July 4, 2006

There were 3 posts published on July 4, 2006 (this is page 1 of 1).

Chevrolet Hills

I was dismayed to learn this morning that Cheviot Hills, the neighborhood golf course, has been sold to car salesmen. The new owners are MLC Automotive of Raleigh and Crossroads Holdings, the companies which control land holdings of the Leith and Crossroads dealerships, respectively. One can assume that the links will soon be paved over and loaded up with shiny new cars.

Isn’t it wonderful? Capital Boulevard has sorely needed a car dealership or two and then this old golf course comes up for sale. Now we have everything!

I think I’d rather let crazy ol’ Parker Edwards take out a few dozen more deer than to have yet another lot full of cars blot the landscape. Besides, isn’t there some kind of law about used car salesmen being too close to neighborhoods? Like they have to register with the state or something?

I hope the new owners have done their homework, as this isn’t the best place to put a dealership. You see, when it rains the way it did a two weeks ago most of this property is underwater. Imagine a fleet of shiny new cars here.

Oops.

(this post’s title shamelessly stolen from the N&O’s Jack Hagel.)

The Amazing WRT54G

Over my time off I’ve spent some time messing around with my Linksys WRT54G access point. It had been collecting dust in my bedroom while I focused on other ways in which to waste time. As I mentioned a few posts back, I had been looking into what it would take to create a neighborhood-wide network. The WRT54G seems ideally suited for such a task.

A while ago I installed OpenWRT on the access point as I wanted to see how Linux worked on the box. What I didn’t find out until yesterday is how truly powerful this little box is when Linux is under the hood. For instance, one thing I need to do is to have it be my home internet gateway and split the internet connection into a trusted segment (the LAN) and an untrusted segment (WiFi). When I first read that the wireless connection was bridged to the ethernet switch, I thought this wasn’t possible. I found out yesterday that – while the wireless is bridged to the switch, it is configurable with vlans! Thus, I can treat each port on the switch as if they were independent, meaning that splitting traffic can be easily done with firewall rules.

Its truly amazing to know that a $50 box can do all of this. Linux rules!

Decider In Chief

We were walking through our neighborhood when Kelly pointed out an aircraft flying extemely low. It was a Boeing 737 on final approach to RDU Airport, sporting a yellow-and-white livery I didn’t recognize. It was flying above the legal 500 feet but probably below 1000 feet, well below most approaches.

Now that we’re back it makes sense. The Decider In Chief is in town. The plane – flying lower than Bush’s poll numbers – was probably minimizing its exposure for security.