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I don’t know when this started, but PHX now has full and free wireless access across the entire airport. I just read this morning that Denver will do the same thing starting this week, but with advertisements that will need to be clicked through in order to get to the web. So be it — nothing is absolutely free. Either way, this is a great set of developments.
One other thing: At Sky Harbor’s Terminal 4 at the Southwest gates they have set up these little podiums with power strips and USB ports for charging. Southwest always got the business traveller, and no more so than now.
Man, it has been a *long* time since I said good things about an airline or an airport. Feels good!
I’ve been tossing around the idea of setting up an Opdahls-only VoIP network for a while. We live in Tokyo (Although I travel 50+% of the time), my brother and his family are down near Los Angeles, my sister and her family are in the Portland, Oregon area, and my parents split their time between Colorado and the Northwest. A VoIP network would be an elegant solution to keeping us all in touch, and by assigning each of us a virtual extension number on the system, a free phone call takes nothing more than picking up the line and dialing the extention of whatever location you want to reach. Conference calls at Christmas or other holidays are a no brainer, and in the future I may actually start trunking some channels in for calls out to actual phone lines.
So…what to do. As I said, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have already played around with a PBX-in-a-Flash system a couple of times. It works great and I am currently nosing around for a system on which to host a full Linux installation (I’ve VMWare’d it until now.). I was at Fry’s in Tempe today looking at the Intel ICH7-M as a system base and decided to go look at what they had for ATAs (Analog Telephone Adapters). They had the usual Vonage PAP2 systems there (Both old and v2), but what caught my eye and my pocketbook was a shelf full of Earthlink-branded SPA2002 systems (So the SPA2002-ER) at $29.95 each. I now have two, and after tonight’s successful testing in my hotel room I will go and buy several more tomorrow.
The SPA2002-ER is locked into Earthlink, so in order to use them in my OpTel plan my next step was to unlock them. A quick search around the internet showed that the unlock was pretty straightforward, but I didn’t find a step-by-step guide. Here’s a write-up of how I “upgraded” my unit.
First, disconnect your network from the internet to prevent the SPA2002 from contacting the mothership. I don’t know what will happen if they do connect, but some links seem to indicate that once they’ve done that, you’re doomed — Perhaps they update the password when they connect and make it so that you cannot get in as admin any longer. In any case, unplug your cable or DSL modem from your router. If your modem is your router, unplug it from whatever is bringing it the internet signal. You need to keep the router portion running so that you can assign an IP address to your SPA2002 and your PC, so a hub alone will not do it unless you are handy with Linux and setting up a DHCP server yourself. If I’ve just lost you and you can’t figure out how to keep your router alive while not connected to the internet, this project isn’t for you. Go spend the extra $20 and buy an unlocked one.
Once you are sandboxed, plug your SPA2002 in to your router and then into power. Once it has booted up, plug in a phone and dial ****. Once the voice starts speaking in the phone, dial 110# and then note down the IP address that gets read back to you. It will probably be something like 192.168.1.2. Now make sure that your PC is also connected to the router (Could be wired or wireless. I was wireless.), open a browser, and in the address bar at the top type in the address you were given. For me it was 192.168.2.2. This will open up the main configuration page. Click the ADMIN LOGIN link in the upper right and enter the following as your username and password:
user: admin
pass: 0rLhnT34vBg2SqwbSoDyGslvF (Thanks to the unknown source of this password! That one didn’t come easily unless you worked at Earthlink…)
After that, click into the ADVANCED link in the upper right of your screen. Now we are going to scrub out all references to Earthlink to prevent the SPA2002 from knowing it was ever anything but an unlocked box. If you don’t see some of these entries on your screen it is because you didn’t click the ADVANCED link and get into the detailed configuration screens.
In the System tab…
1.) Kill everything under System Configuration in the “Restricted Access Domains” field.
2.) Kill everything under the Optional Network Configuration (Hey — It’s optional, so my theory is that unless they prove I need it, I don’t.)
