Updates

• SKGP lost a molar last week, complete with filling.
• As of yesterday, SKGP is now 10 years old.  EJP turned 7 last month.
• Zoe started out at 9 lbs, and is now 27 lbs, and growing.
• School begins in 3 weeks.

Gymnastics Camp

SKGP is back from Nastia Luikin's UCLA Gymnastics Camp, and I think she had a great time. She managed to stay the entire time, even though she had some homesickness. She liked the food.  Details have been difficult to extract.

Bet: iPhone 4

My father made a bet today. 

1. He believes within the next several months, Apple will release an iPhone 4 with a changed antenna.  That is, there will be a hardware fix.

2. He further believes that Apple will them offer some incentive to current iPhone 4 users to move to this new phone, such as $100 credit.

I could possibly see the first coming true, but very unlikely. If Apple decides to do a cosmetic fix (e.g., some version of duct tape over antenna gap), they could get that out in the next couple months, but that's not really the Apple way.

I think he's out of his mind with his second statement.

On a related note, does anyone know how I can get an iPhone in my hands?

Friday in San Francisco

Yesterday, the kids and I went to San Francisco to go to the Exploritorium. We parked the car and used Yelp to find a corner store that made sandwiches for lunch. Then, we wandered into the Presidio to find a bathroom, and I remembered that there was a statue of Yoda nearby, which we found. Then we spent several hours playing with the amazing exhibits at the Exploratorium. I hadn't been in over twenty years, and it was still amazing. We did a little bit of driving around the City -- went down curvy Lombard, drove by the TransAmerica building -- and came home, hitting Aqui in San Jose for dinner.

A Frustrated Gymnast

A series of unfortunate hacks, network edition

So, if I know my audience, then I'm sure that this article is going to fascinate you all!

I've had a problem getting usable WiFi coverage in my house.  This is understandable as my house has lots of walls with lots of metal in them, and my WiFi server is my FreeBSD system with a cheap PCI WiFi adapter in it.  I tried adding a bigger antenna and that helped some, but connectivity still sucked in most parts of the house.

A couple months ago, I learned that power-line Ethernet adapters are inexpensive and really work.  So, I bought the cheapest set I could find (and I now see that I can get them on eBay significantly cheaper -- with shipping, about $30 each, perhaps $25 if you are patient).  One connected to my server-side switch, and the other went into my bedroom.  I connected an old WiFi router that I had to that, and set up a second WiFi network there.

This new WiFi network in that part of the house has been great for our iPhones and laptops.  Our guest room now has much better coverage (come stay and try it out!). With the Ethernet ports on the switch, I was also able to directly connect my Roku Player to the network, so streaming movies works well.

However, there was a problem.  I want the Tivo in the bedroom to talk to my PC to exchange programming.  The Tivo Desktop software requires that the systems be on the same subnet. The new router acts as a router, which means it gives out IP addresses from its DHCP server on a different subnet.  So, I've been forced to leave the Tivo on the distant WiFi network, which makes for flaky connections and slow transfers.

Yesterday, I read this article, linked from Lifehacker, about turning a router into a switch; the simplicity of this is genius -- I wish I had thought of it.  Today, I disabled DHCP on the router, and connected the upstream cable into a LAN port instead of the WAN port, and now the Tivo shows the WiFi connection is at 100% and on the same network as my PC.

Now, all the devices on my network are on one subnet (except my VOIP phones).  This should make printing possible from all the computers.  I am very happy.

Here's another small project that I should do.  I use uTorrent software to download shows selected using the website ShowRSS.  That happens automatically, but I have been manually moving the files to another directory for them to be transferred to the Tivo.  I've seen a couple different tools that should be able to move files, based on name, to the right directory.

Oh wait, my audience likely doesn't care.  Oh well. Hi Mom.

Closet Fail

RCP's closet collapsed again. Last time I managed to reattach the thingy, but I think this time we're going to have to redo the whole thing. Has anyone tried the Costco closet organization service?