I like reading The Boston Diaries–my friend Conman’s blog (damn, I still hate that word!)–but find that a lot of the more technical information in it is way over my head. This owes largely to the fact that Conman is a highly experienced and very talented programmer and network architect; because I hope to absorb even a tiny bit of his vast network experience, I read all of his articles and exercise my brain muscle.

Conman once told me that he doesn’t necessarily post because his articles are interesting to his readers; rather, his articles are more or less a reference notebook for himself–that just so happens to come in the shape of a Blog. Some people use a Moleskine. Conman uses a Blog. Makes sense. Plus, you can’t Google a Moleskine. Yet.

Sometimes Conman’s more technical entries serve to guide other developers and network administrators, because Comnan is always tackling some very obscure problem or another. Conman also posts his problems, and their subsequent solutions, in very great detail–which is perfect for those who search the vast Intrawebs for the solutions to obscure problems. That Conman writes very well and has a sharp wit is a very big plus.

Anyway, I hope the search spiders pick this article up too, because this problem really drove me bananas until I figured out what was going on.

My home network consists of several PCs and computing devices, representing today’s modern family: A Windows 2003 Server, acting as Domain Controller, serving up files, DNS, and DHCP; a desktop and laptop for me, a family PC in the kitchen, a Wi-Fi laptop for my daughter, and, when he’s home from college, a Wi-Fi laptop for my teenage stepson. Additionally, we have an XBOX 360 for my teenage stepson (when he’s home from college), and a Nintendo Wii for everyone else, both of which connect to the LAN via Wi-Fi. Two recent additions are an old–but serviceable–Dell desktop in the bedroom that is destined to be a home-theater media server,and my BlackBerry Storm 2. Lastly, I have an HP OfficeJet 6500 Wi-Fi all-in-one paper handler to round out the network.

Recently, I switched from AT&T DSL to Comcast Cable Broadband. I used to have a Westell VersaLink Residential DSL gateway/router/Wi-Fi Access Point, but replaced it with my Motorola SurfBoard SB5101 Cable Modem, coupled to a Netgear WGT624 v3 broadband Wi-Fi switching router, which I happened to have from a previous address when I had cable broadband before, downstream.

Netgear WGT624 v3

The WGT624 v3 is a pretty nice little access point; however, the last time I’d employed it, it was in a small apartment, and then only had my desktop wired to it, and my laptop WI-Fi’d to it. My network has grown quite a bit since then.

The VersaLink from AT&T handled everything just fine and then some. It was as customizable as I needed it to be, even when I did fancy stuff like route VNC to my desktop at home so I could use it  remotely. The WGT624 is no different and handles custom routing easily. But the one little gotcha that had me up for two days tearing my hair out was DHCP.

(click here for a newbie’s introduction to DHCP)

The little micro DHCP servers typically found in home broadband routers only serve up three things: IP addresses, gateways and DNS. Because I have a Windows Active Directory domain at home, I prefer to use my own server for DHCP and DNS; this gives me far greater flexibility over stuff like lease times, DNS servers (Windows Active Directory is heavily dependent on DNS, particularly a local DNS server), NTP servers, and WINS servers (yes, I still use WINS; if you use Windows, WINS is a sad fact of life).

On my Westell VersaLink, this was not a problem; I simply disabled its DHCP server and was on my merry way. However, when I attempted the same thing on my WGT624 v3 broadband router,  I exposed a flaw in the unit’s firmware.

Out of the many devices I have on my network, only three are actually wired to it–the rest are all wireless clients. When I sunset my VersaLink and put up the WGT624 in its place, I was careful to keep the SSID, encryption, and passphrase all the same so that I wouldn’t have to run around the house reconfiguring everybody.

While the two wired DHCP client PCs were getting IP address leases from my Windows 2003 DHCP server, none of my wireless clients were.