Now click Submit All Changes. When you get your screen back, go back to the Systems tab and check your results to make sure you are clean. Note that you can also change the Admin Password in this tab as well. If you do, you will need to log on as Admin again with your new password after you Submit All Changes. I highly recommend changing the password as it will prevent your SPA2002 from being accessed and changed if for some reason it does talk with Earthlink servers.
In the Provisioning tab…
1.) Kill the profile rule in the Configuration Profile Section.
Submit All Changes.
Congratulations on your new unlocked SPA2002 box… :-)
Now that your SPA2002 is clean, it’s time to update the firmware to get rid of any possible remaining Earthlink nonsense as well as get you current on what features are available. At the Linksys website they have firmware version 3.1.2. At the Sipura website they have version 3.1.5. I went with the Sipura v3.1.5 and it seems to work just fine. This version seems to add some features and fix some bugs that are still in the Linksys v3.1.2, so unless I have problems, I’ll stay here. I’ll post if I change for whatever reason. For reference, out of the four units I have unlocked so far, 3 were already v3.1.5 and one was v3.1.8. Despite there being no change in the version number, I decided to re-flash the firmware on all the v3.1.5 units with the Sipura firmware as a precaution.
To upgrade the firmware, download whatever firmware you decide to use and unpack it. As far as the upgrade itself, run the .exe file, follow the instructions, and you will be fine. One note is that if you have Windows Firewall running, it will attempt to block the firmware install routines. Even if you allow the program through the firewall the first firmware upgrade attempt will fail. I simply ran it again and it worked the second time. If it doesn’t work, go back and check that upgrades are allowed under the Provisioning tab. They should be allowed by default, but you never know. Once you’ve upgraded, you can re-enter the configuration screen through your browser again and in the first page you can check the version field to see whether the upgrade was successful.
A last few notes. The above process worked for me for 4 units and should work for you. That said, unit #3 (v3.1.5 firmware) choked during the firmware upgrade and refused to do anything until it had sat without power for a while. Even then it wouldn’t connect with my router so that I could access it through my browser. It did, however, respond to the telephone prompts, so I reset the unit to factory defaults (****. then 73738#, then 1 to confirm) and was able to recover it. When it had reset to factory defaults, all of the Earthlink settings were recovered as well, so I had to go back and clean them out a second time.
That’s it! Now it’s a matter of actually putting together the VoIP network, but I’m going to play the fool at first and follow the smart guys over at www.nerdvittles.com. I was waiting for the Asterisk 1.4 version to get established, and they did a good job of it. Now all I have to do is get off of my duff and implement it… :-)
So, we now have control of opdahls.com again. Thanks to Registerfly and Kevin Medina we lost control for several months. There’s not much to say except to give a hearty UFF DA! and get on with life. Interested parties can read more at the Wikipedia article.
BTW, we now own opdahls.net and theopdahls.com. Anyone interested? :-)
This e-mail was just wrong on so many levels that I saved it and am posting it here for everyone to laugh at and enjoy. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent, and although I have considered the karmic effect of putting all of these harvestable addresses here, my assumption is that these are also the same kind of people who respond to Viagra and breast-enlargement spam and are already on every large mass mailer’s list of known idiots. I imagine some of them are even starting to wonder when that check from Nigeria is coming. Maybe if they just pay that last “transfer fee” that was requested…
Uff da!
I own MSFT as an investment, so some would say I am at cross-purposes with this post, but one has to wonder at some of the moronic things happening in Redmond. Like this…
Today Jan and I decided that (once again) we would input all of our investment data, etc., etc., into the PC and get a better feel for where our financials are. We used to be very good about this, but the move to Japan made everything multicurrency (Actually, some of our investments before the move with in JPY as well…), and our version of Quicken didn’t handle them. It turns out that the current version of MS Money does, and with aplomb, so today we went to www.microsoft.com and purchased MS Money 2007 Premium. Note that we purchased it directly from Microsoft.
