No fireworks, plenty of food.

July 6, 2004

As I was fiddling with my wireless router settings the other day, I noticed that there is another wireless network in range of my own, and it appears that the network is unsecured. That could spell a lot of fun for me if I wanted to be either humorous or malicious, depending on just how mean I want to be.

Basically, a wireless network works by broadcasting a signal in a radius. Any network card within range of the signal is able to talk to the access point, and that’s how a connection is made. Kind of like using walkie-talkies, except you can have a couple of dozen computers on a single access point. Anyhow, by default, all wireless routers and access points ship with encryption turned off. Probably the dumbest of things to do, actually. It makes for easier administration, and Joe User doesn’t know the different between WEP and WPA encryption, and especially couldn’t tell you why 128-bit is is better than 64-bit.

When encryption is enabled, both the router or access point and each computer it talks to need a key to communicate. No key, no access. When you administer a large corporate network, yes, it’s a pain keeping track of all those computers and making sure that each person is informed of a change in the configuration. Mainly, security for wireless needs to be set up so that someone can’t walk up to an office with a laptop and wireless card and just connect to the network and access corporate files. There’s a term called “wardriving” that consists of people using a GPS unit hooked up to their wireless laptop and driving around a city like San Jose that’s rich with tech companies and then marking on a mpa the location of every unsecured network. Someone even did a “warflying” expedition a couple months ago where they did the same thing, but they used a plane instead. Pretty interesting stuff.

Or like me, the other person’s wireless network overlaps with my own. I connect to my own wireless router, but I have the capability to disconnect from it and connect to the other person’s. Since it’s unsecured, I would essentially have full access to their computer if they had shared files. Part of me wants to do something like fill their hard drive up with things they don’t want there, but I’m too lazy to change my network settings to connect to their network. Network security through laziness on the part of hackers…I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere.

Thankfully, my own network is double-secured. I don’t have anything on my computers worth stealing or destroying, but better safe than sorry. That way I don’t have some joker standing down in the garden below my window or sitting in their apartment filling my computer up with horse porn or something of the like.

I only noticed the other network because Heather’s computer was acting wonky so I switched the network cards again. When I moved in, I set up a wireless network in the apartment because she was going to keep her computer in her room, and we didn’t want to string cables everywhere so she could connect to the Internet. She bought a wireless card from Office Depot, I had one already. My card, however, refused to work properly. It may have been the router it was connecting to, but in any case I bought a new, better one. That one acted wonly, too, and so on the advice of tech support I swapped the cards from my machine and Heather’s machine and the problems seemed to go away. I was a little disappointed that she was using the network card I’d bought that was “better” than hers, but in the end it didn’t really matter. So when her network connection got flakey, I switched them back. So now she’s sing her own card and I’m using my own card, and I’m not seeing any problems…yet. We both have working wireless connection for the time being, though I hesitate to use a word like “perfect” because in my family, that’s cause for immediate retribution from the Computer Gods. It’s happened to my Dad numerous times, and I’m always there to pick up the pieces when his machine blows up.

Wireless networking, though, is a boon, and I’m so glad that I made the switch, overt security problems aside. That’s fixable, but being tethered to a network cable isn’t.

Speaking of computer problems, my Dad’s having a doozy of a time getting his second machine working. I worked on it for a few hours on Sunday when I went over there before dinner, though for the life of me I couldn’t get it to work. I brought all the critical parts back home with me, though, so I’ll keep working on them this week.

So yes, we had our big dinner Sunday evening. It was actually a remarkable dinner because not only did we make the trademark Self beef cubelets and beer-battered Walla Walla sweet onion rings, but they were done in a new deep fryer. My Dad’s been using the same deep fryer his whole life of making beef cubelets, and the fryer was actually my grandmother’s before that. It was definitely showing its age, though, so he bought a new one and we tried it out. It was a different experience, that’s for certain, and we found that we could cook in about half the time because the basket was so much bigger. Made for all the difference when we got a late start cooking. The onion rings didn’t come out quite as well as they normally do, but I blame that on tweaky things with the new fryer. We’ll get them straightened out in no time, though I don’t anticipate we’ll make beef cubelets again until probably towards the end of the summer.

Saturday I drove over to my Dad’s house at 9 AM, and we caught a 10 AM showing of Spider-Man 2. I believe that I’ve talked enough about it, but as I predicted, it had a record opening weekend of $180 million. After that, I went home and bestowed upon my sister her birthday present, a copy of the three Indiana Jones movies on DVD. It was hard giving her something that I wanted but hadn’t yet purchased for myself, but heck, it was her birthday. I have to be giving sometimes. She knew that we were doing a big dinner at my Dad’s the next night, so she, my Mom, and I all went out for a quiet dinner at Rock Creek Tavern (Heather’s choice, not mine!). I really do enjoy that place.

Yes, I realize I’m skipping around. I’m tired of doing chronological updates of my time.

Monday was a beautiful day off. I didn’t spend nearly as much of it outdoors as I would have liked, but that was my choice as I was busy doing other things I had computers and network settings to fiddle with, laudry to put away, a room to clean up, and a game to play. OK yeah, so sue me, that last one took up the most time. But I did get out an go swimming yesterday afternoon. I thought that I’d end up spending maybe 15 minutes out there, but after swimming for awhile and sitting in the spa for a few minutes, I went back inside and saw I’d been out for an hour. Yowch. Not only did I remember to put on sunscreen, but I got a lot more swimming in than I’d hoped. I’m not sure if I’m actually getting any amount of exercise by doing this instead of jogging, but I am enjoying spending more time outdoors and not getting up at 5:15 AM to plod through two miles on a treadmill. Not that I find that boring, or anything. I do miss jogging outdoors, but my knees sure don’t.

So, another week before me full of opportunity. To do what, I’m not exactly certain. I may partake in the viewing of a baseball game at PGE Park this week (dollar dog Wednesday!), I may wash my car, and I may be able to get my laptop back up to 100% operational status after its month of silence. That is, get the new attery installed that I should be getting this week. Hopefully the additional RAM I ordered, too.

So yes, excitement all around. But at least it’s a four day week, so it’ll be over before I know it.

Posted in Geekery, General, Movies