The Vent and Rant Thread

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Just back. Great moving. I don't think it's an academy award winner but might get special effects. Well worth seeing. We did see the 3D version and just ate the 2D tickets.

My husband has been chomping at the bit to see that. He was complaining that it was coming out on the weekend we would be driving to Florida and since we would be spending time with my parents, we would have to wait to see it until after we get back. Now with the huge snow storm (some forecasters are calling for 26 inches of snow) EVERYTHING is on hold.

I just came back from the grocery store. Talk about panic shopping. I've never seen lines that long even while living in Florida during hurricaine season. I wish I could have just left, but we had very few groceries in the house as we were planning to be gone for a week so I had to shop. I only purchased a few things and could go through the express line. I felt sorry for the people with full carts who had to stand in lines 10 or more deep.

[kindlekitten]

so are you delaying your trip for sure? I did a 3 month project in that area 2 years ago. there was a light scif of snow while I was there and major panic ensued. I can't imagine what it is like now!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

The WRT54's sold these days you can easily install Linux on anyway.

Sounds like they upped the memory since the last time I looked.

And to be honest, even with VxWorks, they're pretty reliable little routers.

I have no doubt they are. I just like being able to ssh to a command line and run vi to modify config files.

For that matter, the Belkin is reliable. It's just basically unhackable. I found one third-party firmware effort for it, and the author was eloquent about the issues. He just couldn't get his code to compile small enough while still adding the features he found desirable.

I also prefer OpenWRT to DD-WRT or Tomato.

I looked at those, and they are worthy products that are more than capable of doing the job. I just happened to like Tomato better.

I personally use a Asus WL-500g, which is on similar hardware to the WRT54g, but has certain advantages (like a USB port), and has Oleg's Firmware, which is pretty good. You can't get them new these days though.

There are a few others like that, all based on a Broadcom chipset. Buffalo has one that looks nice.

One of my background efforts was seeing what was involved in getting Asterisk to run on the WRT54G. It's doable - I ran into a writeup on a telecom guy that had done it - and Astersik was something I wanted to learn about, with the Linksys providing a low cost platform. Ah, well. Later.
______
Dennis

[DawnFalcon]

And our boiler stops working. Great. *thud* (Cue 90 minutes of Chinese housemate nagging me to fix it. No, no idea. Go away!)

Anyway - No, it's not that the newer WRT54's have more memory, it's that "micro" builds have been made for them which work fine with the available memory. I also totally agree that my preference for OpenWRT is a personal one, but I'd still recommend it

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by kazbates

My husband has been chomping at the bit to see that. He was complaining that it was coming out on the weekend we would be driving to Florida and since we would be spending time with my parents, we would have to wait to see it until after we get back. Now with the huge snow storm (some forecasters are calling for 26 inches of snow) EVERYTHING is on hold.

I just came back from the grocery store. Talk about panic shopping. I've never seen lines that long even while living in Florida during hurricaine season. I wish I could have just left, but we had very few groceries in the house as we were planning to be gone for a week so I had to shop. I only purchased a few things and could go through the express line. I felt sorry for the people with full carts who had to stand in lines 10 or more deep.

Uh Oh! Hope it's not as bad as predicted. They were talking about snow in that area but more north I think....never know for sure.

Good Luck!

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I did a pinhole reset and a power cycle. (A pinhole reset doesn't reset to factory defaults unless pressed and held for X seconds.) I did not do a hard reset to restore to factory defaults at that point. I have since. I think it's an ex-WRT54G...

Right, the hold-for-x-seconds thing is where there is variance between router makes...see, I told you I was tired!

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

No, that's fine. You have no way to know my level of expertise. As it happens, I've been in IT in one manner or another for about 20 years, starting on IBM mainframes and working sideways and down. Most recently it's been Solaris and Linux admin among other things, and I have Win2K, WinXP, Ubuntu and Puppy Linux up at home. So I do know a little about this stuiff...

