Grim’s Place

Things have been quiet lately. No major problems or concerns. This usually means something is about to hit. The quiet before the storm I suppose. We’re looking into getting some help at work. The place is exploding and we can’t do it all with only two I.T. guys. I’ve been doing a lot of VB2005 programming… SFTP and FTP transfers, barcode labels, minor database queries, flat file processing, etc. I could be doing a lot more too. I have quite a few projects to work on. I have some (shudder) document management stuff do to in the near future. Luckily there is only one type of file to manage, and guess what? They _actually_ know WTF the document is!!! Anyway…

I reformatted my system a few weeks ago and its still running fast. I also wiped my laptop and did a complete reinstall on that too. This time I didn’t install a bunch of bloated shit. Here’s some of the software I have installed.

Free goodness! I mean free of adware, spyware and BS too. Gotta love them.

• Foxit Reader - A free, small, light-weight, and very fast PDF reader. A hell of a lot better than running Adobe. It will open any size e-book I throw at it too.
• Free Download Manager - A great little download manager. Using this program I easily saturate my connection… getting 1.6Mbps at a constant rate. It’s good for pausing those hefty downloads too. Completely free.
• Filezilla - I used LeechFTP religiously. Unfortunately the author abandoned the project and LeechFTP doesn’t like the gigabyte ISOs files that I download. Filezilla to the rescue!
• Paint.Net - This free image editor is written in .NET and requires the .NET framework. I’m no graphic designer and this little program does everything I need.
• Xvid - All my video codec needs are filled with this little gem.
• AVG Anti-Virus - Old reliable. Free anti-virus for the masses. I’ve been using it for nearly 6 years now.
• Firefox - The best browser on the planet! Version 2.0 is out. I’ve installed it. Good stuff.
• Thunderbird - I’ve been using Thunderbird for my e-mail needs since version 0.3. We’re up to 1.5.0.7 now. A much safer alternative to outlook express and super simple to use.
• Wordpress - Blogging at its best. Couldn’t forget it since its powering my site…. which you’re reading right now!

Well. That’s my short list of free stuff that is just as good as corporate software. Thank goodness there are people out there willing to donate their time and money to give us good MS alternatives!

Griminal Grim's Ramblings

Just when I thought I couldn’t get something better, I decided to screw with a WDS (Wireless Distribution System) Here’s my latest tests results:

Using this latest configuration, I can have multiple clients connect to the access point on my tower. (ie. school, teacher’s laptops, teacher’s home) On the donor end the folks that live there can connect to the access point located on their tower.

I didn’t think I’d have the signal strength to make the connection. I was wrong! I still have another 8 feet on the tower that I can move the omni antenna up. Don’t know if I’ll do that or just get a small 100-250mw amp. I also haven’t “aimed” the grid antenna on the DSL end.

I also created a nice Visio network diagram of a standard wireless bridge configuration for the dd-wrt wiki. I plan to do a few others to help with the cause.

Griminal Grim's Ramblings

Here’s some statistics from the new link pulling from the Linux box samba share I have at the donor’s house for the 915Mhz link. The fastest speeds I get with 915Mhz is 200K/bps.

I’m currently using the 2.4Ghz link. The 915Mhz link had nearly identical bandwidth as a standard DSL connection…. 180K/bps. With the additional bandwidth the 2.4Ghz link gives me, I’m hoping to upgrade to 3 Meg service. I’m going to keep both links functioning for a week or so, then I’ll pull the Linux boxes, 915Mhz antennas, and the LMR400 cables.

In other news: I got a small fridge in my office!!! Now I can bring in my 2-liters of diet dew. One requires diet dew when one writes code all day! I’m getting more comfortable with Visual Basic 2005 now.

Griminal Grim's Ramblings

Griminal Grim's Ramblings