It turns out that Digital River handles online purchase/download transactions for Microsoft. So far, so good — I’ve used DR before. Money also has a rebate going, so even better. The purchase goes through and we get to the final download page. Money (The software, not the real thing, unfortunately…) is coming down the pipes and I go to download the rebate when I get this little spitball in the face. The boldface italics below are mine to make it easier to find.
Order Information
Order Date: 8/13/2006
Order Number: 3*******3
Order Total: $79.99
The charge(s) will appear on your credit card as “DR*Microsoft Money”.You will be sent an email with your order details at the address provided.
| Product Name |
Qty |
Microsoft® Money 2007 PremiumÂ
-
mny07prm.exe
- Windows XP
- Electronic Download
|
1 |
Rebate form for Microsoft® MoneyÂ
- An email has been sent containing the download URLs. When downloading the items, you will be added to our Email Campaign list.
-
Mail-in Rebate Form
- Adobe Acrobat (PDF)
- Electronic Download
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So, if I don’t want to be on their spam list, I can’t download what I just purchased? This seems more than enough justification to call out “Foul!” in a loud voice. DR disappoints me, as does MSFT. This is just plain blackmail of the lowest order. One more reason to support open source. Did I mention that I have an employee now who although running on XP is using Open Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, Sunbird, and Ghostscript? It’s an experiment to see how many problems he has, (He’s pretty good on computers, so if he has problems, everyone will…), and none to late.
< UPDATE>
Thunderbird and Firefox are still a go (No surprise — It’s what I have been using at home for the last two years. Thunderbird routinely munches up Japanese filenames when they are placed as attachments and gives them names such as “AT00090.doc” instead of “è°äº‹éŒ².doc,” but I knew that. Sunbird is still pretty useless because you can’t easily share the information, but it’s still alpha software, so I knew that as well. Ghostscript works great, but so do a thousand other freeware PDF creation programs (Although the commercial Fineprint/PDF Factory products are still by far — by far! — the best. I have an ancient version from years ago and it blows even the real-deal Adobe products away. It’s been one of the best productivity software purchases I’ve ever made — They even responded the same day and sent a software update several days later to an e-mail I sent them about a formatting problem on a PDF file I created that had a Japanese font embedded in a WMF in the footer of an English language DOC file. Adobe Acrobat Elements still can’t get that to appear correctly, BTW…).
But here’s the kicker: $70 NFR (Not for retail.) MS Office 2003 Standard, available at multiple, reputable sites. (See Surplus Computers, #9Software,, etc.). That’s less than an hour of my staff’s time, so the first time that I avoid OpenOffice’s crappy compatibility with PowerPoint, I’m ahead of the game. And that’s what it’s all about in business. I’ll use 7zip, Shareaza, or FileZilla because they work well and work seamlessly with my other software. I’ll also use OpenOffice at home, but it’s not ready for he workplace yet.
Uff Da!
(An episode where Peter screams out loud at stupidity in the Japanese service industry…)
I’m a businessman, and businessmen (Or businesswomen, businesspeople, drunken monkeys, or lobotomized fleas for that matter…) will tell you that in order to win or keep business, you do things to make your customers’ lives easier. Japan is reknowned the world over for its service industry’s fine attention to detail, its uncompromising quality control, and the pedestal upon which it places the consumer.That is, of course, unless you are a Japanese bank.
Case in point: Our main bank here in Japan is SMBC, or the Sumitomo-Mitsui Banking Corporation. Now I owe SMBC a lot — Without them Jan and I would have been up natto creek without any soy sauce (More on that in another post at some point.), but today I was stopped in my tracks — I actually cringed, and you know that knot you get in your chest when you feel helpless rage? Well, it grew to the point that I thought I would explode all over my LCD screen. Why?
The SMBC website only allows one to access information on their mortgage during the period between 9am and 9pm, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.
UFF DA!
