem connected to a DirectTV dish at the church office, which we can connect at the house kinda like a cell phone uses a cell tower to connect.) All we had to do was make our poor little iMac wireless-ready. And all that takes is what Apple calls an "Airport Card".

Well, I bought & installed the Airport card... and it didn't work. So, I called Mark Curts and got the passwords & other necessary stuff from him (hi, Mark!). No luck. I had a tech-savvy friend from Nashville (hi, Chip!) help me with the wireless router at the church. Still didn't work. A gamer buddy here in Fresno (hi, Randy!) brought his laptop and checked to make sure we could get a signal in the house. We could - but not with our computer. A friend of Nancy's from Northpointe (hi, Dana!) helped make sure everything was cool at the church and did major research into how to make the Airport card work. Close, but no cigar. I called Apple Tech Support (twice!) and got some helpful answers... but their final call was simply "take to a service provider who can look at it." (And we won't get into how non-helpful CompUsa was... sigh.)

So, yesterday, my dad & I drove 100+ miles to Modesto, CA, to Mac Daddy (yep, the place really is called Mac Daddy.) A Gen-X looking dude in a knit cap (hi, Jeff!) popped open the back of my ruby iMac, moved a couple of things around... and made it work. (Here's a short plug for the guys who rescued my 'puter: http://www.macdaddy.net/)

That's all it took... 5 minutes with a guy who knew exactly what to do.

My mind made a jump this morning from my computer 'life' to my spiritual life. Why in the world do I spend so much time asking people for help when God himself, the ultimate tech-head when it comes to my life, is waiting to tune me up and connect me to His love & power. He knows exactly what to do. Nothing wrong with other people, mind you... but it makes a whole lot more sense to go to God first.

What do you need to go to God about today? Where & how do you need to be connected?

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NIV)

This post originally appeared in the 10/23/03 edition of The Grapevine, the newsletter of NewLife Community Church.