Started on an Apple IIe back when no one outside an office knew who Microsoft was. Also had a little Timex Sinclair 1000 (in the UK it was a ZX81 or somesuch) which used the TV as a monitor and saved programs on cassette tape; problem was getting a tape recorder to record with no noise, else you would corrupt the data. I'd love a *nix admin job; server at work is running Oracle 8i on a copy of NT that's so old the version number is negative, and AS400 on a recently-relocated remote server which has been responsible for 22 hours of downtime this week alone. I come home to my ArchLinux64 workstation, and...you know those fabric-softener commercials where the person throws a window open and suddenly the air is fresh and everything is beautiful? It's kinda like that only not as melodramatic; also I'm not that good-looking.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

About the time Cisco acquired them?

I thought that happened later but it would neatly explain a few things.

I wanted to OpenWRT a 54G series just for the SNMP functionality since I had Comcast at the time when they started capping and (openly) throttling, and I wasn't about to take them at their word on usage numbers. Now that I don't have that issue to deal with, I can't personally justify hacking a router to get it to do what it should do in the first place. I got a D-Link DIR-655 for the Gig-E speed (hosting virtual machines on a RAID-10 array) and it "just works".

And seriously, I know the Belkin is a throwaway piece (got it from Wallyworld) but for the price...well, I bought a second one after all, and I'm not rationalizing when I say the electrics are iffy in this place.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Whatever it is, it sucks, mate, and I'm patting you on the shoulder and saying "Take it easy, fella. It'll pass. It's Friday night [it is here] so let's go get us a drink at Adrian's, hey? Talk about it. Or not. Whatever suits you.".

Which is to say, I'm sorry to hear something's getting you so aggro, Dylrob. Vent like a volcano if you need. Wish I...wish all of us in the Lounge, could be there to actually do the above.

Cheers,
Marc

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

With a name like "hellko Nevada" I can understand.

Hope things are a little more tolerable this AM......hug.

Thanks guys.

--
In truth Hellko is an... heh... "endearing" nickname a friend of mine coined years ago. She, like most of the people I know, managed to get away from this place long ago. I'm stuck as long as things continue the way they are.

Yet on that note, this afternoon actually brought a glimmer of hope... my mother may not need my financial support much longer! And believe me once that matter is settled this town can kiss my dust.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

And our boiler stops working. Great. *thud* (Cue 90 minutes of Chinese housemate nagging me to fix it. No, no idea. Go away!)
...

They apparently travel in threes, because I think you're now the third. Sorry. I'd hit it with a hammer, but, well, that's what I do. It doesn't work, but it's remarkably satisfying (except when you've got a headache you're trying to fix).

Originally Posted by Dylrob

...
Yet on that note, this afternoon actually brought a glimmer of hope... my mother may not need my financial support much longer! And believe me once that matter is settled this town can kiss my dust.

Curiousity only...where would you go?

Cheers,
Marc

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Curiousity only...where would you go?

Cheers,
Marc

The two places I'm looking at are Las Vegas and Dallas.

[montsnmags]

Interesting. Why those two? They seem quite different, though admittedly most of what I know about Dallas I learnt by NOT watching Larry Hagman, and everything I know about Las Vegas I know through fear and loathing. I'd go with Las Vegas.

Cheers,
Marc

[DawnFalcon]

Boilers pump is deceased. Did I mention that it turned cold yesterday?

Amusing enough, though, the outflow pipe for our boiler is positioned such that if next door's kitchen has their window open, it splatters into there. And yes, I did manage to overfill the boiler a bit (and had to bleed it off), since underpressure was the initial diagnosis.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

Right, the hold-for-x-seconds thing is where there is variance between router makes...see, I told you I was tired!

Not a problem.

Started on an Apple IIe back when no one outside an office knew who Microsoft was.

I played with Apple IIes a bit back at the bank where I worked on the mainframe. They were being used to run VisiCalc. At about thet time, the IBM PC began to come in, and Lotus 1,2,3 singlehandedly forced everyone to upgrade their PCs to a whole 640K of memory to run their enormous Lotus spreadsheets.

Also had a little Timex Sinclair 1000 (in the UK it was a ZX81 or somesuch) which used the TV as a monitor and saved programs on cassette tape; problem was getting a tape recorder to record with no noise, else you would corrupt the data.

I never played with one of those. I did log time on a Commodore 64, discovering the joys of "wedges" and detailed memory maps.

