Maine Tech Geeks

This entry is not about the fact that I didn't get to watch Heroes last night. I have a DVR that recorded it. This entry isn't about the fact that I am in a Hotel in Massachusetts and I didn't get to watch my recorded version of Heroes, which I'm sure will be waiting for me at home in a few days when I get home.

No, this is an entry about the extremely poor state of Wireless Internet connectivity in hotels. I will preface this discussion with a comment that the company I work for actually supplies Wireless connectivity to quite a few hotels, and when I first started, I was on the support rotation. Most hotel chains actually contract out their Wifi systems to third parties. There is quite often an option to brand the portal page; and some chains require that your Wifi system integrates with their own proprietary authentication system.

Generally, the third party will supply hotspot servers, access points, intstallation and a support solution to the hotel, for which the hotel will pay some sort of recurring fee. It's quite often a set amount of money per room after the initial installation charges...

When the user tries to visit a web site, they'll have to go to a portal page where they enter the code that the front desk gave (or sold) to them. At that point, their computer's MAC is registered somewhere for access. The cool thing is that even though you are required to use a web browser (port 80) to authenticate, you are perfectly fine to use other apps, such as games and the like after you're authenticated.

Right this minute, I am connected (via a company laptop) to the hotel wireless system. My laptop has the typical 802.11G wireless adapter, and I apparently am getting four out of five bars of connectivity. That definitely should be fine to watch the latest episode of "Planet Unicorn" (this is for you, Elijah - no not the Old Testament prophet):

or at least last night's episode of Heroes so that I don't have to wait until Friday to watch it!

However, it is not. I can watch about 5 seconds between pauses. That is kind of annoying. The "54MB/s" moniker is definitely a lie in hotels. And, having helped out with hotel support, I will say that there's nothing I can do about it. So in order to fume a little bit, I am going to list out what I think are the drawbacks of the current state of the hotel Wifi universe.

• Becuase of the "wally" nature of hotels, the Wifi signal seems to be attenuated pretty significantly, offering equally poor coverage in all the rooms.
• Hotel Wifi rarely, if ever, has encrypted wireless. Which is good, because I want all of my internet sedition intercepted by the feds in the next room.
• Support is horrible. If your Wifi doesn't work, then you might just as well enjoy a little extra sleep time. I think that this poor support stems from two factors: 1) It's a thankless job that is usually contracted out to people in Missouri or Tuscaloosa or something and 2) The general public is too dumb to use Wifi, so the support people probably are on the verge of suicide most of the time anyway, so why should they care that you can't surf for porn tonight? Incidentally, I'll save you the call: reboot, make sure you're connected to the right network and reboot a few more times. If that doesn't work, then you're probably doing something unsupported.
• VPNs have sporadic success at best. Unfortunately, some of the hardware just won't support your Cisco, PPTP or whatever client you're using. Don't bother calling support; they'll tell you that it's not supported.
• Don't even TRY using a Mac or Linux. They're not supported. (see a trend developing?)

OK, that was a much longer post than I expected... but I needed something to do while NOT watching Heroes. C'est la vie, I suppose.

Posted by Craig at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently there was an article on Slashdot (link is dead, but you get the gist) about how Microsoft should abandon its Vista operating system. According to this article (I am hyperbolically paraphrasing), Vista is a terrible failure, ill conceived, will bring down the Micro$oft empire and bears, on a daily basis, the living spawn of Lucifer. I listen to a lot of technologically left-wing podcasts that pretty much agree with that statement.

No I'm no Micro$haft lover, by any stretch, but I definitely know bias when I hear it. I have been a Linux user since 1999, and a Windows user (at home) since about 2002. I have always loved Linux, but I must say that as a home operating system, VISTA IS AS GOOD AS LINUX. That is a horrid thing to say, but if you just want to plug in your computer and have it work, Vista does the job just fine. In fact, you get a lot of perks over Linux. For instance, all major productivity software that you want to use as an average user will work with almost no thought.

Another statement: VISTA IS AS GOOD AS WINDOWS XP. This is only from my own experience, but I've found Vista to be as good as XP. In fact, I've found Vista to BE XP with pretty much aesthetic changes. I know there are some things under the hood that differentiate Vista and XP, but I have yet to find a program that won't install under Vista that installed under XP.

Even the .NET API that deals with the more inner workings of the OS (i.e. WMI, isolated storage, the entire security model . . . ). The registry is pretty much the same and the user interface is marginally different. Except for the aero interface, which is nice.

One thing that was noticeably different was the time required to move a big file. It would say "calculating the time required..." for what seemed to be a longer time than was required. The recent performance update seems to have cured it. However, rumors indicate that Microsoft insiders have revealed that the file was actually moving during the time calculation display. It's just a matter of perception.

One last thing - everyone is DYING for Vista SP1, as if they think it will redeem the operating system. With the extremely aggressive MS update methodology, service packs are almost a thing of the past. Any security updates and so forth that need to be applied are done on "Patch Tuesday", so the service packs are almost more of a PR thing than an actual necessity.

Remember all of the horrible security flaws that XP had originally (for instance, from the web server being activated by default) - no firewall, no antispyware, no nothing! Well, there haven't been any really notable Vista security issues that I'm aware of.

I'm not a Vista apologist, but people should be realistic... Microsoft not only shouldn't abandon Vista, they would be stupid to... it was 5+ years in the making, and it's a pretty seamless migration from XP.

They should rename it, though, to something more appealing. I prefer "Microsoft Ninja Pirate OS".

