The Printer’s Devil

It’s that time of that unique American weirdness: Super Bowl Week.

That time of hopeless overhype for what will likely be mediocre pro football and dazzlingly creative television commercials — something for everybody.

In honor of Super Bowl Week, I’ll pass on a bit of handy wisdom from a computer tekkie. Normally, I ignore newspaper computer tekkies — I’ve found they needlessly complicate an editor’s existence — but once in a while, they‘ll complete a Hail Mary pass.

If you’re like me, your newsroom will have to deal with aging computer equipment, desktop-publishing software that’s unsuitable for your paper and difficult Internet service providers.

During one rough patch a few years ago, I was at odds with our Internet service provider over our less than stellar Web access. The ISP’s invariable response was that it was our computers and software that were the problems and to deal with that before calling and bothering them again.

The tekkie told me to go to the National Football League’s home Web site: www.nfl.com.

She explained that the NFL spends tons of money and time ensuring that when you go to its Web site, it pops up faster than, as the legendary Hunter S. Thompson said, a bullfrog out of a dynamited pond. Being the suspicious news editor type, I checked. She was and still is right. Even on the most decrepit computers and software, www.nfl.com is fleeter than a $20 million running back — and although it has lots of features and photos, the NFL Web site loads faster than most other Internet pages.

She explained that if you were having Internet issues, type in the NFL address and see what happens. She said that usually the computer isn’t to blame — given the right connection even the oldest computers can handle the Internet. Instead, it’s the data pipeline — the phone or satellite company or the ISP itself — that’s the bottleneck, she said.

If the NFL loaded fairly quickly, odds are that your problem was indeed your computer system . However, if www.nfl.com didn’t come up, that meant your connection to your computer system had failed, which almost always meant either the carrier, the phone or satellite company; or your ISP, she told me.

In rare instances, the problem was with our phone or satellite companies. Almost always, it was the ISP.

Although I’m mostly computer illiterate, I’ve won most of my arguments with various sneering fast-talking ISP representatives thanks to the NFL. The NFL trick let me know instantly when the ISP was trying to scam me.

Admittedly, the tekkie told me the trick a few years ago and computer knowledge hangs around as long as a third-and- real-long position. But she has been proved right since then, so I’m sticking to the story.

And if you’re a NFL or Fantasy Football fanatic, it’s a great excuse for goofing off on company time.