Rough Night
I hate nights when I can't sleep. Since I am often tired and fall asleep readily, situations where I can't go to sleep are puzzling and frustrating, especially when I really want to sleep. Like last night, when for the second night in a row I didn't get to bed before midnight.Then about 4 in the morning Igor the Younger came in whimpering because something had woken him up and my wife went out to take care of him. It was just enough to wake me up, so I got up, went to the bathroom, went back to bed . . . and couldn't get to sleep for nothin'. I think I finally conked out somewhere around 5:15, but before I did I reset the alarm to get an extra half hour of sleep. I'm feeling it now though, and hope I manage to make it through the workday, aided by my personal specialist Dr Pepper.
Igor the Younger and his toolkit I described a few days ago helped with a mad science project yesterday. I pulled out the computer screw connection and he and I fastened down a CD-ROM drive in my radio computer. Then he got to fasten the case panel by screwing in the thumbscrews that hold it on. I know it's very simple but he gets to feel like he's helping Grandpa and being a super tool user guy. Then he ran around the house for a while with a couple of little LED flashlights I bought when I got his tool set. He attached them to his head and told me he was a car.
The network is up and running. There's one more step before everything is finished, perhaps two, but the software configuration is essentially complete other than minor tweaks as I find things that I either forgot to implement or didn't know I needed to. Now I just have to wait for a couple of Ethernet extension cables I ordered to come in so I can move the firewall/router out closer to the middle of the room for easier access through the house. I may have to get an amplified antenna. I don't really want to spend any more money if I don't have to, but my daughter says she's having trouble maintaining a signal in the basement, and if repositioning the antenna doesn't work I may have to.
Actually there is one more thing I have to do. In some ways the point of this exercise was to allow a wireless connection to a computer in the front room that serves two purposes. One is as a web-enabled machine for homework and the like; unfortunately it too is getting a bit old and slow for modern browsers and word processors, so I may have to do some research into lighter-weight alternatives. The second is for that machine to allow the TiVo to make its daily calls that update the program listings. Currently we have to string a big orange cable down the hall to the bedroom and over to the Ethernet switch, more or less diagonally across the house. This way the TiVo will connect to the front room computer, which will connect to the firewall, which will connect to the Internet, which will connect to the TiVo servers out on the net somewhere. Hey, better that than stringing a big orange cable all over the house.
Come to think of it there's probably no reason why I couldn't put a second wireless card into the front room computer and let people connect to it. Or maybe I can do it with just the one. I'll have to go investigate.
About 45 years ago one of my jobs around the house was to get up and adjust the rabbit ears on top of the TV if the reception started getting fuzzy on one of the three or four channels we got. Now I get irritated if I have to hook up a wire once a week so I can get a list of what's on on the 100+ channels that come streaming into my house. Once again, living in the future rules.
This entry was originally posted at http://banjoplayinnerd.dreamwidth.org/17414.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Igor the Younger and his toolkit I described a few days ago helped with a mad science project yesterday. I pulled out the computer screw connection and he and I fastened down a CD-ROM drive in my radio computer. Then he got to fasten the case panel by screwing in the thumbscrews that hold it on. I know it's very simple but he gets to feel like he's helping Grandpa and being a super tool user guy. Then he ran around the house for a while with a couple of little LED flashlights I bought when I got his tool set. He attached them to his head and told me he was a car.
The network is up and running. There's one more step before everything is finished, perhaps two, but the software configuration is essentially complete other than minor tweaks as I find things that I either forgot to implement or didn't know I needed to. Now I just have to wait for a couple of Ethernet extension cables I ordered to come in so I can move the firewall/router out closer to the middle of the room for easier access through the house. I may have to get an amplified antenna. I don't really want to spend any more money if I don't have to, but my daughter says she's having trouble maintaining a signal in the basement, and if repositioning the antenna doesn't work I may have to.
Actually there is one more thing I have to do. In some ways the point of this exercise was to allow a wireless connection to a computer in the front room that serves two purposes. One is as a web-enabled machine for homework and the like; unfortunately it too is getting a bit old and slow for modern browsers and word processors, so I may have to do some research into lighter-weight alternatives. The second is for that machine to allow the TiVo to make its daily calls that update the program listings. Currently we have to string a big orange cable down the hall to the bedroom and over to the Ethernet switch, more or less diagonally across the house. This way the TiVo will connect to the front room computer, which will connect to the firewall, which will connect to the Internet, which will connect to the TiVo servers out on the net somewhere. Hey, better that than stringing a big orange cable all over the house.
Come to think of it there's probably no reason why I couldn't put a second wireless card into the front room computer and let people connect to it. Or maybe I can do it with just the one. I'll have to go investigate.
About 45 years ago one of my jobs around the house was to get up and adjust the rabbit ears on top of the TV if the reception started getting fuzzy on one of the three or four channels we got. Now I get irritated if I have to hook up a wire once a week so I can get a list of what's on on the 100+ channels that come streaming into my house. Once again, living in the future rules.
This entry was originally posted at http://banjoplayinnerd.dreamwidth.org/17414.html. Please comment there using OpenID.