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March 10, 2004 - 6:41 pm Well it was bound to happen sooner or later... I was at Memory Express the other day exchanging a wireless access point / router, the LinkSys WRT54G -- HORRIBLE DEVICE! Do not buy one of these, they are useless. The problem I was having with it was not whether it worked or not, because if you want to get technical it did 'work', but my issue was the speed. In my office I have one LAN connection but as you can probably imagine, I have more than one computer. Since these all need network access, I was using a 10 Mbit hub to connect them all to the single LAN connection to our office network which is all 100Mbit. It was slower than it could have been but it worked. So then one day I got the bright idea of using a wireless router/access point as a switch (since most have at least a four-port switch built in) and then I'd get a wireless network card for my laptop and I could take it anywhere in the office and still be connected to the network. Seemed like a good plan, so I bought the hardware I needed. Well here if it turns out that for whatever reason, the four-port switch in the WRT54G is horriffically SLOW! Packets do go through, but at a rate of about 30k / second. Most INTERNET connections can transfer data faster than that, and this is supposed to be a 100Mbit LAN! I could barely play mp3's from one computer to another connected through the WRT54G, it was that bad! Well I called the Linksys technical support to see what they thought, and through a phone conversation and about 5 or 6 emails they could not offer me a single useful piece of advice. I explained the setup quite clearly, told them what I was trying to accomplish and what was not working properly... I went into quite a bit of technical detail on the whole layout, and they would respond with messages like, "Please check and ensure all your cords and cables are securely connected..." Don't you think I would have tried that already? And having provided technical support to a wide variety of customers I can appreciate the "check all the obvious first" approach, but when this level of advice continued through each email I became quite frustrated. I brought the router home and tried it on my home network even to see if it might be an issue with some of the hardware on our network at work; same result. So finally I decided there was only one course of action that was reasonable. I returned the router and bought a D-Link DI-624. So here I sit on my laptop at work, the only cord connected to it is my power cord. I am listening to mp3's on a local office PC, ssh'd into my home computer where I'm typing this journal entry and also waiting for an email from Becka (We're playing 20 questions. It's quite fun) -- All over a wireless lan connection. To add another twist to the scenario, the wireless CardBus (PCMCIA) card I am using does not have Linux drivers because Linksys won't release their specs. So what a group of people have done is written a program called ndiswrapper that allows Linux to use working Windows XP drivers for a variety of wireless cards. On top of that, I am testing the latest Linux kernel, version 2.6.3 which has MANY nice features and enhancements, not to mentions some nifty new bells and whistles. I've found a few bugs in it though, and that is to be expected I guess. But still, I can't wait for this to become a 'stable' kernel. So anyways, there's my rant... But I walked into Memory Express to return the router and there was a guy in a suit and a young lady sort of standing in the middle of the store where I assumed he was waiting in line. Not wanting to budge, I leaned over and asked him if he was in line. He turned around, grinned, and then punched me in the shoulder (in a friendly manner.) I was a little taken aback by this, but then I realized who it was: Rick Wilson, my old boss from Color Right Now. I hadn't seen him since I quit there, probably a good 4 years at least! We ended up talking a bit as we waited and it was quite interesting. I guess Color Right Now is doing quite well for itself and he's even opened another company, "Critical Document Services." But it became equally apparant through the course of our 5 minute conversation that he hadn't changed one bit. I had a quiet chuckle at this actually... "Rick will be Rick", I thought to myself. I think now I would actually consider stopping by the shop and saying hi to him there, take the tour, and all that. But what a small world. So then after that I had to go stop in and see Ib as well. I figured if I ran into one former boss I might as well go see them both... They're busy as ever, but without Blair or I their workload has become that much heavier. (Blair quit Sylvania a few weeks ago as well.) They're down to four guys now plus Ib and I guess they can't hire any more temps right now either. I guess that's good for the guys because they'll have lots of work... Which I don't miss for the most part (the work, that is... Some jobs I didn't mind and a select few I actually enjoyed...) but I do miss the guys there. We were going to get a picture of all of us at the Christmas party but that got forgotten. I'd still like to get a picture with all of them to have. Maybe I'll talk to Ib and see what I can arrange. Anyhow, I've got some other things to work on before I go over to Bo's. Have a great day! One other thing to note, I had a really wierd dream about the only girl to ever make me wash my belly button last night. It was bizarre actually and yet surprisingly realistic. It wasn't a bad dream, we just talked and the things she said in it made sense. When I woke up I thought we actually HAD talked but then the realization kicked in that it had only been a dream. That's probably why it was so wierd... I couldn't figure out why she was talking to me again. Same feeling I had when she unblocked me on MSN that one day. I couldn't figure out why, but then it turned out only to be a mistake. It sounded like she were having a bad day though... I hope everything's allright. March 13, 2004 - 2:37 am Happy Birthday Jay and Kendra! Once again I sort of missed Kendra's birthday... I knew it was here but I really had no way of contacting her other than driving over to her house but unfortunately my schedule didn't allow me to be in her area on the actual day... I'm sure she didn't miss me though... I haven't seen her in quite a few months and she probably wasn't home anyways. Man what is it with cats and keyboards? It must feel cool on their paws or something because George is just wandering back and forth across all my keyboards. What a silly kitty. I went and had coffee with Kristin tonight and we had a good chat. After that I was supposed to help Marshall (www.cubeinc.net/silvrmunky) retrofit