At work at 6:45 on a Saturday. Ouch

Ah well. Maybe I can convince somebody to show me how to drive a fork-lift or something to make the day pass???

Well at least I can rock out

[Listening to: Leper Messiah - Metallica]

After having been burned by more than my fair share of .dot version upgrades to my applications, you would think I would have learned my lesson by now. For instance, I have a really interesting wireless network setup at home using two Linksys routers using WDS (wireless distribution system). I needed this because when building my house, I forgot to take into account Vonage needs a land line (Ok, not in all cases now..) to plug in to my homes phone wiring. An oversight because we couldnt figure out where to put the 3 lines we’re given by the builder, and I didnt want to pay $100/line extra since we’d be using cordless phones anyways. So the only land line remotely near my home office is in my bedroom, 30+ feet away. Instead of being ghetto and snaking phone cord along baseboards or fishing them through walls, I KNEW there had to be a wireless solution. Two Linksys wireless routers running DD-WRT did the trick, yet I digress…blah blah blah

So after the initial research and purchase of a second router, I undertook this as a ‘its 10:00 at night, I’m bored, lets see what I can do w/ this shit’ type attitude, I took all my research and a bit of help from Harper, and got everything working. Vonage box is in the bedroom hooked to wireless router 2 and my land line, internet connection is on router 1 in the home office. At first this was sketchy at best, but after some tweaks, the sound quality isnt half bad. But, I was receiving some TX wireless transmit errors on both routers. Tried tweaking some more setttings, more research, nothing. Now I get to my point…. I go to dd-wrt’s site "ooh, new beta release. lets try that, they may have fixed the issue by now" So here I go….

First I somehow thought of actually taking a backup configuration of BOTH routers (which in the end saved my ass). Upgrade to router 1, flash to mini version .24, then standard version .24, wow, router is lookin’ good. Some new features, etc…. alright, lets try router 2. Its remote, and I felt gutsy tonight, so I flashed it remotely. Take my backup, start flashing w/ new firmware, and BAM *UPDATE FAILED* hmm, weird, did the same process, wtf happened. I reboot it, it comes back. Big sigh of relief right??? then *blip* it disappears off my network… hmm, reboot again, comes back, *blip* gone again. You see the pattern right? Now the cursing starts…. OK, I’ll just roll back… Well, great idea if the router would respond for more than 10 seconds. Ok, so now I’m pissed. I walk over to the bedroom, grab the router, bring it back to my office, plug it directly into my other router, ping… respond… sweet…. no response… wait a minute, WTF. Whatever happened, it wont work for more than about 10 secs. So now I am the proud owner of a Linksys brick. 30 mins later I have a tftp utility, reflash it w/ Linksys default firmware, and at least now it stays online. I’m running fine on factory firmware, and I’m hardwired now, lets try this yet again. Reflash with beta version, then *blip* gone. now a big WTFFFFFFFFFFF. Roll back to factory firmware, reflash it w/ the ‘old’ non-beta software, reinstall config that I somehow remembered to save, works like a champ. Put the second router back in the bedroom, wireless TX errors… now gone, Vonage quality is good. So I basically took 10 mins of work, turned it into about 3 hours, all to realize that moving from version .23 SP2 to .24beta, yeah, not worth it.

SO, in retrospect, no more beta for me unless I’m getting paid to beta test. I like dd-wrt so I’ll stick it out, but, I’m not upgrading unless there is compelling evidence to do so!!!

Lesson F’IN learned

Anybody else get a great xmas gift this year?

Jen got me a Sirius satellite radio receiver for my car. I drive a lot these days, and listening to the radio was getting really annoying w/ all the commercials.

It was a totally unexpected gift. I had thought about getting it a few months back when I started having a longer commute, but could never bring myself to *pay* for radio.

But truthfully, it was an awesome gift. I still flip channels like I did w/ FM radio, but only because I’m going from one awesome station to another instead of just flipping to stop listening to commercials.

It’s got everything, 70′s – todays music, any genre, and a few choices for each. Plus, you get sports, talk, weather, traffic, and my favorite so far, comedy. Three comedy channels which i switch back and forth the whole commute.  Nice thing about this receiver, it has a remote, so I dont have to lean over to switch channels. BIG plus, but the bad part is that Sirius puts the name of the song on the LCD screen of the receiver almost like a mp3 tag, and eventually I’m gonna get into an accident looking at what I’m listening to, but that’s the price I’m willing to pay (wait, wtf, no I’m not, my insurance already sucks!)

The receiver also has the ability to record about 10 hrs of audio, as well as MP3 storage/playback, AND, you get a free online subscription to stream their channels to your computer as well. In all making this an AWESOME gift. Now if I could only find the time/patience to install the home antenna, I’d be able to record hours and hours of shows and listen to that instead of having to stream the audio over the Internet.

I was reminded about how much the gift ruled yesterday while driving home. The DJ says “Did somebody you love buy you the gift of Sirius?” Hell yeah they did!

Thanks again baby. GREAT gift!

[Listening to: Tesla - Love Song] .. on channel 23, Hair Nation <3