I tried everything to troubleshoot the problem. I updated the router’s firmware. I turned off wireless encryption. I changed channels. I changed fragmentation thresholds and preamble settings. No matter what I tried, when the WGT624’s internal DHCP server was on, it would pass out addresses to my wireless clients. When it was disabled, none of my wireless clients were getting address leases from my normal DHCP server. If I hard-coded IP information into my wireless clients, they’d work perfectly–which meant that they were connected to the access point just fine. They just weren’t getting an IP address.

It was as if the router were simply not passing the DHCP broadcasts to the rest of the LAN–but that was impossible; this would be the first Wi-Fi access point switch in my years of networking experience that flatly refused to pass along DHCP requests to the rest of the LAN segment.

Out of ideas, I started this thread on the Netgear forums, hoping another Netgear user may have encountered this rather bizarre issue before me.

I finally stumbled across this page on Netgear’s site that has nothing to do with DHCP as it relates to the WGT624, but rather with using the WGT624 as a plain ol’ Wi-Fi access point on an existing Ethernet segment. It says, in little text as a footnote to the article:

DHCP configuration may not work reliably because the wireless router/access point may not correctly relay DHCP information from the router. Workaround: Use static IPs on the wireless PCs.

You’ve got to be kidding.

Then the thread bore fruit: one of the contributors hypothesized with me that it must be an unresolved bug in the firmware.

So rather than fix the problem, Netgear decided rather to fix the WGT624 DHCP problem the military way: “work around it instead of work through it.” What network administrator in their right mind is going to put up with hard-coding IP information for wireless clients!? Especially given how very inexpensive and competitive Wi-Fi access point/broadband routers have become?

Here’s how I solved the problem: I bought a Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router. It was less than fifty bucks, and it passes DHCP requests like a champ.

Linksys WRG54G2

Also, as part of the solution, I will consider carefully buying another Netgear product in the future.

I really hope all the search engine spiders pick this up, because as of the date of this writing there is not yet a comprehensive review available for BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 for the BlackBerry Storm.

I’ve been using BeeJiveIM since it was called JiveTalk and used it on my Curve 8330; having one of my brilliant, yet rare, flashes of foresight, I knew that phones in my world are not perennial things and thus I sprung for the $29.99 license (it’s now $14.95) that lets you move JiveTalk, or BeeJiveIM, or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days, from phone to phone. It’s a nice little product that allows the user to connect to all the major IM services with their smartphone: AIM, Yahoo!, Windows Live, Google Talk, even Jabber–a boon for me, as Jabber is our primary method of IM.

THE VERDICT: SAVE YOUR MONEY

I began using BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 on my BlackBerry Storm 2 (with OS 5.0.0.328) a few days ago, following an interminable wait for the product to exit Beta. I used its Beta on my Storm 1, and the Beta was about as abyssmal a product as you can get. For a while there, the Beta for the Storm wasn’t even available for download from beejive.com. I downloaded BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 with a minimum of muss and/or fuss, it installed properly, and I was able to transfer my existing license over to it, all very easily. Sadly, that’s where the party ended.

My impression after a few days? No software product has ever made me want to give my BlackBerry Storm 2 top billing on a segment of Will It Blend? more than BeeJiveIM 2.0.1. The product is so unbelievably bad that I think I would have been far better off simply smearing the phone with my own feces and burying it in peat moss for a month–at least the possibility would exist that something beautiful may grow out of it.

BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 is buggier than a bait store in the Everglades in summertime; in my opinion, the product should never have exited Beta. It has some really nice features that, if they worked, would be fabulous.

But they don’t.

Bug #1: there’s no way to disable those obnoxious buddy icons. On a smartphone, display real estate and processing power are precious, precious commodities and to squander them on making buddy icons display and scroll is inane. Oh sure, there’s a check box in “Preferences” that suggests that BeeJiveIM may stop displaying the buddy icons. But it won’t.

