Learning new things...

The telecon went well this morning, though the Russian at the other end of the speakerphone sometimes spoke too loudly, resulting in a somewhat garbled signal at this end of the connection. Afterward, I went down to the RSI office and used my AT&T calling card to attempt to call my banker in Pontarlier. Eventually, I got through, after leaving a couple of messages in his voice box that must've made me sound like a refugee from the shallow end of the gene pool.

It turns out that the bank has a charge for incoming international wires, which is unavoidable (and amounted, in this case, to 6.4% of the amount... yikes!) My conseiller also informed me that the huge inactivity charge that we discussed before Christmas would be reversed by the end of this week, and that the best way to get in touch with him (short of a phone call) would be a fax.

On the way home, I stopped by the shopping center with the CompUSA, Michaels, and Barnes & Noble. In the former, I took a look around to get a feel for the prices of bare hardware, as my loud desktop machine has a tendency to spontaneously reboot (or simply hang), which I attribute to a damaged CPU. What I saw at CompUSA made me think that I was in the wrong place to be looking for this kind of stuff.

At Michaels, I checked to see if they still carried Bob Ross painting supplies, and they do. One of the things I had wanted to bring down from Pagosa was a fishing box with the contents of a Bob Ross "Master" set that I'd bought back in my "pre-LJ" days. I recall I actually signed up for two lessons back then, which were hands-on sessions from which one took home a painting, and I really enjoyed myself.

The B&N was, well... the B&N. Way too many books to think about buying any, but still...

Upon arriving home, I see I have another offer to do medical reports, except that half the pages are handwritten. Then it turns out that, very likely, I hadn't been paid by this outfit for the first job I did, three months ago. (The program I just bought ought to help in this regard, though it won't help much unless the people who deposit the money bother to indicate who paid it, but I digress... sorry, didn't mean to snap like that.)

It's nearly noon. Time to get down and do something constructive.

Cheers...

A little bit of everything...

I've spent a little time trying to figure out how to connect my D-Link router to the 'cloud' that is the Internet through proust, my erstwhile constant VAIO companion. In theory it seems it should be pretty simple, given that I have DD-WRT installed on the router. In practice, things have not worked out so easily.

To run down the background of what I've done so far, by enabling connection sharing on the BlackBerry modem connection (or any connection), the VAIO becomes a DHCP server that hands out IP addresses to clients that are connected through the computer's network adapter, which is assigned a static IP address of 192.168.0.1.

(I just had an 'Aha!' moment... this explains why the WAN port on the router is different from 192.168.0.1 - which I had been expecting it to be, in a moment of perfect 20/200 clarity. Duh!)

Hmmm. So it turns out to be perfectly fine for the WAN port on the router (i.e., the other end of the cable) to have an address such as, say, 192.168.0.24.

In any event, the idea is for data to flow from a machine on the router's network, say, 192.168.1.10 (which represents a different subnetwork), to the router, from where it goes out the network connection to the VAIO (192.168.0.1), from where it goes out through the modem connection.

Why isn't this working? I think I may need to fire up Ethereal to understand this better.

* * *As I had rented another free Redbox movie earlier in the afternoon (code: ICY), the time came to interrupt my network musings and go watch the thing with Galina. The film was Archangel, which I liked from the point of view of maintaining suspense, ability to suspend disbelief against the background of contemporary Russia, and keeping the plot moving. Unfortunately, the plot itself has holes in it you could drive a Cadillac through and not scratch the paint.

Still, it was an entertaining film.

* * *I downloaded a Bob Ross segment from YouTube and watched it this afternoon, and I have to tell you, Ross speaks so quietly and calmly during the segment that I just about fell asleep watching the segment (not because it was boring, but because of that voice...).

With that, I ought to seriously consider getting to sleep. It's late, and I have some stuff to take care of tomorrow morning.

Cheers...