Everything In Between

Tonight I spent much of my time exploring the remains of one of the two PC machines my father gave me for my up-and-coming “computer lab.” There wasn’t much of interest on the machine, but as I was looking around the apartment I realized I had more computers than monitors.

Hardware Countdown

My oldest machine, an ancient first-generation Apple iMac DV:SE (do you remember those?), obviously contains the CRT screen along with the computer hardware in one box. So for the most part I consider that one unit. I also have my laptop which falls under the same category, but then I have two PC towers, and I’m getting ready for yet another from my mother along with a G3 tower soon. All of them are headless.

I only have one stand-alone monitor. So that means up to four computers need to share one monitor. Since I’m planning on using at least one or two computers as dedicated servers, I’m not going to need those connected to monitors all the time. For instance, I could VNC in and look around on the rare occasions when I have to. The others, however, are probably going to need something more scalable. I don’t have the space or the money for more monitors, so the best solution here is undoubtedly a KVM switch.

Broken CSS Can Lead to Unuseable Sites

As I was browsing, I came upon KVM Galore, retailers of every kind of KVM switch imagineable. Unfortunately, when I arrived I couldn’t read any product description because the bottom two-thirds of each line of text was chopped off, disappearing behind a white background. Here’s a screen shot.

My first thought was confusion, but my second was to see if I could fix it. So I dived into the source and traced the problem to a <span></span> element that was pretending to be a block-level box. Their CSS had given the span a width, background and border, but no display property.

Without the proper display rule, CSS-compliant browsers treated the span as an inline element, which is obviously not what the designer had intended. So I created a local style-sheet of my own and fixed the problem for the duration of my stay on their site. Here is the style sheet I used:

.detspecs { display: block; }

Believe it or not, that’s it. That’s all it took to fix the problem. I was using Firefox to browse the site, but after a while I became curious about the other browsers. It turns out that the site looks like this on Firefox for Mac, Netscape on both Mac and Windows, and while it’s mostly better in Safari, nasty black lines cut into the text on that browser as well. Opera 7.5 on both Mac and Windows, along with Internet Explorer 6 for Windows and 5.2 for the Mac looked fine. I’ve emailed the site owner and hope that they will fix the problem as soon as they can.

This isn’t the first time an e-commerce site has had broken CSS. Not long ago I wrote about another savvy web developer who fixed the Sainsbury home shopping web site just like I did for KVM Galore. On the bright side, it’s good to see CSS being used more and more thoroughly throughout the online business world.

I still haven’t chosen a KVM switch yet as I’m still researching the topic. If anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear it.

Update: I just heard back from the site owner today (January 19^th), and am glad to see that the CSS has been fixed. Good job, KVM Galore!

Yesterday I finally got my new apartment hooked up with Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner Internet service. (While I was at it, I totally ditched TV and along with the quieter home, I’m looking forward to the nearly $40 savings on my bill each month!) The cable guy woke me up at noon and I answered the door in a t-shirt and boxers because I couldn’t find my pants. Oh well.

Anyway, he quickly set me up, left me extra cable wires at my request, and I started to set up my computer corner. Got my router hooked up after spoofing its MAC address, and started a cursory test of the Wi-Fi router’s signal around my apartment. Everything looked good for a while, so I moved on to more pressing matters, but later on in the day I began experiencing inexplicable network slow-downs and disconnects. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it until I launched NetStumbler and began exploring a little more in-depth.

(I had to do some quick research to gain any valuable information from NetStumbler’s findings, but luckily Wikipedia is perfect for this sort of thing.)

NetStumbler was able to locate 3 other wireless networks in addition to my own which were broadcasting through my apartment. The interference was remarkable. Each of them were transmitting in the mid-channel range from 3 through 6, and I was caught right in the middle. My network’s SNR decreased considerably the more I travelled away from the AP.

The thing about Wi-Fi is that the signals aren’t typically very strong to begin with becuase the coverage is intended to remain confined. This means that competing signals transmitted in close frequencies (termed channels) cancel each other out, causing the headaches my network was giving me.

Thanks to NetStumbler I knew what channels the other guys were using, so I started broadcasting at the other end of the spectrum and suddenly my reception was loud and clear all over the apartment, and I would guess wherever they are broadcasting from too. The lesson in radio technology and Wi-Fi in general was extremely interesting and informative, but on a more practical note this is about being a good Wi-Fi neighbor and not competing for signal strength on the same channels.

