Yes, I'm alive...
Dec. 29th, 2003 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calic0cat...despite the long and unintended silence.
I live with my parents - can't really afford to do anything else while I'm paying off student loans and making car payments, etc. We have one DSL connection and about a year and a half/two years ago my brother and I pulled CAT-5 cable to wire the livingroom/kitchen and the TV/computer room (my parents' computer room, that is, mine's downstairs where the DSL connection is). A couple of months ago, the connection to my parents' computer went flaky. I cut off and redid the connectors on it, etc. but it still didn't work. Running a long cable down the hall to connect to the spare jack by the livingroom/kitchen doorway confirmed that the problem wasn't the computer, it was definitely the cable that we'd pulled. I really didn't want to yank the cabling and redo it again so I decided to give my parents a wireless connection for Christmas and incidentally make it so that I could use my laptop in my upstairs bedroom when it's too chill and damp in the basement. Great idea, right?
*hah*
Bought the gear on Monday - an SMC Barricade 802.11g Wireless Router w/USB printer connection so that my parents can use my laser printer downstairs instead of buying more ink cartridges for their inkjet only to have them dry up before they use them up, a Linksys card for the laptop (open box so it was a good deal), and an SMC USB Wireless device for my parents PC. Got the router up and running easily, got the laptop wireless card working (though I've discovered that for some unknown reason, I always have to do an "ipconfig /renew_all" to get it to pick up the DHCP settings after a reboot - dunno why and I'm tired of trying to figure it out). Then I started working on my parents computer.
Urg.
After a couple of days of fighting with the stupid thing - and taking the entire network down repeatedly because I'd tweaked something on the router that mucked *everything* up - I finally decided that maybe picking a USB connector was a dumb idea. So when I went on Wednesday morning to see ROTK with my brother and his wife, I ran in to Best Buy and picked up a PCI card instead (SMC again). Well, by the time we got home from the movie (which was good and I *want* Gandalf's horse...), it was time to go for the family Christmas Eve party so I didn't get around to doing anything further. Christmas Day - family brunch, then gifts, then pulled the old wired networking card from my parents' PC and installed the wireless one. Then spent the rest of the afternoon (until time for more relatives to arrive for Christmas dinner) fighting to get the new card to work. It would be working just fine one minute, then lose its settings the next. All with a 60%-90% connection to the wireless network.
I shall skip the hair pulling and swearing and Google searches that ensued. For the next few *days*.
Saturday PM - *late* Saturday PM - I finally, *finally* got it working. Was it the card? No. Was it the router? No.
The laptop was running Win98.
My parents' PC was running Windows XP.
Windows XP likes to be "helpful".
Note to anyone having trouble with XP and wireless networking - stop and disable the stupid "Wireless Zero" service. Your problems will, in all likelihood, magically vanish.
So - network back up and hopefully all is now well. Except for that weird DHCP issue on the laptop but since it takes like two seconds to force it to get the settings, I really don't care at this point in time.
Now if I could just get the tower computer that I upgraded to actually install Win2K without bluescreening, I'd be happy... Hopefully the new power supply that's on the way will fix that problem since that's the machine that has the scanner on it and the DVD-burner and video capture equipment... *sigh*
It does not help matters that I had a nasty cold almost all week last week and therefore slept in and took naps which wasted a lot of time. Plus I couldn't retreat to the privacy of my computer room in the basement because it felt too damp and chilly down there. Thanks to the wireless, I *could* work upstairs in the kitchen - but knowing that someone could come along and peek over my shoulder at any time kind of scared off the muse. And my bedroom didn't have space to set up the computer because part of the livingroom furniture (stuff that was moved to make space for the tree) was in there so I couldn't hide out in there either.
So - hopefully I'll get a site update out tonight now that things are working properly and my cold is pretty much gone. Assuming that I don't get dragged into preparations for the family New Year's Day party that we're supposed to be hosting...
Fics will hopefully get updates before too long as well...
Currently working on:
LWH
Kindergarten Heero
Holiday Series (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years fics are all semi-related so I can't post one till the others are done and I'm sure I don't need to make any changes...)
couple of oneshots
(If there's missing "c"s in here, sorry - I'm posting from work during lunch and my keyboard apparently has decided to slowly die - so far the "c" works about 40% of the time and I don't always notice when it doesn't - but I didn't want to waste the time to stop and shut down so I could replace it...)
