School at last - and more toys coming

The kids are going back to school after a long summer. Early on there was some camp, but later on things dragged a bit. I guess Leah's blog will have more about that. But she's back at the dorm (and we miss her) now. Batya (does she still spell it with an "h"?) came and went off to school.

Dani came and went off to school. And Ari is here as well.

Yechiel will be coming back next week, and hopefully he'll have a Linksys signal booster and a USB 802.11b adaptor for me. It's for the new computer in the mamad (i.e. "protected" room). Oh, didn't I mention that?

On one of my trips overseas, the laptop in the mamad went bad. The screen flickered badly. Later I borrowed a large (beautiful) Dell LCD monitor from the office and attached it to the laptop. It worked, but the positioning of the keyboard was problematic, because we didn't have a keyboard in the house that would fit the laptop, which only has USB ports.

Later at some point the monitor stopped working with the laptop, I still don't know why. Anyway, we bought a new computer to replace the laptop and at some point in my copious spare time I will copy the files over the network from the laptop to the new computer.

One of the cool features of the computer is that I have remote speakers, so now even though it's not portable like a laptop, Tzirel can listen to shiurim and music from the Internet in the kitchen. The range is at least 10 meters, so that's fine.

Here's the problem: All along we've had at best a marginal wireless internet signal in the mamad. When I installed the new computer, I put the old Belkin 802.11b card into a PCI adaptor and into the new computer.

Incidentally, even though 802.11b is sort of old, it's okay because we don't do all that much computer-to-computer copying. We're mostly interested in Internet connectivity, so 802.11b is
fine.

Anyway, the wireless card in the laptop used to be on the desk. Now it's in the tower, which is sitting on the floor... and the wireless signal went from marginal to "almost never".

So I ordered a Linksys WRE54G signal booster

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=38&prid=629

from Amazon, together with Linksys USB wireless adapter.

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=36&prid=435

I intend to install the signal booster (essentially it's a repeater) somewhere on the first floor, in the hopes that it'll get a decent signal into the mamad. Along the same lines, I'm removing the PCI/Belkin card from inside the tower and will put the USB adapter higher up.

I guess we'll see. More when I get it, or when the muse strikes.

'Till then....

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