It also brings up some very critical concerns involving security and privacy issues. One of the networks NetStumbler found was an unsecured Linksys-based AP. The owner probably doesn’t realize that his home computer network is wide open to anyone with a wireless networking card and a computer, but it is. Since Wi-Fi works on radio technology, and radio can pass through solid objects like walls, the area covered by his transmitter pokes out of the confines of his apartment.

If I were the bad neighbor, I could use his Internet connection, or even browse his iTunes music collection and he would probably be none the wiser. If he had a wireless web cam hooked up to the network, I could see whatever images it broadcasted too. And I wouldn’t even have to start hacking. That’s why it’s so important that you take the steps to protect your wireless network with something like WPA or WEP.

WEP is not very strong, and the new generation of WEP-cracking tools can break it in a matter of minutes, so it should never be considered a preventative measure to keep crackers out of your network. Rather, it is a detterant that should be used to dissuade crackers from trying. My old router only supports WEP encryption on its WLAN so that’s what I’m stuck with, but the fact that this other guy keeps his network wide open means I feel pretty safe here.

Afterall, which house do you think a burglar would break in to? The one with the big security-company sticker on all the windows and doors and the lights on, or the one in the dark with the open window and unlocked door?

4:00 PM

For two years in a row now I’ve switched apartments. This time, I’ve moved back to my old stomping grounds. The apartment I’m in is about 4 or 5 times as large as the previous 250 square foot apartment I shared with my girlfriend and yet we still got it for $225 less than the old one. But despite the sudden increase of free space we have, for me it still feels like one step forward and two steps backwards.

The new apartment is located a mere four blocks away from the building I spent the first 19 years of my life in. From my new bedroom window, I can see the park I played in as a child. I know of old schoolmates who used to live in this very tenement.

I’m happy to be living in my own apartment, where the lease is under my name and I pay the rent. But I’m really not that thrilled about being back in this neighborhood. Danica is, however, very excited about the neighborhood. It is a major change from living in the Village. Everything is surprisingly cheap here; Diesel-brand clothing for $15, coffee, cinnamon rolls and several other pastries for a grand totoal of $4.90. Still, I have yet to make this apartment feel like home.

There are suitcases and boxes scattered all over the floor. We need a lot more furniture here, pronto. We don’t even have a bed. Danica and I have been sleeping on an unreliable air mattress. We’ve been waking up on the hard wooden floor for several days now. I only managed to bring my old twin-size mattress for her yesterday.

I haven’t put up any shelves yet, but I’m looking forward to getting more use out of my first power tool. I just used it to attach one of those slide-out keyboard and mouse holders to the bottom of my brand-new hand-me-down computer table. I’m also excited about just having some space to do real work.

I’ve been wanting to play with some Linux and BSD distros for some time now (ever since I discovered Mac OS X’s Terminal, actually)—

5:20 AM

I stopped writing earlier because my mother came to the door and started helping me clear out the living room. As I said, the place is still quite a mess. After she left, Danica came home. I was on the toilet as she arrived, and unfortunately the fact that my mom and I had cleared some space in the living room by moving boxes of our or her stuff out of the way caused yet-another-temper-tantrum.

Thankfully, I was shielded from most of it by being in the shower and thus managed to ignore most of Danica’s outbursts. When she started punching her exercise ball it was grating at first, but then I realized it may actually have been a good thing; at least she was doing something about her mood instead of yelling at me about it.

For the most part, I was right. She calmed down rather quickly and the rest of the day went on without too many bumps. Several situations threatened to erupt into similarly out-of-proportion outbursts but they were mostly contained to a few exclamations throughout the night. I can’t say there hasn’t been any improvement throughout the year.

Two thoughts are going through my head right now:

• What will Danica think and subsequently do when she reads this part of the entry?
• I am totally wrecking my day tomorrow, and probably the rest of my week, by staying awake and writing this but I really don’t want to go into the bedroom and lay by her right now.

So I air my dirty laundry in public. That’s how I do things.

The former is in my mind because the last time I wrote about her (and the first time I really wrote of explicit problems I was having with her irritability) she got extremely upset when she saw it and accused me of publishing “slanderous” things about her. In her view, what I wrote does not, in the least, portray an accurate description of her.

