I was happy to learn that some fine hackers have ported the excellent OpenWRT package to the very Zyxel (rebranded as Sprint) DSL modem I bought off of Craigslist for $20. Some of these Zyxel modems include an integrated WiFi access point, so in theory you could use Linux to control your DSL, act as your firewall, and push bits into the ether, all from one tiny little box.
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Dual-homed home
For those of you who were waiting with baited breath to know how my AT&T FastAccess DSL was working for me (you remember, the $10/month plan?), I have been slack in updating you.
In short, it works great. Not fast enough to replace my cable modem, however, not with 768Kbps down and 128Kbps up. It wasn’t more than an hour or two before Kelly was complaining about the slow connection.
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Idle engines
For the three years we’ve lived here I’ve watched the trains pass by my house. The bread man’s misfortune became my luck. I was going to finally introduce myself to the train crew.
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Let the calls start flying
As a frequent-flying geek I read with interest that JetBlue may soon roll out Internet access on its flights. When reporters raised the possibility of passengers making Internet phone calls, the airlines stubbornly dug in their heels:
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Truck snags railroad crossing gate at Durant Road
A bread truck traveling east on Durant Road caught a railroad crossing gate as it descended this morning, spilling loaves of bread onto the road and causing minor damage to the gate. No one was injured. A northbound CSX freight train was delayed for two hours while CSX workers repaired the gate. The accident happened around 8:30 this morning.
Raleigh police distributed the bread to motorists.
The hazard of updating links
I discovered that MT.Net‘s once-impressive Technorati Authority rating is about half what it used to be. I think this drop occured when I finally pulled the redirects that pointed the old Drupal links to my site to the new WordPress ones. Even though search engines (and others) coming to old links were told by my webserver to update their links, Technorati (at least) didn’t seem to pay attention.
Cheap Thoughts: flying saucer(s)
Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment and present a crazy idea.
I do lots of thinking at 30,000 feet. I even do some at 10,000 feet on approach. Tonight I was marveling at the skill in which the pilot was using the rudder to counter the strong crosswind we were flying through. It planted a seed in my mind.
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Bad behavior from Bad Behavior
I was blogging away happily from the Atlanta airport tonight when suddenly MT.Net didn’t like me anymore. I got a message from my Bad Behavior blog spam blocker flagging my IP address. Since I was coming from the airport WiFi’s gateway address, I assumed that spammers and the like may have sent spam from the airport and gotten the address blacklisted. Still, I managed to get in one post from the WiFi before it blocked me, so that didn’t seem to be the right answer.
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Cheap Thoughts: Taxiing and an airport’s image
Who needs multi-million dollar airport renovations? I’ve figured out a way to make the Raleigh-Durham airport seem much bigger, cheaply! Jaded air travelers know that landing at a large airport like Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is only half the battle. The other half is taxiing to the gate, which sometimes seems to take longer than the flight itself. Two-runway Raleigh-Durham Airport doesn’t have this problem. When jets land at RDU, they are frequently within sight of their gates. This ease of movement contributes to the image of Raleigh-Durham as a small-town airport. A “hick” airport, if you will.
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Tour de Force
I felt very safe at my Port St. Lucie hotel last night. There were at least a dozen of police cars in the parking lot, and believe it or not they weren’t dragging shirtless men from their rooms like you see on Cops. Judging by the many K-9 cars (and the sometimes enthusiastic barking I heard from nearby rooms) I take it some sort of training was going on.
This morning I rode the elevator down with a cop toting a sweet bicycle and we struck up a conversation. He works (or did work) as a school resource officer in the Miami-Dade School System and has family in Southport. In fact his cousin, Sandy Spencer, was just elected mayor of Southport.
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