1. The boy survived his first sleepover just fine. No 2AM calls to come get him, he didn't get surreptitiously dropped off on the front porch bound in duct tape, he was not banned from the premises for life. All reports are he behaved impeccably. Who is he, and what has he done with my son? Srsly, I'm very proud of him - once again, he came through like a champ. This opens the door to more sleepovers, though, which means we'll have to entertain his friends here at some point.
Bloody hell. Guess I'm gonna have to break out the vacuum cleaner. I think we have one of those somewhere...
2. Computer and I have reached an uneasy truce. It continues to work, I let it live. I showed it pictures of the teletubby charge and keyboard trap to get my point across. Oh, yeah, and the workstation. That was a pretty direct threat...
I think I've managed to get across the need for a laptop here at Chez G., though. I think we'll do some checking around this week and pick something up next weekend. Thanks to everyone who offered opinions on what to get; real-world opinions mean about 100X more to me than any review. Let's face it, raw, honest, open reviews tend to last, what, picoseconds in this litigation-happy society???
One last tech bleg, though... I've got Comcast cable internet, with the standard Comcast cable modem. If I'm reading things correctly, here's what I need to do to get a laptop running wireless off this modem:
- Pick up a wireless router, one that is compatible with the wireless card in the laptop (I won't get a laptop without a card).
- Plug cable into router, then router into PC for direct connection (PC does not have, nor is it worth getting, a wireless card; we'll do the direct ethernet link). Alternately, plug the router into the second port on the cable model and run the laptop that way.
- Configure wireless router so that people don't park in my driveway and steal mai internetz. I assume that this is going to involve sacrificing a live chicken to Poultra, the God of Internet Connectivity or something equally messy and complicated.
Man, somedays I really wish I hadn't gotten out of the DIY computer biz... And then I remember that I was never very good at it to begin with...
Okay. T-minus 30 minutes until I leave for the range. Be good y'all...
That is all.
4 comments:
If I'm reading things correctly, here's what I need to do to get a laptop running wireless off this modem:
More or less right. There is no such thing as a wireless-only router, at least not that I've ever seen. They all have both wire ports (usually 4, usually RJ45 Ethernet) and a wireless transceiver. And you should have one even if you aren't using the wireless, because the router is an extra layer of defense between you and the Nasty Evil Hackers who prowl the Internet.
How to protect your wireless from wardrivers (them's the Nasty Evils who park in your driveway and steal your intarw3bz): get a wireless router that has the latest encryption, then set it to a) encrypt all wireless traffic and b) use MAC filtering. MAC filtering means the router will accept connections only from specified MAC addresses. A MAC address is a sequence of twelve hexadecimal characters that uniquely identifies a particular network connector. Every ethernet connection ever made has a MAC address. If the laptop has both an RJ45 port and wireless, it will have one MAC address for each. Your router can accept a list of allowed MAC addresses. Enter your laptop's MAC address there, activate MAC filtering, and presto.
For most routers, you plug the WAN port (usually by itself) to the cable modem, one of the LAN ports (usually in a gang of 4) into the desktop and it just works. Turn the laptop on, and it will also just work--That is part of the problem, it also works for the nosy teenage hacker-wannabee down the street. Really aren't compatibility issues, this stuff is pretty standard.
You don't need the very latest encryption (although it won't hurt) you just need to be a bit stronger than average. WEP is the most basic. It isn't good enough if you are a specific target, but it is more than most do--Basically you tell the router to generate a key. Anyone who wants to connect will have to either have the long-assed string of gibberish the router generates, or they will have to crack it--Not that hard, but takes a little time and it is usually easier to find a neighbor who hasn't bothered to encrypt.
You can fairly easily set the computers up to share files between each other, but make sure there is some sort of password required to get at them from the other computer. You can also share a printer, so you can print from your laptop to the printer hooked to your desktop.
If you are on ANY wireless and use Google stuff with passwords, (Gmail, Blogger, etc) change the beginning to HHTPS: instead of HTTP:. That keeps hackers from stealing your cookie, which would let them have full access to your account, even after changing passwords.
What they said. Really, it's pretty simple.
As to a laptop, depending on your needs you might want to look at a "netbook". I just bought an Acer Aspire One and love it for what it does. Which is everything I need it to do. It's small enough to take just about everywhere, and large enough to be a real computer. I don't know that I'd make it my primary computer, but for lugging around to check email, do blog posts, surf the web, and some other basic stuff it's great.
I'll second the MAC address filtering, get your laptop on the list and turn off your SSID broadcast. That will keep the neighbors and pretty much everyone off your network.
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