Posted by Craig at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow, it's really been a long time since I posted here. I admit I've been hiding in shame since the abject failure of the Blogging Zelda project. The less said about that, the better, other than that I bit off much more than I could chew at that point, and I panicked. SInce then, I've been shying away from posting and facing the fact that I didn't complete what I set out to do, which is difficult for me. However, I've decided it's time to drop by again...

First of all, thanks to Craig for posting so many great entries. He really does have a great writing style which I enjoy immensely, and I encourage him to continue. With both our lives being so busy lately, sometimes I learn things from his entries that I didn't get to talk about with him in person or on the phone. Keep it up!

Second, I'm going to make more of an effort to post in a regular fashion. I don't know exactly what 'regular' means, considering that the twins that Leslie and I are expecting will be here sooner than later, and we're deep in preparation for their arrival. As a matter of fact, Leslie's baby shower is this Saturday, the 20th. Combine that with the fact that work has become incredibly busy (these are the two reasons that I abadoned the Zelda project), and I'm not sure what free time I'll have to post. Call me selfish, but what little free time I get nowadays I spend playing video games or visiting with friends, two pastimes that will take a way-backseat once our two little bundles of joy arrive in January/February.

Third, I have been playing some games since I last posted. I thoroughly enjoyed playing through Bioshock (a Game of the Year candidate, and deservedly so), and put a decent amount of time into The Godfather on 360. Not a groundbreaking game by any means, but enjoyable in its own right. I'm currently playing Blue Dragon on the 360, as well as picking my way through Phantom Hourglass on the DS. Most likely I won't make it through either of these games, as the time investment needed to complete them is more than I have to give, but I'm really enjoying the journey so far in both, and having the option to play Phantom Hourglass while away from home helps.

Work has become really interesting for me, as well as becoming busy. For anyone who doesn't know, I'm an instrumentation and controls engineer for an environmental engineering firm, specializing in water and wastewater treatment. I work on the design of treatment plants, pump stations, specifically focusing on the instrumentation requirements, as well as helping develop the control scheme that's executed by the PLC-based SCADA systems we specialize in. Lately, I've been a part of several large projects, as well as acting as the project engineer for numerous smaller ones. I'm hoping for a promotion in the spring (from Engineer 3 to Project Engineer), but we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, that's my update for now. Hopefully I can be of some use to Craig as the proposed plan of migrating from this blogging software to another moves forward. Expect to hear from me more in the coming months, but I'll try not to interrupt Craig's string of posts too much, as the audience at this site is mostly for him anyway! :)

Posted by Jon at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have found over the past few years that my life has become increasingly filled with electronic things. Nary 10 years ago, I eschewed computers as but a necessary evil. I remember my sophomore year of college proclaiming proudly, "I don't even know how to turn on a computer", and thinking that my ludditism was somehow laudable. It was a lie, though, I could usually figure out how to turn one on.

Then the cascade of electronic devices started flooding into my life. I even got a degree in CS, which pretty much betrothes me to technology for the rest of my career (until my male modeling career takes off). The computer somehow has become more important than the TV. I never go anywhere without my cell phone. I take my iPod with me every day without exception. Since I spend 10 - 12 hours a day in front of some sort of computer or other electronic device, I think that qualifies me as having a digital life. Ironically enough though, I rarely play video games and I don't surf for porn, which probably would elicit questions of "then what do you use a computer for?"

So why am I telling you all of this? It's because I'm very upset. I'm upset that the digital devices that I use are doomed to fail. That may seem very fatalistic, but I'm sure that statement didn't make a single person (if there is even one =) reading this bat an eyelash.

Devices with moving parts are obviously the worst. I have had multiple hard disks fail. With any hard drive, it is a matter of "when" and not "if" failure is to occur. Thankfully hard drives are said to follow the Bathtub Curve, which in a nutshell means that if it doesn't fail right away, it will probably last a long time.

I used to have an iPod video (5g), and that had a little hard drive in it. As awesome as that was, pretty much my life was a nightmarish twilight reality that knew that it was always microns away from total failure. I have 4 hard disks attached to my PC, with a variety of backup strategies, so nothing important exists in only one place. As space permits, everything exists in 2 or 3 places.

Items without moving parts are better. They're more prone to electrical failure. For instance, my bluetooth headset seems to have stopped charging (the discovery of that pretty much is what made me write this entry). It pretty much has a chip, a battery, a speaker, a microphone and a bluetooth transmitter in it. And it's all encased in plastic. Not too complex. Hmmm... still breaks a lot, since, this is my second iteration of it, and it looks like I'll have a third. Thankfully Motorola has a pretty generous return policy.

People think that their solid-state devices are immortal. "This has no moving parts, and therefore will never fail" resembles something a person might say when talking about a USB drive. WRONG WRONG WRONG I say. Having used to work in a semiconductor plant that made flash chips, I learned all about the possible things that could go wrong with the type of chip in a USB drive. They will fail after a very finite number of writes. That number may be in the thousands, but it's not in the range of (∞ -1, ∞ + 1).

I just bought an iPod touch (which I intend to review after I've been using it for a month), which is solid state. My life is definitely less stressful now that I can't hear the little clicking and whirring of the HD motor every time I look at it. However, I sadly realize that it's only a matter of time before it is just a fancy shot glass coaster.

Ha Ha

NOTE: I have officially decided at this juncture to abandon Movable Type. Any blogging system that doesn't easily allow you to embed images in your blog post is CRAP.

Posted by Craig at 09:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)