the LED's in his car's dashboard to blue ones, but I couldn't get a hold of him so I went to the Roads to partake in the celebrations of Jay's birthday. It was pretty full (not for Jay's party) but we had a good time. I met up with a couple of the guys I went on the houseboat with last year who I hadn't seen since that week which was pretty cool. Hopefully Paul will give me a call so we can stay in touch... I told him I'd fix his computer for a case of Pepsi. I guess I should have said Vanilla Pepsi but oh well. Another interesting twist to the night is that this one girl took a serious guess at my age and said I looked 30. I guess it was the work clothes and goatee but she couldn't believe it when I told her I was only 23. Now it's almost three in the morning and I'm wide awake. [ Crazy ] Oh well, maybe I'll go lie down and think about my life. That usually puts me to sleep. I'm not sure what that says about my life... hehehe Goodnight (Yes it is) March 15, 2004 - 12:34 am  This weekend I discovered a very interesting hobby. Essentially, it's the modern day version of treasure hunting. In many pirate stories, you have the infamous treasure map that points the way to a burried treasure. Well, in a manner of speaking, I went treasure hunting this weekend. Sound interesting? It was! Basically, there are a number of people (like you or I) who have put together containers of some sort, whether it's a small plastic tackle box or a coffee can, any sort of closeable container will do. They fill it with nick knacks and a log book and hide these containers all over the world. Then they take the exact coordinates of their treasure with a GPS receiver and post these coordinates on the Internet. It's called GEO-CACHING. Then other people enter these coordinates into their own GPS receivers and go looking for these hidden stashes. Once found, the general rules of conduct state that you can take anything inside so long as you replace it with something else. Pretty much all the cache's have a log book too, so you can record your name, the date you found the stuff, and any other comments you wish to make. Once you've made your mark, you return it to its' place for others to find and search out another treasure. Now you'd NEVER know these things are there. We found four separate cache's down by Bowness within about 500 meters of each other, but unless you knew where to look, the chances of stumbling across one of these things is pretty slim. I took a bunch of pictures and as soon as I get them developed I'll put them on the site, but it was pretty wild! We went out pretty late so we were wandering around with flashlights in search of these things. I just might have to buy my own GPS receiver now, it's quite an exciting hobby! March 21, 2004 - 11:54 am Sometimes the best parts of your life are the ones you don't remember. Johnny Fixit has been at it again... It's funny how the mind can forget details that would seem to be unforgettable... I thought I fixed a leaky shower tap, but Diana's version of the story is much more interesting... What's sad however, is that the drivers at work know more about what supposedly went on last night than I do. But one thing I do remember... Diana has always been somewhat accident prone. Often she gives herself minor injuries throughout the course of any given day, from catching her finger in a filing cabinet to burning her arm on the stove while pulling out supper. But an incident last night took the cake and I still get a good chuckle thinking about it. We were going down to the basement to shut off the main water supply so that when I pulled the LEAKY TAP I WAS FIXING out, it wouldn't spray all over me. (I really hate it when that happens!) We had to walk through this one room that was COMPLETELY empty except for one lone chair sitting in the middle of the floor. I mean, there was nothing else besides the walls around us, but what does Diana do? She runs into the chair! It was the funniest thing! The only object in the room and she has to collide with it. Way to go Diana... But as for anything else that may or may not have happened, all I can say is this: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." 
March 22, 2004 - 2:40 pm You know what's really annoying? You pull into a parking lot and somebody has parked funny. So what can you do? You have to park beside them the same way they've parked, but then when they leave, your vehicle is all by itself taking up two spots and you look like the idiot.  When I first met Chandra she had started a collection of cigarette foil wrappers and at that time (Christmas, 2000) she had a solid ball of them about the size of a golf ball. Since then, she has been steadily collecting the foil liners of cigarette boxes and adding them to this ball. As you can see in the picture, it has grown considerably. Eventually her goal is to create a sculpture of Mickey Mouse. You can see the stand at the bottom and the 'ball' will become the bulk of his head. Not surprisingly enough, it already weighs a good 10 pounds! And for anyone concerned about her health, no she has not smoked all the packs these tin liners represent. Quite a lot of people save them for her and she's been collecting for years. I took this picture at her appartment last night while I was trying to rebuild her computer. I've never seen a computer so messed up in my life. This thing had not just one but two faulty sticks of ram, leaving her with only one 64 Mb SIMM that was actually reliable, and since the computer had suffered an impact the hard drive had developed some serious bad sectors. It was necessary to only format the first 1.5 gb of it so that Windows could be installed, but with only 64 megs of ram, Windows XP is horribly slow. If anyone has old computers they'd care to donate to a worthy cause, I would be more than happy to come pick them up and salvage what I can out of them. I've got a new hard drive for her but we need more SDRAM. March 30, 2004 - 10:47 pm Wow. 24 degrees this afternoon, I burned nearly a full tank of gas today! It was wonderful. I rode to work on what was already a gorgeous morning, and by noon I was ready to take the latter half of the day off. I was going to take Barb out for lunch on the bike, but it turned out she was in a meeting most of the afternoon. Well who doesn't show up for work this afternoon but Diana! My day gets better. I've really got to say, it is hard to think about work while she is there... But oh ya, guess what I had today! Krispy Kreme doughnuts!!! Marc waited in line for about an hour this morning, bought 6 or 7 dozen doughnuts fresh off the line and brought them to the office. Let me tell you, they were wonderful! Tim Hortons -- Look out! If TH didn't sell coffee, I think they'd be in big trouble. BACK to Journal Index |