Mohammed Chang sat slumped against the wall. In one hand he held a strand of Cat 5 Ethernet cable. In his other hand he held a crimping tool. At his feet and all around him lay the remains of his efforts to put a working RJ-45 plug on the end of the cable, now a couple of feet shorter than when he had started. Mo wondered if his client would be angry if he returned to find that Mo had drunk the only beer in the fridge. Mo was close to not caring.

He picked himself up and walked out into the living room. His client, Jon Tisch had converted a two-bedroom apartment into offices for his graphic design firm. Mohammed dug into his cavernous computer bag Ñ a veritable McGeeÕs closet of technological goodies Ñ and came up with a locking surgical hemostat. Mohammed prized this particularly long-necked, non-magnetic hemostat for its variety of uses. It was excellent for fishing doohickeys out of the bowels of computers, for holding wires or small metal plates together for soldering, as well as for the traditional, non- surgical purposes.

Mohammed returned to the middle office, kicked the debris of his failures out of the way and snipped off another two inches of Ethernet cable. Once he had the four pairs of wires in the correct order and spaced close enough together to all fit into the opening of the clear plastic jack, he placed the hemostatÕs jaws about a half-inch behind the ends and carefully closed and locked the jaws. He slipped the jack over the wires.

"Come on baby, come on." Mo muttered.

He pushed the jack between the jaws of the crimping tool and squeezed it shut. He then pushed the completed jack free with his thumb and inspected his work. All the wires appeared to be in the correct order, and all of them seemed to be in contact with the copper. Of course, so had several previous attempts, so Mohammed said a quick prayer to the gods of technology and plugged the cable into the Ethernet hub.

"Work dammit."

Mohammed left the room and walked down the narrow hall with its squeaky floors, past the kitchen to the back office, where he had just set up JonÕs new 300HMz G3. Jon had a downstairs apartment just off Diversey Avenue, in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. He paused at the door to the office. "Screw it," he said and turned back up the hall and into the kitchen where he retrieved the lonely bottle of Harp out of the fridge and popped the top with his Letherman. On the way to the back office he downed a quarter of the bottle in one gulp.

Somewhat more relaxed he opened the Chooser on the G3 clicked the LaserWriter icon and closed his eyes. "One, two, three.." he counted, and then opened one eye a slit. There was nothing in the right-hand window where the two printers, the HP LaserJet and Epson Stylus should have been.

"Arrrgh!"

There had to be something fundamentally wrong with what he was doing Making good CatÕ Five cables was a tricky business, but was a skill Mo though he pretty much had down. His success rate was around fifty percent. But, Mo had just wasted an hour and-a-half and a half-a-pack of RJ-45 jacks trying to do one lousy cable.

Mo went into the back office with the G3 to call his next client to tell her he was stuck and would have to reschedule. He cradled the cell phone on his shoulder and stooped to page through his Palm for the personÕs number when he glanced at the MacÕs monitor. He did a double- take and dropped the phone. There in the right-hand Chooser window were the printer icons, just as they were supposed to be.

"What theÉ?"

Mo restarted the computer and dialed his client. She was quite understanding and, her problem not being urgent, they rescheduled for the next day. Thank God for small favors, Mo thought. As he hung up the phone he brought up the Chooser and clicked the LaserWriter icon once again. A short pause followed byÉ nothing.

"Grrrr." Mo was suffering from rage-induced aphasia. He wanted so badly to smash the G3. Instead, he stalked back up the hall to the front office and inspected the old, reliable 8500/250 therein. It connected to the printers just fine, as it had all during the late morning and into the afternoon. Mo went back down to the back office where the printer icons now sat in the right-hand window of the G3, mocking him.

"Oh! OH! I am so, so STUPID! God, what an idiot!!"