Dear Anonymous Neighbor with the crappy cordless phone,

You probably noticed a constant clicking sound on your new phone. That would be the 5-7 wireless networks freaking out because your crappy phone is flooding the spectrum. I’m sure you got a great deal on it and never thought about it again, people get attached to their cellphones, not crappy cordless phones. But your phone sucks. And it’s suckingness is inconveniencing a half dozen of your neighbors.

“Ok,” you say, “maybe all those wireless networks are causing trouble? Maybe they’re overlapping and turning the air to mud?”

I thought about that. Thing is, this never happens when normal people are at work or sleeping. I don’t have a normal schedule. I’m home during the days, some days working, others taking care of kids. And I’ve always been a night person, usually going to bed around 2am even though I need to be functional again at 8. And all those times, the early afternoons during naps, late at night when everyonen else is sleeping. Those times are wonderful. Flawless wifi.

Then you get home from work, get on your crappy cordless phone and wreck everything for everybody.

Perturbed, you try to blame my computer, “maybe it’s your crappy laptop.”

That would be plausible, but it’s not just my laptop. It’s also my wife’s and my neighbors (they asked me for help when their wireless network was having trouble). It’s also my Linksys WRT-54Gs. Yes, I have two, sometimes, specifically the times mentioned above, they work flawlessly. I’m using hacked firmware, which includes a frequency scanner. When you’re on the phone, every network in range is obliterated. You could sell that thing as a frequency jammer for five times what you paid for it.

“Aha! Hacked firmware, what do you expect.”

Uh huh, I guess you weren’t listening when I mentioned the other networks. Those include Apple hardware, whatever RCN sends out, other Linksys routers and a few miscellaneous devices I wasn’t able to identify. The hacked firmware also allows me to adjust wifi properties like beacon frequency. The beacon is probably what you’re hearing when you’re phone clicks. Tonight I’m setting the beacon on my router to something much smaller. I’m also turning the broadcast power up to eleven.

Cordially,

joe