shaver

I have the internet at home again. I bought an SMC Barricade to replace the aged and crusty FreeBSD box I’d been using as a router for years, but I think I’m going to take it back and get something else. There are a handful of problems with it:

• I can’t find a way to turn off the address translation stuff, though it may be possible if I turn off all the firewalling.
• It doesn’t have built-in wireless support, so I need to blow a port on connecting my existing wireless access point, and power the WAP, and…
• I can’t tell it about a network segment that’s smaller than /24, which is a problem because I have a /29 routed to me by my ISP. (Which is why I want the NAT turned off, etc.)
• The printer port, which I am quite interested in using, now that I’ve seen that they’re available, is parallel and not USB.
• It makes a buzzing noise. This should be a completely solid-state device, with minimal power requirements. Not acceptable.

I have to go drop my tux off for cleaning now, and then finish setting up the computer for Tyla’s use. I was thinking about working from home, because the desktop box is a lot beefier than the laptop, and user-mode Linux is quite the workout, but I have some errands I want to run downtown, and I left my cell phone (well, the loaner from Rogers) at the office last night.

Fixed another portion of our interrupt and timeout code today, and tomorrow I start on shuffling our export and connection code around in preparation for some real recovery work. Tyla’s coming to Boston with me this weekend, so I’ll probably get a fair bit less work done, but we might get to see one of our favourite bands in concert, so I’m not too heart-broken about it.

What a paperwork day this was. In addition to getting my learner’s permit (!), I also filled out about a billion forms so that I could get access to the test cluster for MCR. This is my third learner’s permit — old-style Ontario “365″, one from California, and now this G1 — but the first time I’ve ever applied for access to a sensitive computing resource as a foreign national!