Friday, April 20, 2007

ktdreyer.com

I just registered ktdreyer.com with nearlyfreespeech.net. FreeBSD, SSH access, CGI, PHP, MySQL, unlimited subdomains... and you only pay for the bandwidth you use. Awesome. I'll probably use them for Laura's upcoming site as well. I'm still going to keep my email ktdreyer#gmail.com, although email forwarding with nearlyfreespeech.net is only $0.02 a day.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

New wireless device


I just got a Netgear WGR614 from NewEgg for $36.42 (including shipping). It's going to replace my aging Linksys BEFSW11S4, which I'll give to my sister to use at home. I haven't got a chance to test out the wireless capabilities of the Netgear since I don't have my new laptop yet, but the firmware options available on the WGR614 are much more advanced than the Linksys hardware I've used (the BEFSR41 and BEFSW11S4... but that's understandable since those devices are several years old :)

The only issue I have with WGR614's configuration is that they try to oversimplify things with their "Smart Setup Wizard". For example, if you go to the default page at http://192.168.1.1/, the WGR614 will automatically redirect your browser to http://www.routerlogin.com/welcome.htm, which is a 404 error. To get around this redirection, I took a look at the source of the redirect page on the firmware itself and noticed it had a string in a line of Javascript, "start.htm". I tried http://192.168.1.1/start.htm and it brought up the configuration page without the hassle of the "Setup Wizard". All is well... though it appears that this method bypasses whatever authentication method the WGR614 is supposed to have. Oh well. At least it tracks my IP so that only one IP can be "logged in" to the manager web app simultaneously. It's sufficient for my needs here, and maybe I haven't found the right setting in the config, but I think this is pretty insecure if it works this way out of the box.

In other news, I just found out that Dryer 2 Skip Day is going to be the same day that Mom and Grace are coming to visit! Another reason I can't wait till Thursday :)

Monday, April 02, 2007

New laptop on the way

Just ordered a new computer from Dell... the Inspiron E1405. It's got an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.00GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB), 14.1 inch Screen, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 80GB Sata Hard Drive, CD/DVD Burner, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g wireless, 9-cell Battery, and most importantly... the 4 year warrenty :) Total was $1,587, and with a $450 off coupon, it was down to $1,193.85 (tax included). Incidentally, tax was about $25 more if I shipped to Chicago than to ship home, so my mom's going to bring it up when she comes in a few weeks. I'll need to think of a hostname for it in the meantime :)