Month: March 2006

Certain other members of the household were concerned that the wireless net wasn’t password protected. So last night, I went downstairs, set it up, came back up and everything worked fine after typing in the passwords. And everyone was happy.

Then this morning when I turned on my PC, it wouldn’t connect to the network. I spent an hour trying to figure out why, couldn’t get it, and finally got so enraged that I went down to Fry’s and bought a new Airport Extreme and Airport Express. Yes, that cause/effect doesn’t seem to make sense, but it’s a purchase I’ve been meaning to make for a long time now anyway (upgrading to 802.11g and getting a repeater) and I hoped that upgrading the base station would fix my problem. It did. It also introduced about three other problems, as is often the case.

I’d like to point out that, as expected, my PowerBook went, “Oh, a new network, what’s the password? Thank you.” and connected, and all my Internet was on and working.

The PC went “Oh, a new network, what’s the password? Thank you.” and connected and nothing worked. I got no IP from the DHCP server. I manually assigned an IP and nothing pinged. I got very frustrated and tried many wrong things (as is often the case) and finally someone suggested turning off WEP. So I did so and it worked. But I need the WEP! That was the whole point of this exercise! So finally someone else suggests using 64 bit instead of 128 bit, to which I reply “The Airport only does 128 or 40.”

[Insert dramatic pause while people who know what piece of information I’m missing can laugh at me.]

“64 bit is the same as 40 bit.” Said someone in IRC, just as I read it on a webpage. Had I known this, it would have been one of the earlier things I tried. So switched and, lo and behold, network works with password protection and everything. Then I got the WDS propagation working with the express, after undoing some of the munging I did and everything was happy, I logged in to FFXI to make sure that worked, and started typing this up.

Until I got to this point, at which the network decided to go bonkers, on both my PC and Mac… where I’m getting no outside connection as well as no connection to my linux machine. I swear… what the hell… why me?

This is why I don’t change things when they’re working.

I have just thought of a new word. Well, it’s not completely new, as google has one hit on it: Slacksophone.

My mind immediately went to the wrong place, and “playing the slacksophone” has now become my euphemism of choice.

The problem with worrying about your health is that it can actually impact your health, causing you to worry more about your health.

I purchased short-term high-deductable health insurance and I have a doctor’s appointment next week. My mother should be happy.

Edit: Meant to say high-deductable instead of high-premium.

So yesterday was a landmark day. It was the day I went in to work to get the last of my stuff. Of course, I haven’t actually done any work since December, but I’ve had my account and access and all sorts of stuff since then. But the time came where the company actually called my boss on the fact that we’ve sort of pushed the 2 year limit on contractors, and made them cut me loose.

I came in and packed up everything, had a batch of nostalgic conversation, ran into a bunch of people, almost everyone that I’d care to find… and the last two I ran into on the way out. Also on the way out, in a very weird coincidence, we ran into another 8 year Yahoo, and it was also his last day.

So, unlike most people, I didn’t have a big going away party. I didn’t get a cake, I didn’t get a party, but then again, it wasn’t like I had a traditional departure. As I carted out six boxes full of toy hamsters and o’reilly books, and era was ending, and there was no fanfare, nothing to signify my passing. I left, not with a bang…