When you move into a new neighborhood, it takes time to meet the new neighbors. There is so much to be done in such a short span of time — a tornadic frenzy of boxes and furniture and such to be moved and unpacked and put into places. You meet the neighbors a little bit at a time and practice remembering their names. Someday soon these people can be your friends. But it takes times to meet them all and get to know them.

And then, one night, as soon as possible, you set up your modem, plug in your router and try to establish an internet beachhead in your new home. Things don’t go as planned. There are issues and complications to be worked through.

But as soon as your router comes to life, it casts its net across the neighborhood, scans the entire block for signals in range. Before you meet Tom and Joy and Steve and Nancy and Jeff and Melissa, you meet their wireless networks. You meet beersnob and thisisnotyourwifi and Peggyswireless2. You play a kind of matching game with yourself putting the wifi name with the house. And you wonder to yourself what these new neighbors are thinking when they see jedifunknet show up on their network list. For them, there is no guesswork. Jedifunknet arrived with the big yellow moving truck.

After two weeks, we are beginning to meet our new neighbors, collect phone numbers, host children. No doubt we will settle in quickly. Soon enough, jedifunknet will be a regular member of network community.