One of my major complaints about BeeJiveIM for the Curve was the fact that it sucked down battery power like a frat boy sucks down Old Milwaukee. I accepted that fact because it was a halfway decent product, but BeeJive IM 2.0.1 is even worse. If you keep it running, talking to the network over EV-DO, your fully-charged battery will be depleted within half a day. Aah, but BeeJive added a fix: The Storm 2 has Wi-Fi capability, and BeeJiveIM can allegedly use the far more battery-conscious Wi-Fi radio to talk.

And it will, too. For about a half hour. After that, any status change will result in connection errors; to change your status, you have to shut down the software and restart it. Boo.

Just about everything I tried to do with BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 made me want to repeatedly smash my Storm against my desk. But I didn’t; it’s not the Storm’s fault that BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 is a horrible product, so I refuse to take my enormous frustration and disappointment out on my Storm. The truth is that there are so many bugs in this product that it is pointless to continue the review, and if I were BeeJive, I would be embarrassed to give this product away–much less charge $15.00 for it.

And why the low price point all of a sudden!? If a user can afford a BlackBerry and the hugely expensive plan that goes with it, they can pony up $30 for a do-all meta-messenger like BeeJiveIM. I plunked down my $30 and was happy to do it. If this product actually worked, my God, it would be a bargain at twice the price. I personally think it’s Apple, once again, ruining the smartphone market for everyone by insisting that developers slave away for peanuts; if you pay $5.00 for an app, you’ll get just that–an app worth $5.00. I also have a sneaky suspicion that BeeJive is pouring its limited resources into the iPhone version, making us BlackBerry users (once again) feel like the ugly girl at the Prom that nobody wants to dance with. But I digress.

BeeJive, if you’re reading this, take this gigantic steaming pile of crap called BeeJiveIM 2.0.1 for the BlackBerry Storm back to the drawing board and don’t come back without a version 3. And make sure everything works this time, mmmmkay?

From this post on the Best of Craigslist. This one was laugh-out-loud, distract your co-workers funny:

Harley rider pre-ride check off list:
1. Comb baseball player goatee and mustache
2. Spend 6+ hours polishing gaudy chrome pieces. Be sure people can read the “Live to Ride–Ride to Live” statement on gas tank lid.
3. Assure suspension can handle at least 560 pounds of rider
4. Pack cell phone and have tow service numbers programmed.
5. perfect the “I’m a Bad-Ass Motherfucker” Harley riding scowl in your rearview mirror (if your Hawg is so equipped).
6. Affix tassels from daughters bicycle to handle bars for added gay appearance.
7. Test flashers for when bike breaks down (99% probability)
8. Put on your wrist brace to help carpal tunnel from all of the unnecessary revving
9. Leather pants
10. Gloves
11. Wrap-around sunglasses
12. Skull cap (German soldier type for the real badasses). Remember to think about the SAFETY aspect/argument of loud pipes, as well as putting that potato chip on your head. The real tough guys here will wear a bandana over their face (some with a skull) to look really scary–ooooh!
13. CAT work boots (new)
14. Leather vest with some “chapter” embroidered on the back, such as “North Chapter of Pig-Fucking Obese Attention Whore Douchebags with Fat Ugly Loud-mouthed Wives”
15. Harley Davidson T-shirt (of course)–because everyone needs to know what shop you paid $40 for a $5 hanes shirt at.
16. Remove baffles from pipes so everyone can hear you going 18mph in 2nd gear at redline (Special note: Most HD motors will break down before hitting 2nd gear and/or redline)
17. Starbucks gift card: This is usually your hangout (how tough).
18. Call friends with similar ridiculous motorcycle (World-War II outdated technology garbage) and pathetic store-bought image (gay pirate from the Castro) attire. Have them attempt to meet you at the Starbucks without breaking down or crashing due to being distracted from looking at themselves in their chrome.
19. Five packs of Marlboro Reds or unfiltered Camels to smoke while riding to look extra-cool.
20. Slam a 6 pack of Zima prior to ride.
21. Saddle bags attached to pick up and store broken parts that fall off bike as you ride/push (if you can call it riding without laughing) that hunk of shit down the road.

