With all the hype surrounding the "imminent" announcement of the new iPhone, perhaps we can hope that Steve's announcement will go smoother than some of these moments.



This made my day.

Tags: Technology, Humor

So my FiOS line was installed yesterday. Again, for those of you who don't know what this is, look here. And so far, it's been great except for a few James inflicted issues....

All during the week, I've had people painting my yard (marking various utilities) and then digging up my yard (a nice neat trench) to run the fiber cables to my house. There was a little drama on Thursday. I walked outside to find 3 trucks from UtiliQuest (the utility marking company) and the cable digging subcontractor for Verizon all pointing at my driveway. Turns out, the electric lines that feed the houses across the street go underneath the dead center of my driveway. Oh joy. This resulted in a 3" x 3" cut in the driveway so they could make sure the fiber lines didn't take out electrical power (I agreed that that was a safety precaution worthy of sacrificing the driveway - and they promised to come back and fix it).

Friday morning and John, my installation technician, showed up as scheduled all ready to do the installation. He took a look at the wiring and where everything came in in the basement, and my ethernet switch with rack of servers and blinking lights and said, "This shouldn't be too tough." It took John about 4 hours to install the new interface box, run the cables into the house, hook up the FiOS router, install the TV boxes, test everything, and be on his way. No glitches in the install. Everything worked great.

I firmly believe that no technician should ever be subject to the insanity that's called my network at home, so I instructed John to set it up as for a "typical" customer, I would verify everything was working, and after he left, I'd proceed to destroy all of Verizon's neat consumer setup to integrate it with my network -- absolving him of any responsibility for sorting that mess out. He left me with full administrative access to the Actiontec router and pointed out the master reset button in case I did something I couldn't recover from. I get the feeling he figured out I've occasionally needed that in the past.

The only real challenge in making the setup work with my existing network was figuring out how to handle DHCP requests. Changing IP addresses on the router was easy enough, but the set top TV boxes obtain IP addresses from the router, so the DHCP server on the router had to be changed. *AND*, the router also is programmed to hand out IP addresses in the x.x.x.100 to x.x.x.150 range. And John warned me that having the set top box hand out the IP addresses was important, though I have yet to figure out exactly why...

Problem with this is that I have other devices on my network also needing DHCP addresses, and I have my own DHCP server set up to configure them as needed. And there are devices on my network which I need (okay, really, really want) to get the same IP all the time (for troubleshooting purposes - those devices also don't allow static IP assignments as best as I can tell). And, how do you handle the multiple outbound routes from my home network (there's the FiOS route out and the Comcast Cable Modem route out) without accidentally routing Comcast traffic to Verizon, and vice versa. Oh, and how to best use the now 3 wireless networks in the house (though the new one added by the FiOS router really isn't usable in most of the house because it's in the basement and the signal doesn't reach well to the second floor).

In the end, what I did was for all known DHCP clients in the house, have my DHCP server hand out a static IP based on MAC address and can access the network via hardwire or any of the 3 wireless networks. Simple enough - there's about 5 devices, and that's a limited amount of work. Servers have static IPs defined and manual routes set to route out through Comcast. Also simple enough. If you're hard wire into the network, you have a manually assigned IP (I set it up for you - and I can't think the last time someone came over to my house and needed a Cat-5 jack). 100-150 is now reserved for the televisions and that DHCP range is handled by the FiOS router. Guest laptops (or anything else I don't care to set up a static IP or permanent DHCP assignment) now connect to the second wireless network which is off a Linksys WRT54G unit which hands out IPs on its own subnet, then NAT's into the main network.

So far, this setup seems to be working well. I quickly found out when the TV's got the wrong IP addresses assigned that functions such as channel guides and OnDemand services didn't work, and the set top boxes were very unhappy. Reconfiguring my DHCP server fixed that (I think). The speed off the FiOS is as advertised - 15M down and 2M up (actually, more like 15.5M down and 1.9M up). So far so good.

More reports as I spend more time with the service.

Tags: Technology

No, this has nothing to do with IBM computers.

Mother's Day is always a little sad for me. Not having a mom around to call and wish Happy Mother's Day to somehow never seems to get easier even as time passes. Yesterday, I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about one person's reflection on his mom through a car of hers that he still owned, and how he was having difficulties parting with it. He affectionately called the car "The Big Red Sled". Link to the story.

