Cisco Linksys only has, oh, eleventy million different routers, and guess what? Each one has a slightly different menu configuration. So what do you do if you want to walk someone how to configure their Cisco Linksys wireless router over the phone, and you’ve never seen their router configuration menus before?

Simple. Use what Cisco Linksys support folks use: a Cisco Linksys router menu simulator!

Here’s a link to all of them. Enjoy!

http://ui.linksys.com/

Someone once said that there’s no substitute for experience. I can get behind that. For example, I’ve been working with personal computers for about 30 years now, and was blessed with sentience a few years before the personal computer boom cranked up to full-swing.

Today, I wake up every morning and read yet another breathless column in Engadget (okay, so they’re more tongue-in-cheek than breathless fanboys) about some brilliant new gizmo or other on the cusp of being turned loose upon a society whose gadget-lust is becoming harder and harder to satisfy. Even ten years ago, the smartphone was regarded as a miraculous conception which represented the engineering equivalent to summiting Everest and whose hefty price tag once made them the exclusive purview of the priveleged few. I find it at the same time amazing and disquieting that the release of a new smartphone garners from a jaded and saturated public little more than a disinterested yawn.

But with each new deliverance of miraculous brilliance upon the consumer electronics landscape comes those that must try to sell them to the public.

Enter Marketing.

One might think that thirty-odd years of having to pitch new technology to the general consuming public would’ve made these people a bit more creative. Sadly, this is not the case, and it was a recent iPad commercial that really drove the point home.

I was watching a “What is iPad?” commercial (watching commercials is something I rarely do nowadays thanks to another miraculous advent: the DVR), during which, one of the “Here’s what you can do with this thing” examples focused on education. Specifically, it showed little Johnny’s little fingers not where they normally are–up his nose–but rather, scribbling some arithmetic onto the iPad’s mock-chalkboard screen:

4 + 6 = 16. Huh. I personally thought it was 23.

Of course, Apple includes educational software in its phalanx of applications to help us consumers justify parting with the outrageous sum of money this thing commands–because at this point in the iPad’s lifecycle, purchasing one requires a pretty significant outlay of liquid assets.

I know this is not new. In fact, this looks fetchingly familiar. Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah–I know where I’ve seen this before! On TV about 27 years ago, when Commodore was pitching the VIC-20! Only then, DVRs were 20 years away from practicality and even a VCRs price-tag represented a not-trivial percentage of the average household’s monthly income in 1982, so I had to watch it live, in a commercial break during Barney Miller:

a^2 + b^2 = nosebleed.

Cliché alert: Aah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Personally, I find the inclusion of educational software titles in commercials for gee-whiz gizmos utterly laughable. Why?

Sure, mister, showing the gizmo helping little Johnny learn his ABCs may score some points with your better half, and depending on who wears the pants in the house (y’know, the pants in whose pocket is nestled the spending instruments: credit cards, checkbooks, cash, or PayPal passwords), may even tip the scales far enough over so that running out to the store and buying one won’t land you on the sofa for a week’s worth of fitful, solo snoozing. So tell the wifey anything you like, but I will guaran-$#^@&*-tee you that there is one place that Daddy’s new, pretty, delicate, $699-plus-tax iPad man-toy will never, ever end up. And that place is the jam-smeared virus-laden paws of his seven-year-old, even if he does need to learn his times-tables.

Pitching a new Über-gadget by showing off what educational benefits it can give the household’s domesticated booger factories is like trying to sell Corvettes by pitching to the wife how quickly one can get to the grocery store and back.

Anyone who has had to endure the displeasure of struggling through a customer support call with a completely unintelligible customer service representative in Bangalore should be watching this legislation with interest: A new bill before the House gives outsourcing American companies a hard time. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill requiring that companies transferring calls to an overseas call center disclose that fact, and pay a tax of 25 cents per call transferred.

Hear hear!

