Wed, 26 Dec 2007

Bullshit, Jesus, Those Are Obviously My Footprints

I just love the Onion. If you are religious + humor impaired, this is not for you.





Sun, 23 Dec 2007

Redesigned!

If you're reading this on the web (as opposed to RSS), you already know that my blog has undergone a somewhat radical redesign.

The old design was showing its age, and wasn't making good use of modern HTML layout techniques. I also wasn't very happy with the flickr badges that highlight my photography hobby, so I made some larger feature images that you now see randomly displayed along the top of the pages.

As far as fixing the layout, I made heavy use of "Blueprint CSS" (see the Colophon at the bottom of the page for more details). It really delivers on the promise of CSS and is not that hard to figure out how to use.

I'm sure this design will need a little tweaking and minor fixes (blueprint.css has a few design elements I'm not ecstatic about), but I think I've got something that will suit my needs for the foreseeable future.

Drop me a note if you see something extremely broken!


Name/Blog: christine klatt
URL:
Title:
Comment/Excerpt: What a great way to showcase your brilliant photography skills!




Mon, 17 Dec 2007

What Took Me So Long?

I've had this major thorn in my side over the past few months, but it finally got so bad that I had to go out and do something about it.

I'm speaking of my god-awful Vonage/Linksys WRT-54GP2 router.

I'm half tempted to write a "declaration of Independence" style rant about this router. ("When in the course of human events a piece of electronics equipment reaches a level of suckitude that the people depending on it feel like taking it out back and shooting it with a high powered rifle...")

I bought the router under the mistaken impression that "simplicity is best". A router, a Vonage terminal adapter, and an ethernet hub, all in one-- plug it into my cable modem, configure it once and be done with it, right? Not quite.

Eventually I got an Airport Express, and it would only occasionally connect to the wireless network the Linksys initiated. It'd only show up about 10% of the time and then only if I power cycled both the Airport Express and the Linksys.

But that's just so I could stream music through my stereo... Ignoring that, I couldn't even use the stupid Linksys without hack number one, namely to open a Terminal on my laptop and ping the router. Apparently this heartbeat was sufficient to remind the damn thing that "the drill sergeant is around, stay on your toes". Hack number two was to turn off "Hidden Network" because that nearly doubled the chances that the Airport Express would find the Linksys' network.

But, eventually, those hacks became insufficient. I'd find myself without a network at least once a day, and would have to go and power cycle the thing. I got so frustrated with resetting the damn thing so much I resorted to putting an appliance timer on it! I established a daily "scheduled downtime" routine on the router each day at 4:30-5am figuring "I won't need it then anyway".

After calling Vonage and having them tell me that the firmware, now two years outdated, was in fact the most recent, I had finally had enough. I decided to pick up an Airport Extreme, but with a crazy work schedule over the past few weeks, I didn't have time to pick up a replacement.

Well today, I squeezed in 15 minutes to stop by the Apple store, and am elated to report that all my hacks have been obsoleted. No more ping heartbeats to keep the router up. No more power cycling, or appliance timers. No more Airport Express not available on the network.

And not only does Airtunes work reliably, I can now use WDS to extend my wireless network to my first floor since I'm using all Apple wireless access points.

Here's how it all went down to go to a master Airport Extreme + Airport Express (with WDS) + WRT54GP2 as Vonage TA.

  1. Disable wireless (and nearly everything else) on the Linksys. This was the most gratifying step. Set it to pick up an IP address via DHCP
  2. Unplug WAN cable from cable modem on the Linksys and plug it into the Airport Extreme
  3. Unplug the Ethernet cables from the Linksys and plug them into the Airport Extreme
  4. Configure the Airport Extreme to act as WDS main and a basic WiFi router
  5. Plug an Ethernet cable into a hub port on the Extreme and plug the other end into the WAN port on the WRT54GP2. This enables the Linksys to work just as a Vonage device. Yes, dear crappy Linksys router, you are now just an overpriced, overglorified wired ethernet/POTS bridge device
  6. Configure the Airport Express to act as WDS remote
There, in six relatively simple steps, months of frustration have simply dissolved into the ether. No lost connections, high signal, low noise, no hacks, and the products I already had that never worked right.... now work right. Imagine.


Name/Blog: PAUL GODVIN
URL: PAULGODVIN at_sign AOL.COM
Title: A NERD NO MORE ...lol
Comment/Excerpt: HI KHAN...MISTAKENLY, I use to be under the impression that 'techies' were people that only understood things that were 'TECHNICAL' ...Your demonstrated , tremendous, relationship with ' MY LITTLE CHRISSY' makes me feel great about YOU & CHRIS...KHAN...you make me proud ! psssst... techie question ? is there a camera phone around a 100 bucks that you would recommend ? SHERRY & I went to VIRGIN MOBILE after being with AT & T for 20 years...so far ..so good... xoxo your 'STEP- UNCLE ? PAUL PS/ I am still kinda computer illiterate... keep it simple SIR..lol

Name/Blog: Khan
URL:
Title: Virgin Camera Phone
Comment/Excerpt: I checked out Virgin's website, and of the phones that they list, the one that seems to meet your needs the best is the Cyclops. Their site lists it as $59.99 (although that could be for signing up with a new contract), and it has a 1.3Megapixel camera, which is not too bad for a camera phone.



Khan Klatt

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