Puttering in the Study

Wireless Home Network

It took a year and a day after we moved in, but the cable company finally ran the line to the house, and got it hooked up so I finally have high speed Internet out here in the woods.  Took several more days to get the wiring straightened out before I realized that the cable modem would have to be in the study (the Cat 5 line from the wiring closet to the study didn't work, but the two coax did).  Then took another week before Carl could get the wireless router into the mix, so that, theoretically, the laptop could cruise the house wirelessly.

Well, that didn't work until Jeremy came out yesterday and configured the laptop.  Then the laptop couldn't get the signal when I installed the repeater upstairs (in Grayson's room, since it turned out we hadn't put an electrical outlet in the upstairs hall bookcases where the Cat 5/cable connections were.  Oops.  That took longer, but finally we have rock-solid wireless signal throughout this 150 foot long, two-story behemoth.

So, as I sit here, at 4:44 am, unable to sleep, I am sitting in the study typing on the laptop on the sofa.  If the battery runs low, the power cord is actually right behind me, looped into a Levenger computer pad on the sofa table, so I can pull it up and keep working.  I could also go sit in the kitchen and have a bite and keep browsing.

This is really, really neat.  And it only took a year.

Grayson's 6th birthday party

Grayson just had his sixth birthday last week (May 109) and we had his party at the house Saturday.  The highlight of the party was the "Incredibles" birthday cake that my lovely bride spent all evening and night making the day before.  Jamie took a cake decorating class this spring, so she could make nice cakes for the boys' birthdays this summer.  Photos of the cake and the party are under "Grayson's 6th birthday" in "photo albums".

In Search of Frankenstein - Florescu, Radu (#1859)

Just finished this 1975 book, a follow up to the popular "In Search of Dracula" by Florescu.  Useful background on Mary Shelley and the origins of her book.  This is the sort of thing I really enjoy - an analysis of the history of the writing of the book and the influences on her at the time, including the "real" Victor Frankenstein, a alchemist named Konrad Dippel (who hung around the real Castle Frankenstein - go figure). 

Florescu's main addition to scholarship in this area is his belief that Shelley and her husband (sort of) Percy passed by the real Castle Frankenstein on a trip on the Rhine two years before she began work on the book and (he believes) toured the castle itself.  And then deleted any journal entries for the relevant period to reinforce her statement that the entire story came to her in a dream after the well-documented evening at Diodati two years later with Lord Byron and Polidori.  No real evidence either way, but it's an interesting theory.

Build the Musashi:The Birth and Death of the World's Greatest Battleship - Akira Yoshimura (#1576)

Just finished reading this 1991 book about the construction and career of the second Yamato-class battleship IJN Musashi.  Well-written book, which devotes most of its space to the secret construction of the giant batleship in Nagasaki, Japan in the years immediately before the beginning of the Pacific war.  Learned a lot about the screcy of the construction, and a few details of shipbuilsing.  Also learned a lot about the mechanics of the actual lanching of ships, which I didn't understand before.