Your Friendly Neighbor #5
You know what I like about people, beside their inherent greediness and gullibility. I like the communication. I especially like the fact that the greedier people are the more likely they are to communicate over the technological equivalent to a tin-can phone. That sort of communication can be very interesting.
So, this week at the poker game, I am holding my usual low pair and bluffing to everyone else’s wonderful hands. I needed a distraction, so I do something out of character.
“I fold,” I say.
Roger, Tim, Ray, Carol, and Steve stare at me as if I were green and nervously look at each other.
“Really,” I insist. “I fold.” I even turn over my crappy hand for emphasis.
Roger shrugs as if I were speaking French. Tim glances down at his chips.
“I’m getting a beer,” I say. “Anyone else?”
When I get up from the table, I can feel everyone else relax.
“I’ll take one,” says Roger.
Tim chimes in and Ray nods and raises two fingers. Carol and Steve, of course, are dry.
A few minutes later I return and pass out the beers. Nice of me, especially since this is Carol’s house and Carol’s boyfriend’s beer. I take a seat on the couch and cast around for an opening. And there it is, the May issue of Popular Internet. On the cover is a WiFi antennae and the lead off for an article for neighborhood networks.
“Hey, Carol,” I interrupt, waving the magazine. “Is this yours?”
I know its her’s. She’s the network administrator and her name is on it. Still, an opening is an opening.
Tim bet three, which means he has at least two pair.
“Yeah. You can read it,” she tells me in a distracted voice.
How quaint.
Roger raises two, which means he has two pair, but didn’t pay attention to Tim.
“Is this where you got that idea for the neighborhood network you told me about?” I ask.
Carol is deep in the game, trying to figure out what to do. I can see she has a full house. She calls. Always safe.
“Yeah,” she says. “You should read the article.”
Steve folds and joins me on the couch.
“Let me see that,” he asks. I hand him the magazine.
“I’ve wanted to do something like that. Set up a network. How’s it done?”
What a stroke of good fortune – or something. Carol took the bait and folded. She came over to the couch, leaving Tim and Roger to their battle of wits, which was more like thumb wrestling.
“Well,” began Carol. “For a space like Lake View Heights, you’d need about twelve broadcast points for good coverage.”
Tim drew a full house and Roger called. Both of them, geeks at heart, would rather be at the couch anyway.
“Wouldn’t that be expensive?” asked Roger, always the practicalist.
“Yeah, sure, but the cost could be spread out among subscribers.”
They were off. The poker game was abandoned.
It took them about three hours to put together a plan and about five seconds for them to realize they could never do it.
“It would be so slick,” Tim whined. “Too bad about the funding.”
That was my cue.
“You know, we might be able to do this at a profit.”
Now, I hadn’t said a thing the entire time. I just sat there reading the article and nodding, waiting for my moment.
They all turned to look at me as though I was wearing a red silk suit and carrying a pitchfork.
“No. Really. If we try to get people to join, no one will ever want to, but if we keep people out and charge for them to get in, they will fight for the chance.”
Fortunately, these people were the ones who regularly gave me money in the form of gambling losses. They thought they knew what I was capable of. They were close.
“He’s got a point,” Tim said.
“That’s the way Microsoft works,” added Carol.
“Yeah,” chimed in Roger, “and no matter how bad the service is, as long as everyone has an investment…”
‘No one will want to pull out,” finished Steve
“But how would we ever pull it off?” asked Carol.
Everyone turned to me.
I smiled. Again with the pitchfork looks.
Two months later, the Lake View Heights wireless network was open to the public, so to speak. Thanks to Carol, the infrastructure was a secure as these things get, and thanks to Roger’s access to a city cherry-picker truck the WiFi routers were optimally placed high in some very sturdy telephone poles. With Tim’s investment, the equipment was state of the art and Steve was a big help lugging everything around. The LVH network stood to turn a profit after October, if things stayed on track, and I was doing my level best to get everyone in the neighborhood to join up, even if it meant postponing the profit as far as another year. On top of sales, I had the other duty of housing the T1 connection to the ‘net.
“I still can’t believe you drew the short straw,” Roger said as he toured the steel shed in my back yard that was home to the uplink and other “necessary” equipment. Fortunately Carol didn’t know as much about T-3 internet connections as she did about wireless networking. The other equipment was passed off as necessary to the T1. Lucky me.
“I guess you can’t be lucky all of the time,” I told him.
“That’s a nice PC,” he says, pointing to a very large IBM server on a table.
“Yeah. That’s what the installer says is the controller – or something. I don’t know what it does.”
Roger shrugs. His comprehension of technology is limited to how to run electric can openers and TV remotes.
“I still can’t believe you’re paying for the electricity and heat and for the shed install.”
I can see the wheels in his head grinding so it’s time for Roger to leave.
“Looks like it’ll rain. I should lock the shed up.”
I close the doors and Roger meanders back to his house. When he’s inside, I go back into the shed and close the doors behind me.
The room is completely mine and paid for by “contributions” from the entire neighborhood. I sit down in front of the big IBM box and flip on the monitor. It buzzes briefly and glows to life. Then, the beauty begins.
Did you know that for four hundred fifty bucks, an installer will set you up with a network eavesdropping program and show you how to use it? For another hundred fifty, you can get a great little database that collects all of the information and sorts it according to point-of-origin. You gotta love America.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is about credit card fraud – and with anyone else you’d be correct. What I am interested in isn’t direct access to credit but access to their private lives. Knowing someone’s credit card number might net me a quick thousand bucks and probably a quicker trip to the county lock-up. Knowing they are chronically over-due on their electric bill – priceless. Ditto that for who has the crazy aunt and when she is coming to town or for who is dating, sleeping with or divorcing whom. And in the spring there are taxes. I hear E-Filing is pretty big now, thanks to our Federal government.
It’s nice to help people.