Good article here –> http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2006/03/08/chinas_wondrous_web.html
The whole Chinese take on the internet (Do I get credit — or snarls? — for the term “Chinternet? :-) ) is really amazing. I first noticed this about 4-5 years ago when taking business trips to China. It was the easiest place in the world to get internet connections, because every municipality had a free dial-up service. All you had to do was ask at the front desk for the number and voila!, you were on-line (Albeit at 56Kb back then…). It didn’t take long to figure out why the Chinese government was so beneficent — Giving free dial-ups means that they control what you get to see (And perhaps that they get to filter your emails for any interesting commercial or other information…). It’s a bit different now, but only in the sense that you get free ADSL at hotels — The Wizard of Oz still sits behind the curtain pulling levers and issuing puffs of hot air to make you believe only what he wants you to see.
An aside: I added a comment to the blog after the Fastcompany article. Some people just don’t get it at all. They need to step outside of their box, breathe some air from the real world, and then get on with it.
Uff-da!
“A revolutionary way to send cargo into space, the LiftPort Space Elevator will consist of a carbon nanotube composite ribbon eventually stretching some 62,000 miles from earth to space. The LiftPort Space Elevator will be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, and to a small man-made counterweight in space. Mechanical lifters are expected to move up and down the ribbon, carrying such items as people, satellites and solar power systems into space.”
February 13, 2006: “…LiftPort successfully launched an observation and communication platform a full mile in the air and maintained it in a stationary position for more than six hours while robotic lifters climbed up and down a ribbon attached to the platform. The platform, a proprietary system that the company has named “HALE” (High Altitude Long Endurance), was secured in place by an arrangement of high altitude balloons, which were also used to launch it. The robotic lifters measured five feet, six inches and climbed to a height of more than 1500 feet, surpassing its last test record by more than 500 feet.”
http://www.liftport.com/
You gotta wonder about stuff like this. Is it possible? Is it a scam? (It’s a ‘C’ corporation, so they’re looking for lots of investors — Otherwise it would have been set up as an LLC.) They’ve made it up 1500 feet or a bit more than a quarter mile. To be successful, the orbiting anchor of such an elevator would have to be in a geosynchronous orbit, or around 36,000km up in the air. In other words, they’ve made it 0.001% of the way there so far. :-) Another way of thinking about this is the speed the elevator would have to reach. The fastest elevator in the world right now runs at around a kilometer a minute, or 60Kph. At this speed it would take about 600 hours to get from the earth to the anchor — That’s 25 days. Of course most orbits are much closer. The space station, for example is at 345km, so only 6 hours away.
Anyway…seems like a pie-in-the-sky idea to me. So much to go wrong and so little one can do about it.
Why is it that in the United States one sometimes still cannot get a WiFi link at an airline lounge? It’s bad enough that we have to pay for them most of the time (Admitedly this is also true in Europe. There are also enlightened airlines, such as Continental, that make the service free.), but to not even have anything available at all? It costs what, a few dollars a day in service fees to maintain an ADSL line into a WiFi router? I know that United is in trouble, but this is exactly the type of service that makes a lounge more useful than slumping over to your gate and waiting there. I ended up walking 10 minutes over to the Continental Lounge and leeched a weak signal from outside in the hallway where I huddled down protecting the lone wall outlet providing me power from several others doing the same. LAX doesn’t even offer paid WiFi in the general airport areas!
Uff da!
It is fine to have the electrical outlet at one’s house or work under the desk, yet I think that all of us who move notebook computers around would agree that having one on the desk surface or on the wall above the desk makes it easier to connect and disconnect when necessary.
It is poor design to have the electrical outlet in a hotel room be under a desk. It is ridiculous to actually have to move the flippin’ desk in order to get to the outlet. Yet one could assume that the person will likely be in the room for several days and that the initial inconvenience is not so bad.
It is unbelievably stupid to have the electrical outlet be under the desk in the business area of an airline lounge. The average time a person spends at the desk is likely less than an hour, and yet there we are in suits or business skirts hunched over trying not to swear while we fumble around in the darkness under the desk trying to get juice. Why? The wall unit and desk are made of the same material, so they were installed together. I guess the architects and interior designers still use rulers, a compass, and slide rules in order to get their work done. Someone really ought to introduce them to the concept of a computer.
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