The Netgear WGR614 saga continues. I discovered yesterday that the router’s power adapter was putting out 16 volts; it’s only supposed to put out 12 volts. A ha! The source of my troubles? Heat seems to be the major issue: when it gets hot, it stops working correctly. Of course, being driven at 16v instead of 12v would make it run too hot.
I stopped by Radio Shack and picked up a new 12v power adapter. When I plugged in the power adapter, the router started right up and felt cool. It routed at full speed (I ran speed tests) and was giving no trouble. Of course, the real test wouldn’t come until the router had been running for a few hours.
In the evening, I went to play some Team Fortress. By now, the router was feeling warm. Hmmm. And sure enough, it started dropping connections. Damn.
I now have two choices. Either, I can crack that router’s case open to keep it cool, or I can replace it. The Linksys WRT54GL is looking pretty good — especially if I flash it with Tomato firmware.
The land to the left of the HOLLYWOOD sign is for sale:
An investment group that owns 138 sage-covered acres above and to the left of the 45-foot-high, steel-and-concrete H put the land up for sale last month for $22 million.
This is obviously a golden opportunity for someone to, you know, add a few more letters to the hillside. The letters ‘F’, ‘U’, ‘C’, and ‘K’ come to mind.
Tags: bad TV
“Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.” — Charlton Heston
Tags: quote
I’ve been watching Ken Burn’s The War. In the episode “FUBAR”, the film mentions Thanksgiving Day in Europe, 1944. After the disaster of Market Garden and other setbacks made it clear that the war was not going to end by Christmas, Eisenhower ordered that every GI in Europe get a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving to prop up sagging morale. The Germans used the opportunity to shell the American field kitchens, killing many GIs as they ate their turkey. One officer, who had protested to his superiors about that very possibility, “could never again look upon a turkey dinner without weeping.”
Burns also mentions Thanksgiving in his other epic, The Civil War. In 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving. Union troops were served turkey dinners. The narrator notes that the confederates, who received no special meals that day, “held their fire all day, out of respect for the Union holiday.”
An interesting comparison.
My Netgear router that I wrote about previously is acting up again. I’m seeing the same symptoms as before: dropped connections, etc. I know it’s the router because:
- When web pages stop loading, I can’t access the router itself either (at 192.168.1.1). Once webpages start loading again, I can also access the router.
- I’m seeing no slowdowns or stalled loading of pages when I connect the computer straight to the cable modem (bypassing the router).
It’s probably time to shop for a new router. First though, I’m going to try and open the case to see if there’s dust accumulation; that could keep it too hot.
Maybe I should start a new Gallery dedicated to Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches. I saw these glitches tonight:
This engineer’s dispenser is showing the same type of glitching that I’ve seen before.
This is a new one: There should be water in the bottom of this sewer. Instead, all we see is wireframe polygons where the water is supposed to be; obviously, those polygons are missing their “water” texture map.
The Windows desktop itself continued to glitch after I closed Team Fortress, so I had to reboot my machine. After that, TF2 ran fine.
Previous TF2 rendering glitches.
Tags: bug, computer games, team fortress, TF2 glitch
I spotted this story today:
DENVER – A gun belonging to the pilot of a US Airways plane went off as the aircraft was on approach to land in North Carolina over the weekend, the first time a weapon issued under a federal program to arm pilots was fired, authorities said Monday.
ADVERTISEMENTThe “accidental discharge” Saturday aboard Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte did not endanger the aircraft or the 124 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants aboard, said Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service.
I’d be interested in finding out how this pilot fired his weapon. I should point out that a gun doesn’t “just go off”. Someone fires it by pulling the trigger. Incidents where a gun is fired unintentionally are more properly called negligent discharges since they result from an act of negligence.
This quote at the end of the story pisses me off, since it comes from an “aviation expert” who really should know better:
“If that bullet had compromised the shell of the airplane, i.e., gone through a window, the airplane could have gone down,” he said.
Explosive decompression due to gunfire is a myth. Obviously this guy needs to watch fewer movies and more MythBusters.
As for the negligent discharge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the democratic Congress use it as an excuse to strip pilots of their ability to defend themselves and the passengers.
Update: More here, including photos.
Rachel Lucas mentions an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that trots out all the typical gun-grabber baloney. This drew a most excellent fisking from one of her regular commentators:
Amazing Beliefs:
That 1 firearm owner in 10,000 will commit an act of violence in his or her lifetime, and this is far more frightening than the 25% of drivers who will cause a serious or fatal accident.
Heh. It’s a long comment, but definitely worth the read.
Tags: gun ignorance, link
I recently acquired a used Sigma SD10 and several lenses. This is exciting, as I can now get into “serious” photography with a digital camera. My Sony DSC-W1 is a great little digital camera, but like any point-and-shoot, it doesn’t offer the control that a good SLR does. I do own an SLR, a Minolta X-700, but it hasn’t been out of its bag in a few years since it isn’t digital.
I took my first photos with the Sigma yesterday: around my house with the macro lens, and around Cal Poly with a wide-angle lens. Unfortunately, my Cal Poly trip was cut short by dead batteries, but I still managed to capture a few interesting shots. Lesson: carry spare batteries!
I’ve posted a new photo gallery on my pictures site. That gallery will be dedicated to photography for its own sake, rather than the more typical family or travel type of gallery.
Tags: battery, Cal Poly, Photography, Sigma