Freudian slip?

Talk about a slip of the tongue . . .

Fun with the Pres

I saw excerpts of this video last month, but the entire segment is now available on Google Video (thanks to Jason & David). It's Bush at a Correspondents dinner giving a speech, and he's got an impersonator "interpreting" his remarks. It's hilarious, and I love that the President can laugh at himself like this.

Now What?

Is there anyone out there that didn't see the finale of American Idol? The outcome was pretty predictable (I still think Katharine will be bigger) but the show was definitely huge. I do think they milked it for all it was worth though. Thank God for Tivo. I couldn't have lasted 2 full hours - especially because half of it was commercials.

Actually, the entire thing was one big commercial. Besides the shameless plugs for Coke and Ford, almost every guest artist on the finale, and every other Idol episode for that matter, was there to promote something. Half of last night's artists are plastered all over the iTunes store today selling their latest album. Coincidence?

Idol was the last big TV show that we've been keeping up with in our house. Our favorites this season were Grey's Anatomy, Lost, House & Scrubs. Close behind were The Office and My Name is Earl. We've never kept up with TV before like we have this season. I'm glad it's all over now though, because the weather's getting nice and all I want to do is go outside and play.

Gigabit - for now

Less than 4 years ago, we upgraded the CLC network from 10 Mbps hubs to 100Mbps Cisco switches. It was a significant upgrade. We were pretty happy with ourselves and thought we'd be set for a long time.

This week I installed 2 new Linksys gigabit switches and plan to upgrade the rest by year's end. Now our core switch, which connects our servers and DSL, is talking at 1000 Mbps. Also, the Ministry Center is now connected to the network over a fiber gig link. The fiber has been in place for several years, but it was terminated with a 100 Mb fiber/copper media converter on each side. Now it's connected to a 1000 Mbps fiber GBIC on each end, which gives us a lot more speed to work with.

Now we'll be set for a long time - right?

wireless bridging

One of my favorite things about my job is that I am constantly forced to learn new things and be challenged. My latest opportunity involves networking a couple buildings on our campus that have never been connected. The Student Life Center is less than 300 feet away with a clear line of sight, and "The House" is 1700 feet away and on the other side of a forest.

I've been considering connecting the SLC wirelessly, but I don't think it will be an option with the house. I met with a guy today from a local company who specializes in fiber optic installation. I'm curious to see what the cost will be to trench from the main building to the house and lay fiber between the two. If we go that route, we will connect the SLC at the same time since it's on the way.

In the mean time, I need to work on getting a quick solution for the SLC. I've had a couple Linksys WAP54G's laying around for a while and have wanted to test them out as a wireless bridge. Today I finally found the motivation to begin testing from Tony Dye at Perimeter Church. Thanks Tony! I'll be curious to see if they run into any weather-related interference - rain, lightning, snow, etc.

After several hours of configuring, upgrading firmware, testing, and almost cursing - success! (sort of). The problem I ran into is that my APs don't support WPA in wireless bridge mode. I have v.2 of the WAP54G, and it's only supported in version 3 or higher. Of course that fact was nonexistent on Linksys' website and I only discovered it when I broke down and asked an online Linksys tech. So, I'm temporarily running WEP to make it work, but I will be upgrading the APs soon to take advantage of WPA2. I have no faith in WEP, but it's better than nothing. I'm ordering some high-gain outdoor antennas, and I'll post pics when I implement this in the buildings. This should be a good solution until we can get fiber out there.