Cosmo

I’m sitting here eating breakfast at my favorite breakfast place in Olympia, which I scheduled for low volume, with few customers coming and going. The smooth jazz is playing, as I watch a singular street person (derelict, bum, homeless, metallly-ill?) wander past the fenced in parking lot of the decrepit “ghetto Safeway” which has been closed since last june, and languishing due to “no retail stores clause in the sale agreement.” As I sit here, the logs trucks come by occasionally, loaded with their “National Forest Booty Give-Away” lumber. No question I’m in Olympia, for sure.

My Friday appointments and plans have all been pooched my schedule, (always bad timing) and now I set forth on a whole set of different priorities.

I’ve have done about 3 hours worth of research on Apache/PHP/Drupal tuning, and monitoring a server hosting a site on which I’m doing some “sys-adminy type” consulting, and performance tuning. Of course the problem with being a consultant, is you only get to bill for about 1/4 of your time, as you often have to do research to figure out what do to, and most of that is not billable.

I’ve brought a Belkin Wireless Access Point down to put in the restaurant (Cicada) to include them in the wildly popular Zhonka! Surfbreak program of free (no-marketing, no data-collection, no-logging, and no “give us your name and click here” website re-directs) WiFi Hotspots, our contribution to the “DIY, power to the people!” ideal I care so stongly about.

My AT&T 3G wireless card is serving me until the access point is in place. (Must eat first for strength!)

You can see my results (Olympia to California on AT&T’s 3G network, and back to Olympia via Intertubes), speeds not bad, but still pricey at $60 month ($80 without AT&T Mobile Phone on plan).

This of course reminds me that my iPhone has a pooched transmitter (or antenna connection problem), and that I received my over designed pre-paid FedEx mailer for service. They have a little white iPhone sized box with foam pad, and little pouch to put it in. Also included in the package was my Apple(TM) officially issued “paper-clip”, in a little parts baggy with a pictograph on how to remove the sim before sending. Wish me luck!!