Another Word for Nerd

When Apple’s 802.11n-capable Airport Extreme router came out early last year, I picked one up in anticipation of eventually replacing all my wireless networking gear with 11n-capable stuff. At the time I was running Linksys WRT54GL routers running DD-WRT firmware, and doing WDS in order to bridge networks in two rooms together without running Cat5 down the hallway.

I bought the new Airport Extreme router, and one of the 802.11g Airport Express units, and set up WDS between them. Throughput was just a bit slower than it had been with my highly-tweaked WRT54GLs, but I could live with that because “eventually Apple will come out with 11n Express hardware”.

Back in March, Apple finally came out with the 11n Airport Express units. I rushed out and bought one, only to get it home and discover that Apple does not support using WDS in 802.11n mode; it has to be run in “G-compatible” mode. In other words, having 802.11n hardware on both sides of the connection makes NO difference at all in throughput, and gives no advantage over having 802.11g hardware.

I just finished ripping out all of the Apple wireless gear, and replacing it with three brand new WRT54GLs running DD-WRT v24. I reasoned that if I’m going to be limited to 802.11g speeds between rooms, I might as well have it on the best, most-tweakable hardware available - stuff that I have complete control over via SSH and a web interface, instead of being forced to use a proprietary management GUI.

I sold one 802.11n Airport Extreme (non-GigE version) and two 802.11n Airport Express units to a friend for $175, which was just enough to pay for the WRT54GLs from NewEgg with free shipping.

$199 plus a new 2-year contract, plus $10 more a month? No thanks, I’ll stick with my iPhone 1.0. If it was just $199 for a new phone, with the same price plan I’m paying now ($71/month total) and no contract extension, I’d consider it.

EDGE data speeds are fine for anything that I might need to do on the Internet from the phone (face it, it’s not a laptop replacement) and cell-tower pseudo-GPS is good enough for me so far. All of the other new features will be available on my current iPhone when firmware 2.0 comes out anyway.

Playing around with VMWare Fusion on the Mac tonight.

Running Windows XP, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all at the same time, and I still have more than 600M of RAM free.

The Open Genera LISP development environment by Symbolics. It’s Brad Parker’s x86-64 port, running in a 64-bit Ubuntu 7.10 VM under VMWare Fusion on my Mac Mini.

For instructions on how to get it running, see here, here, or here.

I still pine after a real Symbolics Lisp Machine. Unfortunately, I can’t justify $1500 for a MacIvory board, an old 68K Mac to run it in, and the Symbolics keyboard with ADB adapter.

Houston recently opened a Goodwill Computerworks location. I was very happy to see this because I missed my weekly Saturday browsing sessions at the Austin location.

Last week, I picked up a great load of books:

- Murphy’s Law
- The Elements of Programming Style (both editions)
- COBOL With Style
- FORTRAN With Style
- Programming Proverbs for FORTRAN
- Programming in VAX-11 C
- Software Tools
- The C Programming Language (first edition, two copies)
- UNIX System Administration Handbook (first edition, yellow cover)

Today, i went back to pick up a book about BCPL for $2, and while walking towards the cash register, looked down at the tub of PS/2 mice.

Sitting there on top of the pile like the king of the hill, was a Logitech Trackman Marble FX trackball!

I grabbed it, hurried to the register, paid the $8, and brought it home. “Hey honey! I have a surprise for you!” Amy turned around, and I handed it to her. “OOH! It’s so.. shiny…. I told you flowers were overrated!”

Only in a nerd household could a ten-year-old trackball be worth more in karma points than a dozen roses.

I have the manuals and serial cable pinouts for nSTOR CR8e RAID arrays up for download:

http://www.mrbill.net/nstor

I managed to get these out of nSTOR (or whoever owned them at the time) four years ago when I was trying to reconfigure a unit but did not have the manual or console cable.

Someone emailed me to say that they’d found them useful, but only found them because I had mentioned the URL in a mailing list post from 2006. This should help anyone trying to keep their arrays running.

The 20″ iMac Core Duo has found a new home with a friend. I bought it the day the Intel-based iMacs were available (January 19, 2006) and it was my main machine for just over two years.

Amy and I met in person for the first time on February 14th, 1998. Due to stuff going on, we weren’t able to properly celebrate our 10th anniversary on February 14th this year.

We were married on March 31, 2001. So, we’ve been together for ten years, and married for seven. I think we’re going to spend our seventh wedding anniversary just relaxing at home, considering that we had a new HVAC system installed today (our old AC was mismatched, and turns out it was causing some condensation problems).

For anniversary presents, we each bought the other new computers. I’ll be upgrading from an “early 2006″ 2Ghz CoreDuo iMac (20″) to a “late 2007″ 2Ghz Core2Duo Mac Mini with a 20″ Acer flat panel.

I have NO IDEA what I’m going to do with the iMac after I migrate everything over. It’s still in decent condition (has been my main system 24/7 for the past two years), works fine, and has another year of AppleCare left. I may just end up putting it back in the box and storing it.

I recently bought a Via PC2500E motherboard in order to build a low-power replacement for my current backup / rsnapshot system, a 2.5-year-old Dell SC420.

Got all the parts in, assembled the system tonight, and went to boot Solaris Express Community Edition; the latest release being Nevada B83a. I got the ISO image downloaded, burned a DVD, and booted the system.

For some reason, it boots straight into a grub prompt, and not into the installer or even a boot menu.

Oh well; now I have to spend another three hours downloading the latest Solaris Express Developer Edition, which is Nevada B79b. Hopefully it will work properly on the Via board.

I really don’t want to have to run FreeBSD 7; it’s ZFS support is still a little unreliable.

I’ve had an iPhone since they came out last year, and ever since I got the phone, I’ve been on the search for the perfect iPhone case.

I started out with an iPhone Total Body Skin from BestSkinsEver (ShieldZone sells an identical product, at a higher price). This protects the screen, and adds some not-really-needed protection to the back and sides of the phone that gives me some peace of mind.

First, I started out with a generic snug form-fitting rubber/plastic case bought off eBay. It was okay (better than nothing at all), but didn’t quite fit right and started to “sag” and get loose after only a month or so.

My second iPhone case was the Incase Leather Fitted Sleeve for iPhone. I bought this one from the Apple online store, using part of the store credit that Apple gave out after the iPhone price reduction. It was in use less than a week; the case didn’t fit properly (too tight) and the stitching started to put little divots/indentations into the screen and body protective film. The port access holes never lined up right, and the leather bits on the sides of the phone would “roll” one way or the other. I eventually just took it off and threw it in a drawer somewhere.

My third iPhone case was the DLO Jam Jacket. This was a big improvement over the generic rubber sleeve case and the leather fitted case. However, I don’t use the iPhone earbuds and don’t need to carry them around, so I used a razor blade to cut the “earbud holder” off the back of the case. I used that case for six months or so; my only real complaints are that the texture and “tackyness” of the rubber used tends to attract dust and dirt and that the holes on the side for volume and mute access aren’t very user-friendly (I often had to just pull the top part of the case off the phone when I needed to get to the mute switch).

I was at MicroCenter tonight, and ran across what is, for me, the best case for the iPhone - the XtremeMac Tuffwrap. It’s got the same basic shape and “grip” as the DLO case but without the headphone stuff on the back, and has nicely-formed ports for access to the lock button, side buttons, and bottom dock connector. It came with a TuffShield screen protector, but I’m not using that because the phone already has a protective skin permanently installed.

Other than the generic rubber case I first got off of eBay, the XtremeMac Tuffwrap is also the cheapest case I’ve purchased for my phone, at $19.95. I don’t think I’ll need to find an alternative!