I live with my parents - can't really afford to do anything else while I'm paying off student loans and making car payments, etc. We have one DSL connection and about a year and a half/two years ago my brother and I pulled CAT-5 cable to wire the livingroom/kitchen and the TV/computer room (my parents' computer room, that is, mine's downstairs where the DSL connection is). A couple of months ago, the connection to my parents' computer went flaky. I cut off and redid the connectors on it, etc. but it still didn't work. Running a long cable down the hall to connect to the spare jack by the livingroom/kitchen doorway confirmed that the problem wasn't the computer, it was definitely the cable that we'd pulled. I really didn't want to yank the cabling and redo it again so I decided to give my parents a wireless connection for Christmas and incidentally make it so that I could use my laptop in my upstairs bedroom when it's too chill and damp in the basement. Great idea, right?
*hah*
Bought the gear on Monday - an SMC Barricade 802.11g Wireless Router w/USB printer connection so that my parents can use my laser printer downstairs instead of buying more ink cartridges for their inkjet only to have them dry up before they use them up, a Linksys card for the laptop (open box so it was a good deal), and an SMC USB Wireless device for my parents PC. Got the router up and running easily, got the laptop wireless card working (though I've discovered that for some unknown reason, I always have to do an "ipconfig /renew_all" to get it to pick up the DHCP settings after a reboot - dunno why and I'm tired of trying to figure it out). Then I started working on my parents computer.
Urg.
After a couple of days of fighting with the stupid thing - and taking the entire network down repeatedly because I'd tweaked something on the router that mucked *everything* up - I finally decided that maybe picking a USB connector was a dumb idea. So when I went on Wednesday morning to see ROTK with my brother and his wife, I ran in to Best Buy and picked up a PCI card instead (SMC again). Well, by the time we got home from the movie (which was good and I *want* Gandalf's horse...), it was time to go for the family Christmas Eve party so I didn't get around to doing anything further. Christmas Day - family brunch, then gifts, then pulled the old wired networking card from my parents' PC and installed the wireless one. Then spent the rest of the afternoon (until time for more relatives to arrive for Christmas dinner) fighting to get the new card to work. It would be working just fine one minute, then lose its settings the next. All with a 60%-90% connection to the wireless network.
I shall skip the hair pulling and swearing and Google searches that ensued. For the next few *days*.
Saturday PM - *late* Saturday PM - I finally, *finally* got it working. Was it the card? No. Was it the router? No.
The laptop was running Win98.
My parents' PC was running Windows XP.
Windows XP likes to be "helpful".
Note to anyone having trouble with XP and wireless networking - stop and disable the stupid "Wireless Zero" service. Your problems will, in all likelihood, magically vanish.
So - network back up and hopefully all is now well. Except for that weird DHCP issue on the laptop but since it takes like two seconds to force it to get the settings, I really don't care at this point in time.
Now if I could just get the tower computer that I upgraded to actually install Win2K without bluescreening, I'd be happy... Hopefully the new power supply that's on the way will fix that problem since that's the machine that has the scanner on it and the DVD-burner and video capture equipment... *sigh*
It does not help matters that I had a nasty cold almost all week last week and therefore slept in and took naps which wasted a lot of time. Plus I couldn't retreat to the privacy of my computer room in the basement because it felt too damp and chilly down there. Thanks to the wireless, I *could* work upstairs in the kitchen - but knowing that someone could come along and peek over my shoulder at any time kind of scared off the muse. And my bedroom didn't have space to set up the computer because part of the livingroom furniture (stuff that was moved to make space for the tree) was in there so I couldn't hide out in there either.
So - hopefully I'll get a site update out tonight now that things are working properly and my cold is pretty much gone. Assuming that I don't get dragged into preparations for the family New Year's Day party that we're supposed to be hosting...
Fics will hopefully get updates before too long as well...
Currently working on:
LWH
Kindergarten Heero
Holiday Series (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years fics are all semi-related so I can't post one till the others are done and I'm sure I don't need to make any changes...)
couple of oneshots
(If there's missing "c"s in here, sorry - I'm posting from work during lunch and my keyboard apparently has decided to slowly die - so far the "c" works about 40% of the time and I don't always notice when it doesn't - but I didn't want to waste the time to stop and shut down so I could replace it...)