To which I can only say, of course it doesn’t! I wrote it in a moment of frustration and resentment. No single moment, taken out of context, could possibly hope to describe her entire being accurately. And to be fair, no moment of wonderful tenderness and loving (which I have written about in regards to her before) has been entirely accurate either. So I’ve decided to write what I please because I don’t write for anyone but me.

She said that she didn’t care about what others thought of her. Just what I thought of her. It seems to me that she was implying that the supposed fact that I was slandering her indicated that I didn’t have an accurate view of what happened.

Well. That’s insulting.

So how will this be taken? And what wrath will I pay for it? Regardless, it is written. So let it be paid for.

Will this be the last fight?

The latter because Danica and I just fought yet again. It never seems to fail. Fight after fight. This time we were going to bed. We had survived the day. Danica began to get depressed. Her thoughts focused on the past and all of the negativities therein. She said she wanted to “make it stop” (the bad thoughts, that is) but was unable to do so. Sounds bipolar to me. I would know; that’s exactly what used to come out of my mouth.

So I suggested that she finish up getting ready for bed, and eventually managed to get her to take a shower (the getting ready for bed she wanted to do). Afterwards she remarked on how much better she felt, but that was short lived.

Depressed thoughts returned, and somehow—don’t ask me how exactly, but thanks to my partial reading of Emotional Intelligence I can accurately term it catastrophizing—she spoke for some time about how we aren’t working out together and oh-dear-what-should-she-do? I couldn’t stem this tide, and in that, I failed miserably, because before I knew it she was crying and I had had enough and was laying it on pretty thick, loud enough to wake the neighbors.

I was am simply tired of it all. Months ago I had screamed that I was at the end of my rope. Now I find myself with a new apartment lease, this time in my name that I can not easily afford on my own, fighting day in and day out with my live-in girlfriend. I just want to have one week or just a few days in a row when we don’t fight at all. I honestly can not remember the last time a full day had gone by without at least some hours of unnecessary negative feelings in the air.

It’s pretty simple, really. Calm is to productivity as weather is to nature. Positive emotion is to happiness as oxygen is to breathing. Put another way, I just can’t do shit with these emotional pollutants constantly fucking up my environment!

One of Danica’s co-workers is in a potential end to this situation. He currently lives with his ex-girlfriend (yes, currently living with his ex) and he is reportedly miserable every night. One of my friend’s MSN Messenger display names was particularly relevant today: The best way to survive a gunfight is to not be involved in one.

So more than anything else, more than hoping to stay together even (no, I do not want to break up, yes, I do love her), I hope that this is the last time I fight with Danica forever.

Adapted from a message-board posting of mine:

My girlfriend has been extremely irritable for weeks now. It’s adding untold loads of frustration on to me.

<vent>

We got in a huge fight tonight after I apparently said something which she percieved as a personal attack (and which I didn’t even think could be interpreted that way). It was the third time tonight that has happened. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’m usually very, very good about controlling my temper but this has been going on for too long already.

As an explanation, my girlfriend offers the facts that she is away from home for the holidays, and works long days on her feet at work. That’s all very nice and well, I think, but it still doesn’t grant her permission to get upset with me all the time.

Case in point, I spent the day with my mother cleaning out the new apartment my girlriend and I are moving into, and so I had unpacked her toiletries (toothbrush, tweezer, perfume, etc.) in the new apartment. I had also unpacked some of her laundry, some of which was currently in the wash. When she arrived home tonight, I went to the door to hug her. But she blew right past me, saying something about not wanting to be hugged, walked into the apartment and upon seeing the laundry out of the case, demanded to know what I had done with her things.

Turns out, I wasn’t supposed to unpack her stuff because she never asked me to, and the fact that I had induced a crying fit reminiscent of a funeral. In not so many words, I was blamed for ruining her day, and yet throughout this I still kept my cool.

But throughout the night I kept “doing things wrong” and finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told her I wanted to spend the night elsewhere (i.e. not with her), and that’s when she broke down and started apologizing. Which she always does. And I gave in and stayed. Which I always do.

Which I resent now because I’m up at 5 AM and can’t sleep.

</vent>

Well, I suppose it was inevitable. This blog finally recieved its first major spam attack. Over 350 comments were submitted on nearly all my open entries, all talking about certain sexual unmentionables that would certainly get you excommunicated from the Church.

Thankfully, WordPress’s lovely built-in comment moderation mechanism caught every single spam comment, and I deleted them all without much trouble. This is yet another reason why WordPress is so great.

Oh, and happy 2005.