PolarLava::Blog

A couple of weeks ago I (finally) received my laptop from work (Dell Latitude D610) after waiting nearly six months.  My company pretty much rolls around the clock so often things transpire during off hours.  I generally work fairly normal business hours, but a lot of the people I work with do not.  Having the laptop allows me to check-in from home in the evening with very little effort and thus avoiding getting blindsided in the morning.  It also allows me a lot of flexibility when working from home or wherever.  That is, once I got a wireless connection working for it…

I've had reliable DSL service since that finally was resolved.  But that was one computer connected straight to the DSL modem (Westell 6100).  Thus the first thing was acquiring a wireless router.  In an amazing stroke of luck, one of my employees was looking to unload a LinkSys WRT54G…for $20.  A great deal as most of the used ones I saw were selling for at least $40.

Cool, lets hook it up.  Wham, bam, uh, not quite ma'am.  Got my desktop system connected, and I could get to the configuration interface, but no internet access.  Thus begins a number of rounds of connecting and disconnecting the router so I could access the internets for some help.  After a bit of searching I learned something important about my DSL connection that I didn't know…it's running PPPoE and the modem is also a router.  This means that I needed to run it in bridge mode and let the WRT handle all of the connection details.  Which then meant I had to find out how to do that.  Thus more searching, more forum reading and I finally found a couple of answer that were similar and promising.  Using the tried and true trial and error method I finally got the Westell configured, the WRT connected and internet access working.  Actually I should say I got it mostly working.  …more

Via this Boing Boing article…Apparently some scientists have discovered a furry lobster in the South Pacific.  It's so different from other crustaceans that they've given it its own family and genus. It is white and "about the size of a salad plate".

Neat stuff, but they failed to answer the most important question…what does it taste like?  Oh, and how long before we can start over fishing it!  ;)

First off congratulations to Sweden and Finland for their competitive and hard fought Olympic final.  I can only hope that your gold and silver metals respectively will be appreciated for what they are.

But my main point of this entry is primarily to laugh hysterically at the United States and Canada and their prima donna players and their lame attitudes.  You were "supposed to be" the big gold metal showdown.  Instead you flopped miserably.  All I can say is HA HA!  :)

Trying Times

Time and time again, heard the story
Of another one, who's finally made his way
Betting lines, they show the times before us
Hell it's hard to stay alive
These times, they can be trying

Searching for an answer
Working late into the night
Isn't one solution, can't see no end in sight
It's going to take us all
Just to put it all back into line

Trying, trying times
When I was just a child
Trying, trying times
When will it all subside?

There are many people, people who have tried
So many people, their eyes begin to cry
And in their tears, all through the years
They search to find the answer, a single cure
The trying times, they cloud our minds

And now the time has come
Time for us to be aware
Oh, we must lear, spread the words
To find the answers that we must share.


5/17/1982