Walking around a Seattle electronics store, on our way to the ink supplies, we happened to see a new wireless printer. “Wow, how cool!” we said. If we had a wireless printer it could live in one of the aft cabins, or be brought to the saloon when we were doing a big project.

We asked how hard this was to install and were told “Easy. Just follow the on-screen prompts.” By now you can see where this is headed.

Whoever wrote the manual for HP was not, to be polite, a good communicator. And guess what, there was no help phone number. A call to the store got us a number which sounded like India, and then we were told that because we used a Verizon air card for our Internet connection, the printer would not work, unless we purchased a wireless router.

Still in the thrall of a portable printer, we went to Best Buy and picked up the required router. During the process we asked some technical questions, like “How hard is this to install?” We were met with a polite push to the “Geek Squad” desk.

For $150 they would come to the boat, install the router, and network both computers and printer, all with the Verizon air card. We thought about several hours of tech support calls to Lynksys and HP, via the Indian subcontinent, and signed up.

Tyler McMinn was at the boat the next afternoon. He is competent, actually knows about masks and subnet addresses – and how to make this stuff work.

Tyler even has a badge. Way cool, Dude!

The wireless Internet connection via the Verizon air card really made the situation difficult. But after an hour and a half of trying different approaches, Tyler had us networked.

We can now share files between the computers, share the Internet connection and files between computers, and the printer works from either laptop.

What did not make it into the mix is our Furuno Fax 30 weatherfax. This requires some special programming which the new router would not allow, so it is connected to one of the PCs directly with an ethernet cable, and that PC is connected to the network by its wireless system. Sound complicated? We just hope we never have a problem, although Tyler assures us he can walk us through any future problems.