The C64 had 64K of RAM, and 16K of ROM, with an 8K ROM holing the kernel, and another holding Microsoft BASIC v2. Turn it on, and you were in the BASIC interpreter.

The 6510 CPU saw 64K of memory total, and the ROM chips were normally mapped into the 64K. But you could diddle a register to flip the ROM out and access the underlying RAM. One enterprising program did that, stashing code and data in the normally unused RAM. You accessed it by pressing the Restore key, and it gave you a menu of functions. You had to be careful your code wasn't trying to call kernel or BASIC routines while they were mapped out of the address space, but it you were careful, neat things were possible.

I've thought off and on about getting a C64 or C128, adding enough RAM to provide a usable RAM disk, and run GEOS on it. GEOS was astonishing on the C64, save that it was disk based, and I/0 to the 1571 floppy was terminally slow. You'd grow old and grey just waiting for things to load. Run from a RAM disk, performance might be a lot nicer.

I'd love a *nix admin job; server at work is running Oracle 8i on a copy of NT that's so old the version number is negative, and AS400 on a recently-relocated remote server which has been responsible for 22 hours of downtime this week alone. I come home to my ArchLinux64 workstation, and...you know those fabric-softener commercials where the person throws a window open and suddenly the air is fresh and everything is beautiful? It's kinda like that only not as melodramatic; also I'm not that good-looking.

When I worked on the mainframe, I had a common experience. I'd have a problem. I'd pull down the manual for the part of the system I was working on. I'd turn to the chapter documenting the program I was using. Where I hoped to find an answer to my question, I'd find a pointer to another manual I didn't have, so matter how many manuals I accumulated. I never saw a complete set of System 370 manuals, but I suspected it wouldn't fit in my cube.

The I started playing with Unix, where a complete set of manuals took three 9x6 binders occupying about a foot of space on a shelf, and said "Where has this been all my life?"

(A letter in Computerworld back then described an IBM mainframe guy's shock on encountering Unix. He took what he had been reading in to his boss, dropped it on his deak, and said "How could we have been so wrong, for so long, and nobody told us?" )

I thought that happened later but it would neatly explain a few things.

Might have. My memory is hazy on the time sequence, and I didn't Look Stuff Up.

I wanted to OpenWRT a 54G series just for the SNMP functionality since I had Comcast at the time when they started capping and (openly) throttling, and I wasn't about to take them at their word on usage numbers. Now that I don't have that issue to deal with, I can't personally justify hacking a router to get it to do what it should do in the first place. I got a D-Link DIR-655 for the Gig-E speed (hosting virtual machines on a RAID-10 array) and it "just works".

Which is all you reall care about. I hacked a bit because I could, but it wasn't a necessity for anything I did.

And seriously, I know the Belkin is a throwaway piece (got it from Wallyworld) but for the price...well, I bought a second one after all, and I'm not rationalizing when I say the electrics are iffy in this place.

I bought the Belkin as a cheap temporary measure when I thought the Linksys had failed. (It hadn't.) It's bare bones in many respects, but it does the job. It was worth what I paid for it.
______
Dennis

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Interesting. Why those two? They seem quite different, though admittedly most of what I know about Dallas I learnt by NOT watching Larry Hagman, and everything I know about Las Vegas I know through fear and loathing. I'd go with Las Vegas.

Cheers,
Marc

Las Vegas is closer. I could return to college immediately, without having to pay out of state tuition. And the city has a much better public transportation system.

OTOH much of my family lives in the Dallas and Houston areas. And I think the cuisine is generally better down there.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Boilers pump is deceased. Did I mention that it turned cold yesterday?

Any idea on how long it will take to replace?

I'm sure you're the third person on MR to have a broken boiler (mine's fixed now! Faulty circuit board replaced), and there's two on another forum also having problems

Amusing enough, though, the outflow pipe for our boiler is positioned such that if next door's kitchen has their window open, it splatters into there. And yes, I did manage to overfill the boiler a bit (and had to bleed it off), since underpressure was the initial diagnosis.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

Any idea on how long it will take to replace?

Already done! We have a great landlord, and apparently it's a very very common boiler so the service company has the parts in stock.