One of these days I'm going to write an Ode to Cables. I love cables. I must! I have them everywhere in my house: They are in the kitchen, the family room, even the bedroom.

And I think I have found the secret lair where they breed. It's under my desk!

You see, my wife and I share a rather long desk/table. Under that desk are the cables for two workstations, two routers, a server, a hub, a scanner and a printer. It is a festering den of writhing creatures that hasn't seen the light of day in eons (and probably never will).

Nothing in life is so closely associated as this union of cable and computer. Love and Marriage is a myth. Horse and Buggy, c'mon, that's SO last century. Nothing beats the loving, albeit co-dependant relationship of my PC's and their cables.

I had been trying to talk a friend of mine into setting up a network at his house. Lately his normally blissful (cable modem-equipped) home had developed into a sort of war zone. He and his wife both bring home their laptops from work and then they both want to be online. The problem is they only have one IP address.

Thankfully I finally got him to come over to my place for an evening of UT and beer. What he saw blew him away. While we gamed to out little heart's content my wife spent the evening chatting online with her family back home in Indiana. That was it; he was sold. He asked if I would be so kind as to give him a hand with setting up his own little LAN heaven. It was either that or pay him the $20 bucks I owed him.

"Great! I'd love to help"

So I began by showing him how I was setup. And that is where his love affair quickly died.

"What are all of those CABLES? Danielle would kill me if I had a rat's nest of cables like that!"

I admit I was a little hurt by the aforementioned rodent remark. Nonetheless, I fleetingly tried to convince him that the mesh strewn beneath his feet wasn't all that bad, but the damage was done. And on top of that he wanted his $20 bucks back.

Sweat brimming off my brow I desperately clawed into the nether regions of my brain for another game plan. Suddenly, like a bungee cord snapping back against my forehead, it hit me!

"Hey, how about wireless?"

A quick trip to the local CompUSA and we were in business.