I know this has probably been floating around the Intrawebs for some time, but I still got a really big kick out of it:

I’m pretty sure this very poster was hanging in Capt. Ramsey’s stateroom on the Alabama.

Ooooooooh-ooo-ooo-ooooooooooooh!

Not bad singing on a journal, eh?

My mother-in-law got me a 2010 Sodoku calendar for Christmas. Not having the heart to tell her that the last time I tried to solve a Soduku puzzle I got an almost uncontrollable nosebleed, I bought myself a Jeopardy! calendar instead.It’s pretty neat, with each day’s question having a particular dollar value, lines on it to jot down your weekly winnings, and Final Jeopardy! occurring on Sunday.

It’s kicking my ass!

I used to fancy myself pretty good at Jeopardy, but because this is a desk calendar and not the actual game show, I’ve made a few rules (since the calendar came with none of its own):

• As the only contestant, I am compelled to buzz in and must answer every question.
• I cannot use any “lifelines” (e.g. no googling stuff, or asking co-workers).
• Instead of five seconds to submit an answer, like on the show, I have until I leave work to submit an answer.

Because I must answer every question, the hard ones are killing me. Naturally, they’re worth more, and when I get them right, Jackpot! But when I get them wrong, I almost assuredly end up in the red when I get to Final Jeopardy at the end of the week and have nothing to wager.

I haven’t skipped ahead in the calendar–that would give me an unfair advantage–but I’m wondering if there are Daily Doubles on the holidays. That would be neat.

So here’s my winnings so far:

Week ending 1/3: $1,600
Week ending 1/10: -$3.600
Week ending 1/17: $0

So far, I have no net winnings. Boo.

Guess I’m not going on Jeopardy! anytime soon…

I’m a voracious Engadget reader, so when Barnes and Noble introduced the Nook right before Christmas, I was intrigued. My commute takes up four hours of my day, and since I’d rather carry a gizmo than a bunch of books around (to each their own, right?), I’d been investigating various electronic baubles to do the job.

I’d been looking at the Amazon Kindle 2 for a while, but until now, I hadn’t had the courage to take the plunge–$260 was a lot of dough for me to spend on a doohicky that only read books, and I already have a BlackBerry Storm 2 that–which, when coupled with Mobipocket Reader, lets me read e-books just fine.

Only it’s not as fine as “just fine” could be.

The screen is tiny–even though it’s big for a phone, it’s tiny for an e-book–and staring at it for hours on end resulted in some serious eyestrain for me. After reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol on it, I was less than impressed with the whole “e-book on my phone” thing.

So despite Engaget’s optimistic-yet-critical review of the Nook, I went over to Barnes & Noble to check it out.

My impressions:

• The thing was slow. Not just slow, but slooooooooooow. It had to really think about the direction given it by the user–just like Engadget said it did, but I had to see it for myself nonetheless.
• The interface was cool, with the color iPhone-like screen on the bottom and a beautiful E-Ink display on the top. But that lower display is hella bright, and very, very distracting until it shuts off after 30 seconds.
• The foreward to the Nook was written by Dave Barry (whose writing style he obviously stole from Conman). It was hilarious. Favorite line was the opener: “Congratulations on your new Nook! We’re sure it will give you many years of trouble-free enjoyment until next week, when we come out with a newer version.”
• Barnes & Noble’s website did not make it even remotely obvious which of its titles were Nook-friendly and which weren’t. Boo. This is in very stark contrast to Amazon’s Kindle e-book section.

But the real kicker, and why I don’t have a Nook right now? Barnes & Noble are completely out of stock, and they will only start shipping again February 1st. The petulent child in me demanding instant gratification threw a temper tantrum as I dragged it out the door of Barnes & Noble.

But upon further reflection, it gave me an opportunity to sit down and compare–really compare–Amazon’s Kindle 2 to the Nook

Amazon's Kindle 2

Barnes & Noble's Nook

• The Kindle 2 doesn’t have Wi-Fi, like the Nook. But it does have its wireless service provided by Sprint PCS–unlike the Nook, who gets theirs from AT&T. Boo.
• The Kindle 2 has a built-in PDF reader, as does the Nook. But where you have to plug your Nook into your PC with a USB cable and transfer the PDFs manually, you can send PDFs over-the-air to the Kindle 2–just by e-mailing them.
• The Kindle 2’s battery goes about twice the distance of the Nook’s a week as opposed to four days.
• The Kindle 2 is thinner and lighter.
• I like real buttons. The Kindle has them, and the Nook does not.
• The Kindle’s content-buying website is organized a thousands times better than the Nook’s.
• The Kindle will read your books to you via text-to-speech. A kitschy feature, true, and that’s why it’s at the bottom of the list. But it seems cute, and I was disappointed that the Nook didn’t do the same.
• All the reviews said that the Nook still has several major bugs to work out. And after playing with it for an hour, I can tell that it does, too.

In the end, I purchased a Kindle 2, a leather case, and a light. I can’t wait until they get here!

Well, by my wristwatch, it’s about 52 minutes into 2010. Happy New Year!

That would make this the very first journal entry in The Corsair Journal of 2010. Fireworks burst outside as I write this entry, and my head is swimming with a combination of several liquors that I have consumed during the evening’s “festivities.”

As I try to compose this journal entry (I still $#&@*! hate the word blog), it would seem pretty obvious that I’ve made pretty “merry” in the early hours of January 1, 2010. Suffice to say, I didn’t go to any parties. Rather, I stayed home and played board games with my family.

However, despite winning American History Trivial Pursuit (even with a good dose of Smirnoff and Jack coursing through my veins I’m still a trivia whiz; that just goes to show you exactly what a geek I am), I feel I’ve embarrassed myself pretty good.

I’ve always been particularly careful in front of my step-kids, especially considering that their legal father was always considered a fair man with the bottle. While I do not posses the highly-trained liver that my stepkids’ father possesses, I think I hold my booze pretty good. I’ve always been a happy drunk and with liquor in my system, and have a very easy laugh.

I can only hope that with the light of day, and the hangover I have surely earned through the early morning’s activities sequestering me to the master bath, that my wife and stepkids don’t judge me too too harshly.

I want to wish all of my loyal readers a happy 2010. May the new decade bring you much peace, happiness, and success. And may it bring me a hangover cure that wasn’t borne from Southern lore–where I come from, a Pepsi and a Moon Pie is the most tried-and-true hangover cure there is. Well, all I have to ring in the New Year is Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi, and I don’t have any Moon Pies. I’ll have to go to Publix and grab myself a 12-pack of RC and some Little Debbie Swiss Rolls.

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.