I for one would be delighted to get those calls back to being handled in the United States, by native English-speaking and Spanish-speaking reps. I don’t even call tech support anymore unless I need an RMA because I rarely can understand the person on the other end of the phone. Even calls to American Express and other companies with other large customer-service organizations are being handled overseas, and not just by India anymore: Romania is a top call-center magnet in, and Sirius/XM has their call center in balmy Jamaica (ask me how I know).

In a complete fit of incredulity, in this article, TollFreeForwarding.com states:

“It will cost jobs while aiding the continued destruction of American wealth and influence. As an employer, it is prohibitively expensive to do business in this country, primarily because the talent pool is tiny due to our poor educational system. Even in a down economy, American technology companies have difficulty finding well-trained individuals who are prepared to work at the pace of international business.”

File that one under Oh Puh-LEEAZE!

Are you kidding me!? It’s America’s shitty talent pool? Really? Bullshit. You left out an important bit from that statement: …because the talent pool [who is willing to work for minimum wage and no benefits] is tiny due to our poor educational system. Yeah. Our educational system teaches kids to demand a living wage and health insurance, I guess that’s what makes it so poor. As a product of the American educational system–and as one who started their career in a BlueBehemoth call center, supporting OS/2–I find that quote highly offensive, and completely unfounded.

I realize that over in India it takes a Master’s degree from Bangalore U. to ensure one is qualified enough to ask someone if they’ve rebooted their computer (because that’s the next step on the script), but why don’t we give our American men and women a crack at it, ‘kay? I’m pretty sure they can handle it…

Despite what my iPhone-enabled friends might think, I don’t actually dislike the iPhone. I have made it very clear that I very much dislike AT&T, and I couldn’t care less how cool the iPhone is, I’m never going back.

The latest crop of smartphones out there on Big Red’s network: the Pre, the Pixi, the Droid (both Eris and Motorola), even my own BlackBerry Storm 2 come close, but cannot quite replicate the iPhone experience. And they certainly have not been able to replicate the runaway success of the iTunes and the App store.

In a classic understatement, a few days ago AT&T itself admitted that it had a problem with “overpenetration of the iPhone into the New York City market.” And what is really intriguing is the growing number of users out there who love their iPhone, but hate AT&T. Even more intruguing is that there are spots on AT&T’s own message boards where iPhone users are bitterly complaining about AT&T’s poor service, where some users are going as far as saying that if an alternative–any alternative–comes along, they’ll jump at it and tell AT&T to go pound sand. Yes, I know that these people can jailbreak their iPhones–and subsequently void their warranty–and switch to T-Mobile or some other GPRS/GSM carrier. But most iPhone users, it seems, aren’t willing.

The latest exclusivity-ending rumor to circulate quotes analysts saying that the iPhone will come to CDMA networks like Verizon’s as early as Summer, and that Apple is arranging its Asian supply chains to include CDMA chips into the mix. I can only hope they’re right. I would love to have an iPhone–if for no other reason than to take the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” path. But I will never, ever, ever go back to AT&T to do it. Not ever.

I really hope AT&T’s exclusivity stranglehold on the iPhone is, in fact, ending much sooner rather than later. I wouldn’t exactly say that the arrangement is killing Cupertino, but I will go so far as to say that Apple could be selling a lot more iPhones to CDMA subscribers on Sprint and Verizon–when a customer leaves AT&T like a rat leaving a sinking ship,  they have to buy a new iPhone. And a sale is a sale, no matter what; I know apple hasn’t discounted that possibility.

Ultimately, non-exclusivity could work out in everybody’s favor, actually–Cupertino could sell a lot more iPhones, and iPhone users would be spread more evenly throughout all the carriers, leveling out the traffic and relieving their burden–they wouldn’t have to work quite so hard to satisfy their remaining, loyal (albeit misguided) customer base.

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?

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.

I have two “What was I thinking!?” entries to report.

