St Isidore protect me

I must have missed the memo but somewhere along the line Pope John Paul II decided that St Isidore of Seville is the patron saint of technology and the internet. Seems like an awful lot of responsibility for one person. And a confusing choice since he lived around 600 AD and would probably have as much knowledge of the workings of technology as I do. That being said he got some fierce messages from me yesterday when I was setting up my new router. I’m hoping he didn’t mind some of my more colorful language (I doubt he even speaks English so I’m not worrying too much about it) as I attempted to CONNECT TO MY NETWORK!!!!! At least I understood those words even if I had no clue as to how to do that.

My router died the night before last in the middle of a George Harrison documentary (really good, if you’re a Beatles fan). I went the next morning to the Spectrum store only to be told that they RAN OUT OF ROUTERS!!!!! How do you run out of routers when that is part and parcel of what you do?!? So I ran out also, but over to Best Buy to purchase a new one. The 4 foot tall 9 year old who sold it to me told me that it was easy to set up, just plug it all in. Mm hm. Just plug it in I repeated to myself in a mocking tone imagining my hysterical phone calls to my own personal tech support St Ashish of Berlin. He would be less sure of my abilities as regards the setting up of a router.

Super fun. Much of that fun is taking place in the morass of cables, cords and blinking lights behind my television, a place so foreign to me it may as well be another planet which is pretty appropriate since all of the equipment looks like space aliens. I was sweating bullets as the new fun app on my phone directed me to my WLAN. Something my phone does not seem to have. This new installation app shrieked directives like Get the Wi-Fi info . . . Find the SSID . . . Come back to tether . . . what does any of that even mean??!? Where? How? Why?

I am happy to report that after some very sincere pleading with St Isidore as well as some insincere apologies for my language use, the appropriate lights blinked on, turned the appropriate color (green is apparently Isidore’s color of preference) and I rejoined the 21st century.

(Side note: St Isidore is also the patron saint of farmers, as some people will know, but that is a different St Isidore so when you’re doing your novena because of whatever technological problem you’re having be sure to direct it to the right St Isidore or you may end up with potato blight or squirrels in your peach tree)