I have been a loyal Bellsouth/AT&T DSL subscriber. While I don’t particularly care or AT&T’s wireless service, their DSL high-speed Internet service hasn’t been bad at all. It’s been operating continuously in Casa de Corsair for going on three years now. I’ve only got one problem with the service:

It’s slow.

In truth, it’s not that slow; I get around 6Mbps of download speed, which is more than plenty. However, I only get a paltry 256-512kbps upload. Yes, that’s right. About half a megabit per second data transfer up.

That sucks. Especially when I have to transfer a bunch of large files from home to my office, which I do with some frequency.

Now, being that when I find a service that works, I at least try to stick with it, I  called AT&T Broadband Customer Service and asked if there was any way possible to increase my upload speed.

“Nope,” they said.

Next call: Comcast. I already had a disused Motorola Surfboard SB5101 Cable Modem from a previous stint with Comcast. Their fastest high-speed Internet package: a whopping 12Mbpsdown, plus 2-3Mbps up. And it’s the same price as the DSL I’m currently subscribing to. And that isn’t even their fastest package. Wow.

One problem, though: I’ve had Comcast before at Casa de Pius, and it’s reliability rating always sucked. It’d stay up for a few hours, then go down. Then up again for a day, then go down.

Once again, though, I took the plunge: I ordered their middle-tier package (12 down/2-3 up). $42.95 per month, and $20 for the first six months. Plus, since I already have one of their cable modems, I don’t need a modem rental.

I wired it up. Same $#@^&*! problem. It’d stay up for an hour, then go down for two. Very frustrating. However, I figured it out: the system was miswired. Once I rewired the QnQ cabinet the right way, I’ve had no further difficulty.

So I’m going to try out Comcast High-Speed Internet for a week or two and see what happens.

Butterfly has turned me onto watching The Biggest Loser with her on Tuesday nights; the season finalé of which was on last Tuesday.

For this season, what made the show for me was Abby.

If you follow The Biggest Loser, then you already know the heartbreaking story of Abby Rike. For those who don’t, Abby’s husband, young daughter, and infant son–her entire family–were killed in car crash. Worse, Abby was supposed to be in the van with them.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has thought what I’m about to write; but every time I see Abby, my heart breaks for her. America, collectively, has asked the same question of Abby: How do you recover from a personal tragedy of such staggering proportion?

For Abby, the answer now is simple: “You choose to.”

Abby uttered the most beautiful, inspirational words in an interview, granted during early filming of The Biggest Loser:

“[Throughout my grieving process,] there are times–where I felt I was walking in molasses.

I took 26,000 steps yesterday. Every one of them was a choice.”

I’m reading back the words I just wrote and they look ridiculous. I wish that I had the eloquence to truly relate how powerful those words are, how foundation-shaking. Abby Rike has endured a tragedy so horrifying and heartbreaking that it completely defies my meager ability to articulate the profound sadness I feel when I hear her talk about it.

Yet Abby Rike chooses to get up, every morning, and face another day without the beautiful family she loved. How on God’s earth she finds the strength every day to choose to do so is a complete mystery to me.

Abby Rike is an inspiration.

I remember why I don’t like commuting via public transit:

It takes forever.

I left my house this morning at 6:45. I got to work at 10:00. Now, granted, had I not gotten on the wrong bus and had to double back, I would have gotten there by 9:00. That’s still two full hours on public transit.

I’ll tell you, though, it’s far better than the way I was doing public transit before. Palm Tran Route 40 to the West Palm Beach Intramodal Transit Station (whew!) is not even a quarter full–unlike Route 62, which is always jam-packed. It also doesn’t do that whole stop-every-200-feet thing to let more people on and off.

I got a whole bunch of e-books for my Storm and enjoyed reading a book (such as it is), for a change during my commute. Heck, I have two hours to fill, after all… I can’t work during all of them…

Wow. Two hours each way. That’s four hours a day, 20 hours a week, roughly 86.5 hours a month, or 1,040 hours a year. Or, 43.3 days.

