The Monday after Easter - getting in the groove

I woke up early today as my wife kissed me good bye at 6:45AM. Stayed in bed for a bit longer reading Duma Key by Stephen King. Some good stuff, especially for someone that is infatuated with FL like I am. Did you know this? SK winters in Naples (or did at one time). He perceptions and observations of many things in the book are spot on.

What do I today I thought? Well, I got the mailbox up for the new tenant. They seem to be good people. Country folk, fair and hard working. I am still cautiously optimistic after the last bunch, but I have some faith.

I installed the tax software today (TaxCut) to get the taxes finished this evening. I should have it done tonight and submitted. Two days before they are due. Nothing like waiting to the last minute, but I love modern technology.

I will be working on some software using MS-SQL and ASP.NET and Visual Basic 2008. Wow, how that stuff changed since I used VB6.

However, tomorrow will be in part job hunt day. Looking to post my resume on all the job boards. I also plan to stock up on the freelance sites. I am looking forward to the skill tests to show me where I stand. So much to do on multiple fronts. I am still leaning toward my own business. Kinetic Thoughts Consulting again? Sounds good to me. The site needs updating.

I must get up and head out to the bank. I think I will ride my bike. So much for the blog entry. I still hurt in my neck sitting in this chair. I am looking forward to getting that fixed. A little scared too. Mixed emotional bag I guess.

I have rambled enough. Looking good out there in the SWFL sunshine. Getting my groove back.

~Jeffrey

Ping.FM and social media

I have recently been toying with Twitter and Plurk. I was at one time pushing my Tweets to Facebook and pushing my Plurk's to Twitter (and thus up the chain to Facebook).

It was messy and strange (since they all had different character limits, or would attach URL's). I had to find a new way.

My colleague turned me onto Ping.fm. From it I can push to Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, AIM, Yahoo 360, Friendster, Blogger, and many others. The Blogger push is part of the reason for this post. The two short posts were in fact ping.fm pushes. I have turned that off, because I want this blog's entries to have more substance than a micro-blog.

Check out some of the above and follow me! Enjoy the social media of web 2.0.

~Jeffrey

Working on some more ASP.NET stuff. MS-SQL has not been my friend.

Testing my first Ping.FM to all the social networks. Thanks Lee, Robi, and Charisse for the tip!

Comcast and Linksys Router BS

I awoke today to start working (well job hunting and side business). I depend on multiple devices going out on my Comcast cable address. Well, today it was not working. I tried the usual power cycle things. Called in, got a snotty girl that had me turn everything off (no real reason for this) and plug into my PC directly. After doing so, it worked on my PC. I was like Hmmm, guess I was wrong and I apologized.

I plugged into the router after hanging up. Nothing. Didn't work. I called back not satisfied. He walked me through a few things that didn't work. I said thank you and I would figure it out. Well first off, I changed out the cable, that was not it. I could connect to other machines on the network and the server. That was not it. So I plugged it into my machine directly again and restarted.

After getting a connection I did a search for Comcast and LinkSys. This link came up. Aparently Comcast found a way to thwart users that are not using Comcast router equipment. After following the instructions of cloning my MAC address, everything worked well. Here is the kicker, I asked repeatedily on the phone if anything had changed. "No sir, nothing here." I won't be too indignant, read the EULA and you will know why. Here are the instructions:

1. Plug your computer directly into the cable modem.
2. Use "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew" from the windows command prompt to get a new IP address from the cable modem.
3. Unplug your computer from the cable modem.
4. Plug your computer into the router, leaving the router unplugged from the cable modem.
5. Use ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew to get an IP address from the router.
6. Enter the router's configuration with your web browser.
7. Tell the router to Clone your Mac Address. wait a few seconds.
8. Plug the router into the cable modem.
9. In the web interface, tell the router to ask for a new IP address from the cable modem. (This is the "DHCP Renew" Button) The cable modem should think that you are the PC that just spoke with it and will let your router work again. You might have to ask it to renew a couple times.

~Jeffrey