Sometimes technology can be a bit annoying.

Our cordless phone died a few days ago. I'm not complaining by any stretch, since we had it for about eight years. Since A. is still laid up for another two weeks and there is no phone jack near the couch where she is spending most of the day, a cordless phone was a necessity. I stopped by Target Tuesday night on my way home from work to pick up a new one.

I hooked it up that evening, and A. starts using it the next afternoon. Then, late Thursday morning she calls me and says that the Airport network is out. I tell her to make sure that the base station is plugged in to the power and the cable modem, but if it wasn't anything obvious I would have to look at it when I got home.

A couple of hours later she calls me back. I ask if the network is behaving itself and she says it's been fine since she talked to me. Then she says that it went out again, as soon as she called me on the phone.

A bell went off in my head at that point. I dimly remembered reading something about certain cordless phones interfering with Wi-Fi networks. A quick check of the Apple support site confirmed it; 2.4 GHz cordless phones can interfere with the network.

I'll have to go back to Target, return the phone, and replace it with a 5.8 GHz model. Not a huge problem, but annoying nonetheless. Shouldn't they put a warning label on those things?