RasterWeb!

Ok folks, you remember the last time, Wifi Adventure #3 right? Time for a new installment…

One of my neighbors asked me to come over and help them figure out wifi on their new Dell laptop. They told me they could see a few networks, but could not connect to them. Yes, it’s a Windows machine, and I still said I’d help. (This is the sign of a true friend, because if I am not really your friend, I won’t try to help you with Windows.)

So I get there and we stumble through the dialogs in Windows, and eventually I ask where their “wireless access point” was located. This confused them, so I asked where their “router” was located. This confused them again. I then realize they have neither. Oh, they do have a cable modem, it’s plugged into another Dell that sits on a desk. Ah, I get it…

See, they are about to take a trip, and want to be able to log in from cafe’s with wifi, etc. So, they just plugged in the card and tried to join a network. Mine showed up, but since I use encryption (and the signal was too weak) they couldn’t join it. We also saw the network named “linksys” which we (still) assume is another neighbor, but it seems that they’ve since protected their network as well. (See Wifi Adventure #2 and Wifi Adventure #3)

I told them everything appeared to be working, they just needed an open network to connect to.

On a sidenote, my neighbor also said that he’s bought 5 computers from Dell, and he completely, with all his might, hates Dell. I’m working on turning them into “switchers” every time I help them with Windows…

Launch: ocono.com

(Note: May be of limited interest unless you live in or near Oconomowoc…)

Yesterday I got a text message on my phone from Cingular telling me the email address associated with the phone was changing from a @mobile.att.net to a @mmode.com address. As you might know, Cingular assimilated AT&T Wireless a while back. In fact, after April 26th, 2005 that link to attwireless.com will probably redirect to cingular.com I also noticed that today my phone now displays CINGULAR where it used to say AT&T. Though the startup screen still shows the AT&T logo. The debug menu displays CINGULAR as well.

I also got a text message regarding replenishing my account. (This phone is a prepaid model.) When logging into your account at the Cingular site the first time, it let’s you know that it might take a few minutes. (Do they have an old 386 running Linux talking to an AS/400 or something?) You do get to look at a nice flash animation of the Cingular logo jumping up and down while waiting… Well, after a few minutes I was told that the number I entered was “not found in their records” so I might have to wait another week or two for AT&T Wireless to ship all those records over to Cingular…

Anyway, we just wanted to welcome our new Cingular Overlords…

Why I love Perl… From the perliaq – infrequently asked questions about Perl

How do I get my perl program to run faster?

In Perl, there’s always more than one way to do it. Try one of these techniques.

        use more 'cpu';
        use less 'time';
        use more 'speed';

        ## or, the ever popular 
        ## Military Marching Band accompaniment:
        use March::Sousa qw(:DoubleTime);

The March::* hierarchy is not found on CPAN. Please contact the author for more information.

Alternatively, programs have been known to complete more quickly when they contain a declaration like this one:

        BEGIN {exit}

If your application is truly urgent, you might try the experimental

        no more 'time';

feature, but this has been reported to cause some systems to panic.

How can you not love a language with a good sense of (geek) humor? See the rest of the perliaq for more fun…

The “Road” part of the Road Trip is cancelled. Well, part of it anyway. I had mentioned that my vehicle might not make it, and then I was told I would be renting a car, and then it was decided I would fly from Madison. So, that means I’ll drive to Madison (1 hour) and then fly to Minneapolis (1 hour) rather than drive there (about 5 hours.)

All I need now is a train and I’ve got the makings of a movie…