Just commuting to and from work.

Wow.

Of course, if I drove, my commute is about an 45 minutes. That’s about 390 hours a year, or 16 days.

I decided to start taking Tri-Rail to work again. After crunching the numbers, I still can’t beat Tri-Rail to ease the financial pain of my 80-mile-a-day commute, even though I know that Tri-Rail doesn’t run on time most of the time.

Helping to ease that pain is the fact that Palm Tran just opened a brand-new Park and Ride lot about a mile away from my house, right behind the Fresh Market at The Mall at Wellington Green. This lot serves Palm Tran Route 40,  which goes practically non-stop to the West Palm Beach Tri-Rail Station (now called the West Palm Beach Intramodal Transit Station) in about 35 minutes.

I used to take Route 62 to the Lake Worth station, but I only did that for a few months–there were a couple of very good reasons why I stopped:

• When Tri-Rail updated their schedules about a year ago, Palm Tran did not. Route 62 arrives at the Lake Worth Tri-Rail Station very close to the same time as the trains do. A few minutes little earlier or later by either mode can spell the difference of waiting at the station for up to an hour. A couple of times I’d gotten off the 62 bus at the Lake Worth station just as the Southbound train was pulling away.
• The last westbound Route 62 bus leaves the Lake Worth Tri-Rail station at 6:30pm. Because the bus and train arrive at Lake Worth so close together, If I miss P634 because I have to work a little late, I risk being stranded stranded at the Lake Worth station–Palm Tran 62 and Tri Rail won’t wait for one another.
• I had to ride 62 from its terminus at the Mall at Wellington Green to the Lake Worth Tri-Rail station, which is very close to the other end of its line. It was an obnoxious, bumpy, ride lasting a little less than an hour, and during rush hour it would stop every minute or so. Quite a number of times it was standing-room-only.

Route 40, by contrast, is practiaclly a straight shot to the West Palm Beach Tri-Rail station along Southern Boulevard, a limited-access state road, stopping for passengers only once or twice. The ride is anywhere from 35-40 minutes and arrives about fifteen minutes before the train does, leaving a nice, big buffer for both modes of transit. Plus, the last Route 40 Westbound bus leaves the station at 8:25 pm, reducing the risk of my being stranded. The latest train I’d need to catch is P642 leaving Cypress Creek at 7:14 pm.

Of course, this morning, I got on 40 Westbound and nearly ended up in Belle Glade. Whoops. However, I got off at Palms West Hospital and caught 40 going the other way still made it to work by around 10:00.

After driving to work for the majority of the rainy season, I’d forgotten how nice it was to let someone else do the driving for a change. I slept on the bus. I answered e-mails on the train (thank you, Verizon BroadbandAcces!) . It was a beautiful day, and the trains were running smoothly and on-time.

Here’s hoping it stays that way.

Bobby Bowden, iconic head coach of the Florida State University Seminoles football team, announced that will step down from his head coaching job after this season’s bowl game.

Bowden joined FSU’s football program in 1976 and turned the moribund Seminoles into a college football dynasty. He has 2 national championships, 20 bowl victories, and 315 wins under his belt, rivaling other legendary college coaches such as Bear Bryant and Joe Paterno.

The rivalry between the Seminoles and the University of Miami Hurricanes is equally legendary; while it’s not quite as intense as the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, it is no less fierce. The rivalry currently sees Miami at the top, 31-23.

Doubtless that losses to the Hurricanes so heartbreaking that the games have received their own names–Wide Right I, Wide Right II, Wide Right III, Wide Left I, and Wide Right IV, all lost by a field goal–will haunt Bowden’s dreams until the end of his days.

Even though I rooted against the ‘Noles, Bowden was nonetheless a legend on the gridiron and worthy of great respect. I hope his retirement is a long and happy one.