I’m covering KJ German’s Wednesday night show for a few weeks while he’s off in Germany. Normally I like his Wednesday night show; it’s at one of those very nicely-appointed, hip, trendy, alcoholic Slurpee™ bars; y’know the ones, with the good food, great drinks, and typically a pleasant atmosphere. But I swear there must’ve been a full moon out last night: every lunatic, ass-hole, and crazy was out en masse and they all came to my show.

It makes me question why on Earth I was so eager to get back into the Karaoke business, especially considering that I have a full-time job besides. After last night, I’m totally sick of Karaoke and I fucking hate people–and if I ever see another microphone again, I’m going to throw up.

I want to be alone for a week.

I upgraded my BlackBerry Storm (1) from OS 4.7.whatever to 5.0.0.230, the latest “leaked” OS from RIM, and re-activated it on my account in place of my Curve.

There are not enough developers in all of Christendom that can turn that phone into anything more than a shiny toy. If the Storm 2 uses the same OS–and by all accounts, it will–then it will be no better.

OS 5.0.0.230 updates the User Experience with such baubles as flick-scrolling (a la the iPhone), the text input is faster and more precise, and predictive input gets kicked up a notch. They say they’ve improved the browser too, but I sure can’t tell.

And sadly, RIM will never, ever, ever make voice-assisted dialing not totally suck, and the OS–being a pre-release and all–is still fraught with annoying and aggravating bugs.

In this case, I did know what I was thinking: I was so caught up in Storm 2 fever that I wanted to preview the OS on my Storm 1. But, unfortunately, it was kind of a let-down.

I await the arrival of the Pre and the Droid on Verizon with heightened interest, because the Storm 2 has been completely eliminated from the running. My next “last-phone-I’ll-ever-own” is going to have a real fucking keyboard. Period.

One of these two phones is going to become the latest “last phone I’ll ever own:”

I bought a Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm (original) about two months ago. Needless to say, I’m back using my BlackBerry Curve; I just couldn’t get used to the typing delay on the Storm. Its operating system is slow and buggy, written for the likes of the Curve and the 83xx rather than the Storm; consequently, because of the higher demands of the Storm, it crashed a lot.

The Storm 2 promises to be an all-new experience, with BlackBery OS 5.0, and the hit-and-miss SurePress “button” under the floating glass screen has been replaced with a slick piezoelectric sensor arrangement, promising multi-touch capability a-la the iPhone (a phone which everyone but iPhone users love to hate).

The Storm 2 has WiFi capability–long clamored-for by Verizon subscribers, but something I really don’t care much about, as Verizon’s 3G EV-DO data network is so fast that I don’t wont for it on the devices I already have. However, Engadget has rumored that the Storm 2 will have MiFi capability–which means that the Storm 2 is, essentially, a mobile wireless access point, with which I share the staggeringly-fast 3G EV-DO Internet connection with up to five laptops, which would connect to my Storm using their 802.11 WiFi:

So I would be a walking WiFi hotspot. That is freaking cool.

If this is actually true, then this device is chock-full of win and it will be my next “last phone I will ever own.”

But there’s also a new contender on the block: The Droid, by Motorola, is coming exclusively to Verizon. Its claim to fame? It’s not the fact that it has a a fold-away keyboard–like a number of smartphones these days–but rather, it boasts version 2.0 of the Google Android operating system. While BlackBerry has an App store, Android is completely open-source and I can finally have a phone I can develop my very own apps for. (and don’t none of you WinMo users tout the ability to write apps for your phones–WinMo is buggier than a bait store and I’d sooner own an iPhone before I owned a WinMo phone.)

I’ll wait until Christmas. Then I’ll take the plunge with one of these two phones. But either way, I will have a new phone come New Years.

Light Peak Technology looks like the most promising new technology in the computing arena since the invention of the Universal Serial Bus (USB). I can’t wait to see what they do with it!

As an aside, I can’t help but notice that that technical folks have an uncanny ability to make the most breathtaking technical breakthroughs and innovations sound about as exciting as a colonoscopy. No matter; we already know that Intel has a great marketing arm–I just love their “Rock Star” commercial: