Monthly Archives: January 2009

The morning after (the acid test)

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It’s a Sunday morning, just before I leave for church. I’d managed to get the Linksys router to work yesterday, after lots of cussing and tearing of hair, but above all, patience. Now I had about 30 minutes before leaving, so I fired up the whole computer, plus the Linksys and the D-Link. Vista started up, entered my password, waited for the whole thing to load. I looked for the network icon in my taskbar to light up with those familiar blue lights, signaling that all was well. Nothing, nada, nyet, zippo—what the heck? Oh well, it’ll have to wait until after church (I didn’t want to get myself all worked up on a Sunday morning when I had to be playing the organ in church).

Arrived home after church. Enough is enough. Did a factory reset of the Linksys again—jabbed its backside for 30 seconds. Heh, it actually feels good to do that. Anyway, it responded and I was able to connect to the Internet. OK, great. Installed the Linksys USB adapter drivers in the male offspring’s computer, no problems there. Inserted the adapter, fiddled around with some settings, and presto, his computer’s online—wonderful!

At this juncture, I’m wondering whether I should burn some joss-sticks and incense to appease the wireless entities. On second thoughts, NO. I walk up to the Linksys, and tell it in no subtle manner that if it ever misbehaves again, it’s a straight 70 feet drop from the nearest window. There haven’t been any problems so far…

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The acid test

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So, having bought the Linksys WRT54G2 router together with a USB adapter, I opened the package up a few days ago and proceeded to setup. Nothing could have prepared me for what was about to come. I’m fortunate I’ve acquired patience for computer troubleshooting all these years. Little did I know that this wireless setup would be testing my patience to its limits.

OK, I open up the box, and there’s the black Linksys router, together with a setup CD, Ethernet cable, a brief installation guide, a power cable and adapter. I look at the CD; it has a bold sticker saying Run CD first before connecting cables. Well, who am I to argue with that, so I pop the CD into my DVD-ROM drive, and it does a couple of diagnostics, tells me to connect the Ethernet cables, plug in the router’s power supply, and here I go on the home stretch—at least that’s what I thought. Remember Murphy’s Law—“If something can go wrong, it will…” And it did—up pops an error message at the end: Error 322: Your router could not be configured correctly. Please check the cables, blah blah blah. I exit the setup, and repeat the whole process again, and again. Error 322 keeps popping up! At this point, ordinary mortals would probably have picked up the router and thrown it out of the nearest window. But remember—we’re dealing with a computer geek here, and us geeks never give up!

The number one rule of computer troubleshooting is—if it fails, try something else. Alright, enough of that darn CD. I take out the router and test my Internet with my existing D-Link DSL500G ADSL modem. The Internet works—good. Connect the Linksys into the picture, ensuring the cables are properly connected, and—Internet fails. OK, I’m getting somewhere now. Remembering that my D-Link was configured with a static IP address, I go into the Linksys web configuration page (using Internet Explorer) and enter a few settings. Then I test—no Internet. Change this—test. Change that—test. The internet was dead as a door knob.

What do I do when things don’t work out? I go swimming. Or make some strong coffee. It’s important to take a step back and not get so caught up that you could really throw the stuff out the window—besides, I could hurt somebody, right? And end up paying for more stuff. Anyway, here come my two good friends online for some friendly banter and chat: Doris and Uncle Ian. It’s nice to chat with fellow geeks, exchanging our failures and successes. Not only that, I called the shop up, where I bought the router from. They gave some advice regarding the router settings, but unfortunately that didn’t work.

At this juncture, I’m like taking two steps back. I re-evaluate my current settings:

  1. My D-Link router was configured for a static IP address, and worked when the Linksys was taken out of the system. In other words, I could access the Internet.
  2. I did a factory reset of the Linksys. Opened up the Linksys web configuration page, and configured it to have a static IP address, together with a subnet mask, gateway, and my ISP’s DNS addresses.
  3. In Vista, I opened up the Network and Sharing Center > View status > Properties. Opened up Internet Protocol Version 4. In the General tab, I chose Obtain an IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically. Previously I had specified the IP address and DNS addresses (which did not succeed in allowing me to connect to the Internet). I just had to try every option.
  4. Click on OK and close all those windows. And what do you know—it works! The Internet is accessible once more, wonder of wonders.

Now please, don’t ask me why it works—I’m just glad it does! Which goes to show, perseverance and patience does pay off, even if it is a little delayed. Now excuse me while I go configure that USB adapter for my male offspring. That’s another story for another post.

