Monday, November 24, 2003

Humongous Christmas Tree



We got our 9ft. Christmas tree yesterday. I dont know why we thought we could fit in our Civic coupe. But we tied it on the roof and we made it safely home. Then my wife and I had to lug that thing up 3 flights of stairs :(



Not to mention this thing was so big that it barely fit in our stand, so it was lopsided the first night. It tipped over 4 times during the night. Did you also know that a Christmas tree can drink up to 1 gallon of water a day?

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Interesting...

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers are in a wrod, the olny ioptmrant tnihg is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a ttaol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by iletsf, but the wrod as a wlohe.



Naet huh?

Sunday, November 2, 2003

DSL has finally arrived

After years of waiting, I finally got DSL yesterday. Right now, Im sitting on my couch, in my living room, using my laptop, equipped with my d-link wireless PCMCIA card, which connects to my Netgear MR814v2 Wireless router, which connects to my speedstream DSL modem.

I have an excellent signal strength and a FAST bandwith connection (1150 kbps). Suprisingly, Im getting the same bandwidth connection speed as my desktop computer which is hard wired to DSL.



Also, suprisingly, setting up my SBC Yahoo DSL was a snap. I was up and running in no time. DSL service was turned on promptly on the date specified. And I even got a letter from SBC congratulating and welcoming me on the SAME day the service started. DSL has really come a long way. I remember trying to set up stacie's family DSL about 2 years ago and it was a complete nightmare.



Here are my DSL package details:

Standard Plus Package

384Kbps-1.5Mbps download

128Kbps upload

$26.95/month for 1 year



The time consuming part was setting up my wireless network. But as usual I learned a lot.

1. SSID - I wanted to disable the broadcasting of my SSID to make my wireless network more secure. But I ran into problems because I kept connecting to a neighboring broadcasted SSID. Also, microsoft doesnt recommend it, but doesnt explain why.

2. MAC address - Another way I secured my wireless network was to limit to my laptop's MAC address using the router configuration. That way only my laptop was authorized using my DSL.

3. Ad hoc vs. infrastructure - Since I only have a 1 desktop and 1 laptop I probably didnt need a wireless router. I could have just set up a ad hoc wireless network by using some USB wireless card to connect to my desktop. Then my laptop wireless card would just feed off of the USB wireless card. But I guess using the wireless router was pretty easy to set up. Too bad Im only using 1 of the 4 ports though.

4. update driver - After setting everything up, the wireless speed on the laptop was very slow. Also, I would get disconnected every 5 minutes and have to manually reconnect. After trying everything, I decided to uninstall and update my d-link wireless card driver. Immediately, my connection was fast, and I never get any dropped signals.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

rogerchew.com launched!

Welcome to my site! I finally launched my web site. Phew. I'm about halfway done, so pardon the dust. What prompted me to finally create my site? Well, I found FREE web hosting for 3 yrs and my domain name is registered for FREE for 10 years because one of my buddies hooked me up. Yes, Im cheap.



Hopefully, I'll be completely done with my site by the end of the year. Then I'll be regularly updating my site with internet bargain deals, snippets of my life, cool internet goodies, deep thoughts, pictures, and more.



For now, feel free to navigate through the rest of my site. If you have any thoughts, questions, or opinions, please leave me a comment. See ya.