Friday, March 10, 2006  

[Dazed and confused...]

The state of my mind is pretty confused right now, because I have a lot of things going on. I'm the kind of guy who needs some structure in his life, and having too many things going on at the same time stresses me out, gives me insomnia, and I can't concentrate on school. This post will probably show you just how confused my mind is right now.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I canceled my cable connection. I've been using it since my polytechnic days. I still remember the day I got it...I installed the Ethernet card into my motherboard, and it couldn't be detected properly. I tried every single free PCI slot I had, same problem. In the end, I removed my sound card and installed my Ethernet card in that slot. Worked without a hitch. I came to the conclusion that all my free PCI slots must have some rusted contact points or something. So in order to get my cable connection going, I had to spring for a new motherboard, processor, and memory. Ouch...

My connection was killed by my cable company on Tuesday night. So I spent Wednesday without any Internet connection at home. I can't remember the last time I did not have Internet connection at home. My ADSL provider sent over the free ADSL modem on Wednesday night, so I spent the night installing it. I was actually doing it blind, since my ADSL was only going to be activated on Thursday. I did the best I could, then went to bed.

When I woke up on Thursday morning, I was surprised to see that my ADSL has been activated. It was supposed to be activated after 5pm. Anyway, I tried downloading files off the ISP's FTP server. I managed to hit the promised speed of 3.5Mbps (~430kBytes/sec). My P2P also maxed out my bandwidth too, which was great (although right now it sucks, probably because it's the peak hour for Internet traffic now).

Prolink Hurricane 9000C
This is the modem they have me for free. Lowered my switching cost. I've had no experience with ADSL before, so everything about it was new for me. The ADSL modem functioned a tad differently from what I expected...It stored the ADSL account username and password inside the modem, kept the IP from the ISP for itself, and leased my desktop an internal IP. Weird.

I did not get a laptop when I went to NUS. Most people in my faculty have one. I didn't get one because I was exempted most of the programming modules, and I didn't really wanted to drag a laptop around. But my sister is joining me in NUS next academic year, and having only one desktop at home wouldn't do. We're about to place an order for a Dell laptop (offer ends Sunday), so I bought a wireless router today so that the laptop could have Internet access as well.

Linksys WRT54G Broadband Router
Bought the Linksys WRT54G. It's a popular model over here. Set up was easy, got it running in no time.

Broken EZ-Link Card Scanner
On my way home, the bus I took had a busted card scanner. Yeah, it's broken up, but it still works. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

And my back pain is back. I've been having on and off back pain ever since I finished my stint in the Army. The time spent in Army (especially towards the end) really killed my back. Now whenever I have some form of physical exertion, my back aches. The pain also comes when I'm stressed. I don't have money to see a specialist right now. After I graduate and start work, seeing a back specialist would be one of the things high on my To-Do list.

Hope my back gets better tomorrow. Back pain blows.....

^^^ by Locksley @ 12:10 AM. 4 comments.
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[Comments]

take care of your back man...they can be serious...
Yeah. I actually did some research when I first suffered from back pain. It seems that most people would feel numbness in their buttocks or legs because if a disc slipped in their backs, it would press onto their nerves.

I've yet to suffer from any numbness, so I'm not that alarmed...Yet. Still, having chronic back pain since 23 is certainly something to be concerned about.
Your modem was configured as a router. What you would want to do is to configure it as a bridge (bridge or RFC1483) and then set your WRT54G to log in via PPPoE.
Wow, I had no idea you read my blog. :) There were a ton of settings in the modem, I didn't really wanted to change anything because it's all working fine. Most importantly, because there's no reset button on the modem.

Good thing there was on on the WRT54G. I made a silly mistake when I first started configuring it. Couldn't connect to it at all. Haha!
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