Route. Rout. Only one letter difference, but definite difference in pronunciation. Route (root). Rout (rowt - as in ow, that hurt)
Why am I blogging about this? Well, if you live in my part of the country, there are at least two professional football teams, not doing well this season, that frequently have the word "rout" used when describing what the opposing teams did to them. Occasionally the descriptor is "romp" but more often than not, it is "rout".
I looked up "rout" in my trusty Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary - 11th Edition, just out of curiousity and found two meanings. One meaning of "rout" is the disorderly retreat of defeated troops, hence the application of "rout" to the sound defeat of one team from another. The other widely accepted definition of "rout" is to make grooves in a surface. Then I realized that if I added the letters "er" to rout, I had a word that has interesting and vital implications for different reasons.
One meaning for "router" could be one that routs; i.e. a member of the Green Bay Packers who routed the Oakland Raiders this past weekend. But the prevailing, modern definition for "router" is that which decided to die in my household - also this past weekend - a device that forwards data packets to part of a computer network. One day before the Green Bay Packers routed the Oakland Raiders, Capt. Cook and I were becoming de-routed, and not by choice. When your router dies, so does your online work, or so Capt. Cook and I discovered. Yes, his new and trusty iPhone 4S can act as a router but a network router is a vital part of our computer security.
Hence.......along with a new laptop, new phones, new this and that, we are now the proud owners of a new router. It probably was not a bad thing that our old, antiquated router decided to instantly bite the dust. After all, it was big and had these two funny antennae sticking up on both back corners. Captain Grandpa removed the antennae and they are now part of the arsenal of interesting things our grandchildren can make with cardboard, staples, pipe cleaners and duct tape.
For now, I say we have had enough electronic change for a while.......that is until my new iPhone 4S and iPad arrive. Maybe I could make an iPhone 4S out of cardboard, those antennae, and duct tape?
Ya think?
Ancora im"probably-not"paro
