![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Heat, Networks, and Cleaning
Sep. 21st, 2003 07:22 pmToo, too hot today. Almost a hundred degrees according to the weather report, with almost exactly the same forecast for tomorrow. Not why I live in Berkeley. Bleh.
Of course I was running around in the heat for a couple of hours this afternoon, heading to downtown and back (and back and back).
Yesterday night, you see, I was doing some cleaning, since we're going to have some folks poking around the house tomorrow to appraise it. I figured it'd be best to at the least have the Junk Room navigable since they'll need to get to the far walls for measurement.
As part of the cleaning I decided to move my wall of computer stuff which acts as our network hub from a peninsula that juts out into the Junk Room to a more rational corner (where my desk used to be, as it happens, but which is now vacant since my move to the furnace I laughingly call my office). I tried to do the move without unplugging anything at first, so I wouldn't interrupt![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kimberly_a's netsurfing, but after a few minutes I realized the futility of this, when I should really take the movement as an opportunity to clean up all the dangling cords.
So, I unplugged all the computer equipment, moved it to its new corner, then started wiring it all back together, plugging it in, and turning it back on. And the Apple Airport Base Station, our wireless hub, never came back up right.
It turns out that Apple did a poor job manufacturing these early Base Stations. To cut corners they used a severely substandard capacitor, and just about a year after the base stations came out, these capacitors starting popping. For a while Apple ran a super-secret replacement program, where they were replacing base stations even out of warranty if someone called in and revealed they knew the secret code word by explaining the particular configuration of lights which related to this crappy manufacture. But, from what I read on the net, as of this March or so they decided they'd helped their customers out enough, and anyone else who had one of their base stations fail because of their cost cutting was SOL.
So today I braved the heat to find a new wireless hub. I was at first planning to get a new Apple Airport, because I knew it'd work with everything, but after one of the Mac stores in the area turned out to have gone out of bussiness, and the other revealed itself as closed on Sundays, I started looking at other options. I finally decided upon a Linksys Wireless Hub which also acts as a NAT router and a hub. It's very nice because it takes over the job of several pieces of electronics I was previously using, and thus simplifies the whole network.
Unfortunately after installing the new hub it took a couple of hours to get the three wireless clients we have, each using a different card, to agree to work. But, everything seems kosher now.
So since it's been back to cleaning the Junk Room, which is 90% done now. I finally quit for a bit because it's too damned hot.
Of course I was running around in the heat for a couple of hours this afternoon, heading to downtown and back (and back and back).
Yesterday night, you see, I was doing some cleaning, since we're going to have some folks poking around the house tomorrow to appraise it. I figured it'd be best to at the least have the Junk Room navigable since they'll need to get to the far walls for measurement.
As part of the cleaning I decided to move my wall of computer stuff which acts as our network hub from a peninsula that juts out into the Junk Room to a more rational corner (where my desk used to be, as it happens, but which is now vacant since my move to the furnace I laughingly call my office). I tried to do the move without unplugging anything at first, so I wouldn't interrupt
kimberly_a's netsurfing, but after a few minutes I realized the futility of this, when I should really take the movement as an opportunity to clean up all the dangling cords.So, I unplugged all the computer equipment, moved it to its new corner, then started wiring it all back together, plugging it in, and turning it back on. And the Apple Airport Base Station, our wireless hub, never came back up right.
It turns out that Apple did a poor job manufacturing these early Base Stations. To cut corners they used a severely substandard capacitor, and just about a year after the base stations came out, these capacitors starting popping. For a while Apple ran a super-secret replacement program, where they were replacing base stations even out of warranty if someone called in and revealed they knew the secret code word by explaining the particular configuration of lights which related to this crappy manufacture. But, from what I read on the net, as of this March or so they decided they'd helped their customers out enough, and anyone else who had one of their base stations fail because of their cost cutting was SOL.
So today I braved the heat to find a new wireless hub. I was at first planning to get a new Apple Airport, because I knew it'd work with everything, but after one of the Mac stores in the area turned out to have gone out of bussiness, and the other revealed itself as closed on Sundays, I started looking at other options. I finally decided upon a Linksys Wireless Hub which also acts as a NAT router and a hub. It's very nice because it takes over the job of several pieces of electronics I was previously using, and thus simplifies the whole network.
Unfortunately after installing the new hub it took a couple of hours to get the three wireless clients we have, each using a different card, to agree to work. But, everything seems kosher now.
So since it's been back to cleaning the Junk Room, which is 90% done now. I finally quit for a bit because it's too damned hot.
