WiFi at Fort Knox

Thanks to the ever helping Raghu, my house is now a wi-fi enabled zone. The upgrade happened over the last weekend. The wireless router has been setup in my office room and yet, the signal strength in my room upstairs (at a near-diametrically-opposite place) is fairly decent enough for me to be able to browse at reasonable speeds.

The most important aspect of this whole setup is that, I am finally able to use the new laptop I purchased last January. You see, this new laptop came with Windows Vista and the USB modem that I was using till last week, was not being recognised by Vista. Main problem was the incompatible driver and since the USB modem supplied by my DSL internet service provider was manufactured at a remote village in Taiwan or Korea, the service provider had categorically told me that an upgrade of drivers was not possible.

I had no option but to go the WiFi route, but at that time, for some vague reason, I wasnt willing to shell out the money. So 5 months of deliberation and wasted hope later, I finally pushed Raghu to buy the equipment last weekend and he did the needful after going through a lot of hardship (which actually he seems to like!). He also came home and installed it in no time. I couldn't thank him properly that day, because of major plumbing issues at home.

Anyways, I am now posting this blog from my new laptop and using my WiFi connection. This is only the second post with this combination; the honor of being the first, goes to this post.

P.S.: Just in case you are wondering what Fort Knox has to do with this post, please be informed that we refer to my house as Fort Knox due to the security arrangements which to a normal person would appear too complicated, but in truth is not.

Its better to be back

2 weeks back, I blogged about how it was good to be back. While I continued using my bedroom to setup my Internet connection, the lack of a proper table-chair setup meant that I couldn't spend too much time with the laptop.

But now that the painters have handed over the house to us, albeit with a few minor pieces of work still pending, I was able to return to my office room this morning. I setup everything the way it was and have actually gone a step ahead in installing the Cambridge sound system that I have, in one of the shelves.

Yesterday, I hunted for a piece of plastic pipe which I planned to use in the table. The purpose of the pipe was to let most of the wires run through it, just so that the table looks less cluttered. I got hold of an old mop and cut out an 8" piece. I put it to use this morning and instantly realised that while my idea was probably good, it wasn't great. Most of the wires connecting to the power outlets had huge plugs or connecting points that wouldn't go through the tube. Similar was the case with many of the wires connecting to/from the computer.

In the end I was able to put in some 4 wires into the pipe. Moreover, the 8" length doesn't seem to serve the purpose either, since I still find a whole lot of wires strewn around table. I really hope that some day I can live in a world without wires!

But at any rate, I feel happy that I've returned to my office room!

Its good to be back!

As part of the painting job that's going on in my house, I had to pack up my "office room" on Wednesday. That in effect meant that I had to dismantle the whole computer setup I had done in one portion of the room. Speakers, Webcams, Keyboards, Printers and some stuff that I didn't know that I possessed - all had to be moved to a box.

But the most important thing that also went into the box was my modem and the ADSL splitter; in other words, I was unwiring myself from the Matrix!

I did all this under the assumption that they would move to that room on Thursday and get out by Saturday. Unfortunately, there was a change in plan and it was decided to take up that room as the last one in the house. And the work on that room has started only around 4 PM Sunday (few minutes back).

The point to be noted is that since the painters took over the hall as well, I lost out my Tata Sky connection too. So, I had to spend a good portion of Friday night and Saturday browsing through the Tamizh and News channels available on my cable connection upstairs. (To be honest, the presence of Tata Sky would have given me some 15 more channels to browse, but still.....).

I got totally fed up with no Internet and no TV. So, this afternoon I opened the box where I had put in all my computer stuff and took out the aforementioned modem and splitter. Came to my room and hooked it up to the telephone jack. Connected it to my computer and voila, here I am, back on the Internet. I am feeling so happy.

But, it also makes me wonder how bad a life I am leading. Just 4 days of staying away from the Internet and 2 days of staying away from a DTH connection is making me feel that life is empty. Bring back the Internet and I feel like getting a shot in the arm.

As usual, this is a tussle between the brain and the heart. And as usual my heart wins!

Social Networking Quagmire

Honestly, I am a bit swamped with requests to join various websites cultivating a Social Network via the Internet.

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to one such site called Ryze. Sometime last year, I joined the Orkut bandwagon. A few months back my tryst with Facebook started. And somewhere in between I got into Linkedin. There was an invite to join some other site and today, I saw an invite to join Yaari.

And you know the interesting part? I barely have one or two common threads on these sites. Another thing I noticed was that there is a clear demographic separation in terms of the people who invite me to these sites. Most of them are my friends from my previous employer and none of them has invited me on Orkut. They have invited me to join all other networks. Again, is that because they themselves don't belong to Orkut or is it because they don't like Orkut or is it because they don't like to link me on Orkut?

Whatever be the network, I don't think these are really meant for me. I am a bit of a reserved character and so, unless someone contacts me directly, it is highly unlikely that I'd visit these networks to get connected with the individuals. In fact, few people do comment regularly on my Orkut scrapbook and I duly get an email notification. Yet, I don't login promptly to find out what it is. I take my own sweet time to login and respond.

Having said that, I think these sites are useful at some level, coz it did help me to get back in touch with a long lost friend of mine in college. But its just that, I am not cut out to be an active participant on any one of these websites and am baffled by how I would stay in touch with my friends who are profiled in different websites.

So, would someone come up with a new website that would let you integrate all your profiles and present it to you in one site itself? This way I wouldn't have to check each of these sites to see if there are any updates from my friends. I can get the view in one single page itself. Probably someone has already prepared that website and I think I will wait for someone to invite me to that site as well!