This made me think about my mom's old blue 1979 Mercury Zephyr Station Wagon. A car that we purchased just as my mom and dad were getting divorced - with just a few hundred miles on it, we drove it cross country from New York as mom, my sister, and I started life on our own in California. It was definitely a "Big Blue Box".

At the time, that car was really cool. It had every option available (from cloth seats to power everything to a really cool blue interior to a 3.3 liter 6 cylinder engine). It was really neat. It was a big blue box. But like all cars of that era, it didn't seem to do well in the long-term durability department. I remember as mom had that car 10 years later (with well over 100k miles on it) that it had all sorts of problems, kind of like what was described in the WSJ story. I remembered the morning mom telling me how it caught fire while warming up (an eternal oil leaker, one morning, the oil leaked on to the catalytic converter and started a small fire which was put out by a passing school bus driver with a fire extinguisher). How it hated starting. Steering wheel cracked. Windows that would go down, but not back up. And finally, the thing that convinced her maybe it was time to give up the car, but the steering shaft snapping in half in the middle of a left turn because the power steering pump had done its morning cut out/in/out routine at an inopportune time.

I have lots of fond memories of that car. I learned to drive in that car. I spent a lot of time going places in that car. I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time in that car. It even made it on to an episode of Simon and Simon (remember that series?). It served us well. It just wore out. Mom I think kept that car 5 years longer than it had business being in existence. The car dealer gave her $500 as sympathy when she traded it. But we were poor and getting a new car wasn't something mom could afford until I was out of college and on my own. She finally traded it for a blue Ford Escort station wagon that, honestly, endeared itself to none of us. When mom passed away, my sister asked, "Please don't make me drive the Escort." With its less than hearty 1.9 liter 4 cylinder engine, it struggled to make it up on-ramps. I considered it unsafe getting it on to the freeway, where flooring the gas pedal just meant louder noises from the engine. I traded it at my first opportunity.

Funny what reading articles in the WSJ will trigger in terms of thoughts. I hope the car has found a nice resting place somewhere. I hope it's not still on the road 29 years later...

And Mom, Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for sacrificing by putting up with that old car for so long so I could get through college and my sister could have things we might not otherwise have been able to afford.

Verizon finally flipped the switch on FiOS in my neighborhood. After false starts, more false starts, and lots of digging, I'm on the books to be installed on Friday May 16th. I was even able to help my neighbor out who works for Verizon (he gets a referral fee for sending people over).

Cost-wise, I think monthly service will be a wash with respect to Comcast cable. However, my backup DSL line (at 3M/550k) will get replaced by a FiOS internet line which is advertised at 15M/2M.

Will report on how the install goes. I just hope that they don't hit any sprinkler or cable lines while digging, and that the orange paint that they've used to mark line locations will stay on the grass through this torrential downpour we are having.

Tags: Technology

Some of you probably won't find this that interesting. Certainly not anyone who has been to the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. But I found the elevator system at the hotel to be kind of fascinating.

You walk up to the elevator banks and push a keypad as your floor destination.



It then tells you which letter elevator to go to:



After an small eternity waiting for the elevator, you walk in and the elevator takes you to your floor. There are no floor buttons.



The no floor buttons is the thing that took me the most to get used to.

What also appears to happen is that the computer system keeps track of the number of people who have requested a particular floor. So after a certain number of buttons presses for, say, the 40th floor, the next request for 40 will send you to a different elevator. Unfortunately, the system is a bit flawed because people keep pushing the pad when the elevator doesn't arrive, and there's no accommodation for people and large pieces of luggage.

But it's an interesting system nonetheless.

Tags: Technology

I'll post a few lighter pictures, but wanted to share the link below. Zandra and I were on our way back from New York City on this Amtrak train when this happened just outside of New Brunswick, NJ today.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/104-05042008-1529108.html

Say a prayer for the train engineer and the crew. The engineer said the guy stood in the middle of the track, squared himself at the train, and just stood there looking at him.

(updated 8:17am on 5/5/08 due to old link being removed)

Not that I really like the coffee at Starbucks that much, but here's something nice to know:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/01/atandt-wifi-hotspots-free-to-iphone-owners-anyone-with-a-brain/

Even if they plug the access hole, I still have an iPhone to use.

Tags: Technology