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Into the fire

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For the past fortnight, I’ve been harassing my supplier about the availability of the Linksys WRT54G2 wireless router, to no avail. Seems as if this product is harder to obtain than hens’ teeth. In turn, my male offspring was asking me every now and then when the router would arrive. Today, as luck would have it, I chanced upon this shop in one of the shopping malls here and spotted the familiar Linksys boxes. Thank my lucky stars, they happened to have one WRT54G2 left. The price was good, so I bought it on the spot. I had just the right amount of cash, and left the shop with an empty wallet.

I was also able to obtain the Linksys USB Adapter, and so here comes my trial by fire—I’ve never actually set up my own wireless network before (I’m a wired kind of guy). I guess there’s always a first time, but I’m going to choose a day where I have an hour or two free, and then plunge into the installation.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. Wish me luck.

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WALL-E!

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WALL-E Trailer

Confession time—I’m not a big fan of animated movies. The last one I watched was Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) and that was pretty good. Now comes WALL-E, and if The Dark Knight was my #1 choice for 2008, this movie comes a very, very close second. Here’s a brief synopsis, courtesy of NYC.com (look at their 5-star ratings for this movie!):

After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). EVE comes to realize that WALL-E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet’s future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home). Meanwhile, WALL-E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen. Joining WALL-E on his fantastic journey across a universe of never-before-imagined visions of the future, is a hilarious cast of characters including a pet cockroach, and a heroic team of malfunctioning misfit robots.

What I enjoy about WALL-E is its overall simplicity. He’s all alone in this big city overflowing with garbage, and here he is, chugging along, collecting rubbish, compacting it, and then stacking the compacted cubes neatly together. WALL-E’s smart too—he collects any knick-knacks he likes, and stashes them in his own hangout (apparently, he’s the last robot left on Earth after the humans leave). However, after 700 years, he’s developed one little glitch—a personality. He’s extremely curious, highly inquisitive, and a little lonely. Which is where EVE comes into the picture and sets off a love reaction in our hero. This alone makes the movie extremely watchable.

With Rotten Tomatoes giving this movie a whopping 96% approval, I knew I couldn’t go wrong in buying the DVD. And boy, this is a joyous movie to watch! Everything about this movie gels together: the storyline, the characters (there’s hardly any speaking in the first 30 minutes), the music, the visuals, etc. Director Andrew Stanton keeps everything moving at a well-controlled pace, which builds up as the movie nears its end. At 97 minutes, WALL-E isn’t overlong, and by the time it ends, I’m having tempting thoughts about watching it all over again—it’s that good. I heartily recommend this movie, it’s brilliant!

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The Internet = Oxygen

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It’s New Year’s Eve. The last day of 2008. I’m getting ready to go to the hotel. Hmm—what CD should I play in the car for this special occasion? I scan through my collection and settle on Sir Colin Davis’ extremely fine performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Choral) with the Staatskapelle Dresden. Universal brotherhood and all that stuff…it does make me feel good all over.

Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies

Come to think of it, I believe that the Internet has actually helped to create a sense of brotherhood in us humans. True, there’s some bad stuff in it, but certainly the good stuff triumphs. For instance, if you’re having a problem with your computer, one of the first steps would probably be to do a Google search and see whether other people have experienced the same thing and whether or not a solution has been found. Or perhaps you’d look it up in one of the thousands of forums (most of them are free to view and to sign up). Or failing that, IM (Instant Message) a friend to ask for help. Or use email (teenagers consider email old-fashioned nowadays).

The fact is, the Internet has become a godsend. Which is why I’ve become a little annoyed as the Internet has been sluggish since before Christmas. Seems that some undersea cables were severed near Italy, causing Internet services to be disrupted. It’s odd that Malaysia would be affected since you’d think our traffic would be re-routed via the Pacific. Now comes the big bummer—our traffic to North America is disrupted as well! Grr—but patience, patience. At first my ISP mentioned that everything would be back to normal by December 31, 2008. Now they’re saying it’ll take a few more days—hopefully by January 4, 2009. I can hardly wait.

Fortunately I can still access my blog and web sites, although they are hosted in the States. If not—!@#%!! The last time Internet services were disrupted was about two years back, when an undersea earthquake off the coast of Taiwan caused havoc. That created an immense slowdown in Internet services here. That was an unpleasant experience, to say the least.

Yes, call me an Internet junkie—millions of other people belong to this club as well. And I almost forgot—Happy New Year!

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