My Week This Week in Review

This is turning out to be a really long post. There's quite a varied “menu” for everyone tonight, with topics including a PowerBook G4, my trip to see the Morning Meeting on KMOX, installing a Wi-Fi Network, some odds and ends, a good improvement on my broadband connection and even a few comments on the Reagan funeral. Read on if that sounds interesting.

This week has been a busy one, but busy in a good way. On Monday, I went over to the Apple Store to buy a replacement for my aging Dell laptop. The replacement comes in the form of a PowerBook G4 12” with SuperDrive (1.33 GHz) — this system seems to combine an ideal set of tradeoffs between power and size, providing a system that is quite fast but fits in my briefcase so that I can carry it around easily. Mega thanks go to Kevin, who provided me with information about his experience using the 12” PB. While I was there, I took advantage of the substantially discounted .Mac subscription, the $99 off printer rebate (to get the HP 5850 wireless printer for only $50) and the available “Incase” case that is designed to be thin enough to fit in another case… my briefcase.

On Wednesday, of course, I spent the morning in Kirkwood watching the KMOX broadcast mentioned in my previous post. As I commented on that post, it was an amazing event. Bill Sammon autographed a copy of his book Misunderestimated for me, and Charles Brennon autographed the receipt (not wanting to sign someone else's book). While waiting for Mr. Sammon to finish signing the book I got a chance to talk to both him and Mr. Brennon for a short while. I stood in line and posed a question during the broadcast, which afterward caused Mr. Brennon to come over and talk to me for a second again (he seems just as nice in person as he does on the radio). The broadcast will be shown on TV on C-SPAN 2 on Sunday, June 20 (I'm not sure of the time yet) — if you're interested, I'm the person posing the very last question, assuming it makes the cut for C-SPAN.

Thursday, I spent the afternoon adding a wireless router to my office network. While a Wireless Access Point (WAP) would have made a lot more sense, I needed another switch, and a Linksys Wireless router includes a switch in addition to a WAP for the same price as just the Linksys WAP. The Linksys Wireless 54G Router installs pretty easily into an existing routed network. Just plug a standard ethernet cable coming from the other router into the fourth port of the router, disable the DHCP server on the wireless router and change its IP address so that it doesn't conflict with the wired router… and presto!

Today, I did a house call for a client — cleaning up her computer and returning her son's computer which had been dropped off to me for repairs earlier this week. Everything went well, and AdAware blasted a record (from my experience) 735 adware, malware and spyware programs from her computer. That should help a lot.

While I was there I also looked up available broadband services for her. She's about 11,000 feet from the DSL CO, meaning she can get SBC Yahoo! DSL, although it might not be the fastest. I then checked on Charter Pipeline, which was also available. At that point, I noticed that Pipeline's speed had been upped from 2 Mbps to 3 Mbps and decided to give Charter a call when I finished.

Before doing that I followed up on a speed test I had run yesterday and confirmed that my modem was only running at 765 Kbps instead of the promised 2 Mbps. So, I checked my modem's status page and it turned out I had been reprovisioned back down to the now non-existant 765 Kbps plan that costs $3 more than the faster plan I thought I should have. That explains why my bill didn't drop $3 starting in March like it was suppose to. Fortunately, the rep I got at Charter fixed my account settings, reprovisioned the modem and supposedly prorated my bill. Broadband Reports' Speed Test and CNet's Speed Test both seem to confirm that everything is now up to snuff. An extra megabit over my previous 2 Mbps connection is a real treat!

Tonight I took it easy, just doing a few minor projects like moving some of the final data off my old server and onto ServerForest. Then I watched a part of the Reagan memorial at the Reagan Library on C-SPAN. I found Michael Reagan's eulogy especially touching. I was also impressed by the Biblically strong sounding pastor of the Reagans. It is unusual to hear a prayer “in Jesus name” and speeches including many references to Christ from even pastors, if they are given the opportunity to do a big public event. This pastor did those things, and that was certainly nice for a change.

So, that's my week. I type this as I lay on my bed, getting ready to turn off the PB and call it a night. How was your week?