I’ve
6 days to wait (hopefully) ’til my ADSL line is in operation. It’s like waiting
for Christmas. I never was very good at being patient.
Of course, once I do get it up and running it won’t be anywhere near as exciting
as it seems to be now. Once I’ve done all the configuration and it’s up and
running it’ll pass into being just one of the normal services I have, just
like digital telly did.
Anyway, this is still counting Chickens until BT have ok’ed the line and it’s all up and running.
Well, my new D-Link ADSL/Ethernet modem arrived this morning. So, all that needs to happen before my link is active is the following:-
I do hope that the line checks out otherwise I’ve spent lots of money on useless things.
I got an e-mail from Nildram this morning saying that they’ve confirmed my details (ie. it took them 1.5 days to check my switch card) and that they’ve ordered an ADSL upgrade on my phone line.
Apparently it’ll take BT 3-4 days to test my line to see if it will work.
I’ve just ordered ADSL for home.. Assuming the line is OK it means I have to spend another 70-80 quid on an ADSL/Ethernet modem and a few line filters.
I’ve made an appointment to see the dentist.. 2pm Friday.
I was surprised how quickly I could get an appointment seeing that the last time it took about 2 months prebooking.
I’ve now got WEP encryption working with the WiFi stuff.
Of course, WEP stands for “Wireless Encryption Protocol.” However, as lots of people know, the “W” should really stand for “Wowful” or “Weak” as it’s so easily broken.
It doesn’t help that I can’t get 128bit encryption working.
This afternoon I have been replacing my house network.
The original was a thin ethernet (coax) backbone with a single 3Com mini-hub acting as a media converter sitting in my front room with a couple of long cat 5 drop cables trailing around the edge of the room to get to my big machine and the place I usually use my laptop.
The new network is based upon a Netlink WiFi Router/Switch sitting in my spare room connected directly to my two SPARCstations and my main machine with a long cable trailing downstairs to the big machine in the living room. My laptop now has a Belkin WiFi PCMCIA card.
As for the WiFi card and Linux is concerned.. I plugged in the card, switched on the machine, it booted, if configured and it worked.. I was dead impressed with Mandrake 9.0’s support.. Though it does seem to be using the old Wavelan driver rather than the newer one.
The total cost of the hardware, including the cables was £222. The prices at PC World (other than for the cables) were surprisingly as good as I could get on the net.
All I need now is ADSL and an ADSL ethernet modem. 😉
The party was at John, Katie and Sam’s house as it was John’s party.
It was a fun evening, I got to talk to lots of nice people, mostly women, as it turns out.
One thing did come to light which surprised me. It’s all revolved around
John and Katie talking about going to see the Rocky Horror Show in Oxford
and costumes to be worn. In the conversation there were three of us males
and six females and I was rather taken aback by the ideas for costumes the
women were putting forward and how daring the men targetted would have to
be and how daring they would like to be also. Most of the costumes suggested
either had kinky underwear on full display, which is understandable for Rocky
Horror, or involved dangerous or skimpy clothing with no underwear at all.
Call me sheltered, but I did find it a little shocking.
My sense of being a little sheltered was even more brought to light when
i bumped into Katie on the way home last night. She told me that she’d just
bought herself a new dress for the Dept. Christmas party as she’d worn all
her other party dresses in previous parties. She said it was “very small,
very tight, black and glittery.” My reply was, “Well I guess you’re going
to have to be very careful about what you wear underneath it.” to which her
reply was, “No, I won’t wear anything beneath it, it’s too small and tight.
It should hold all my bits in place well enough.” I was a little taken aback
by this.
Is it very common for women to forsake underwear just as that their clothes look better?
If so, then expect me to be a little shocked more often in future.
Let’s see, what’s happened?
Work-wise, the new DVD jukes boxes have been installed, the new colour printers
arrived and have been installed, I’ve been running around like a headless
chicken trying to keep all the juggling jobs in the air at the same time.
Otherwise, my parents arrived last Thursday, left Monday morning. I had a
very pleasant weekend. Went to a birthday party on Saturday evening and had
a fun time socialising.
Monday night I just couldn’t get to sleep ’til 3am. It’s a pitty it was cloudy
as otherwise I could have made use of the time watching the Loenid meteors.
Yesterday afternoon during the afternoon tea I got some hot tea on on of
my wisdom teeth and it started hurting. I thought it was merely heat sensitivity.
However, within half an hour the whole of the gum on the left side of my
mouth, both top and bottom, became inflamed and painful. This has continued
since then along with extreme temperature sensitivity of all the teath on
that sid eof the mouth since then. This kept me awake most of the night dispite
painkillers and lots of toothbrushing and mouthwashing. Either I’ve managed
to get a very fast acting infection or I’ve triggered some sort of allergic
reaction? I don’t know what it is, I just know it’s very painful.
Well, my 4 DVD Extended edition of the Fellowship of the Ring arrived in the post this morning. I had to hide behind my front door when the postman called as I had to dash out of bed and didn’t want to be had up for indecent exposure.
Anyway, although I’ll not have time to watch it this evening, it should make very good entertainment tomorrow evening after my parents arrive. They didn’t get to see the film in the cinema, so my Dolby 5.1 system & big widescreen telly should give them a small taste of the experience.
*bounce*