Sorry if I don’t have any pictures yet. We’ve mainly been taking it easy: eating, sleeping, playing the Wii, drinking beer (me, not Somara) and socializing. The Silder boys are at camp from 9 AM to 330 PM so this puts a wrinkle into any kind of plans during the day because it’s Helen’s turn with the van pool. However, vacations are about relaxing, not running around, trying to soak up everything in sight. I always recall how the Griswalds took in the Louvre, no thanks.
Yesterday Helen let me buy her prize for winning the Name Somara’s Muppet contest: nice accessories to protect the iPod Touch I gave her for a (belated) 40th birthday. Then I scored the Silders a Time Capsule to upgrade their wireless network set up. I readily admit to my own selfish motives to this…I can now get on the Internet from the guest room! They also have been upgraded to 10.5 which really helps in getting the most one can from the TC. It’s a good thing I did this. Years back I gave them my old AirPort base station only to discover it was never installed correctly when I showed up. Paul assumed it was working because the iMac could get on. He was half right since the iMac still had the cable modem plugged into the cable modem.
To be fair, I had my brief struggle getting the TC operational through Comcast. The other days I found Comcast’s instructions on clearing the suspected provisioning. Meanwhile, establishing the basic settings on the TC were a breeze: WPA2 passwords, a Guest network (this will rock when their nieces visit), NAT, etc. Then I powered up/reset the Comcast router. It fed the TC a class A IP via DHCP with two DNS servers! I thought, “suck it Comcast! I didn’t need to call you for help,” and any customer who can’t set one of these up needs to take remedial logic. However, I couldn’t get out to real-world Web pages. After a couple restarts to flush the TC, I discovered the “Internet On” button the Comcast device had. I did recall turning it “off” as part of the resetting yet I’ve concluded that this is one of the stupidest things. I mean, who wants to turn the Internet “off” at the router level? This option is the equivalent of finding my grandparents’ VCR flashing “12:00 AM” because they unplugged it for safety concerns and/or fear of porn getting into it.
Today will be low tech. Paul has time off from work and Somara will be giving me a basic tutorial on the new camera. Then we’re going to attempt to take in something “educational” and/or some bitchin’ cuisine, Helen says there’s a great Mongolian grill joint. I haven’t eaten that in years. We have it in Austin yet we haven’t gotten around to it.