Finally

Got my cabling issues in the office sorted today. Seems to be a wrap for the MBP wireless issues. Put two cables in around the walls after a trip to Fry’s for cable(s).

I’d been told by a couple of people not to exceed about thirty feet in length as you’ll notice a drop in transfer speed. I put two fifty foot cables in. Haven’t really noticed any difference. But i could just be slow. *grin*

What a Difference a Day or Two Can Make

I have reported here and elsewhere that my MBP and the Airport Extreme (Apple’s own 802n router) were having a few problems communicating.

I had taken the MBP into the Apple Store in Shugahland last week and had the WiFi tested after it wouldn’t connect with the Airport Extreme that was sitting in my office. Well, it would connect if it was three to six feet away(!) and the signal was either for shit or fluctuated wildly from one end of the scale to another. Loss of signal and / or connection was frustrating as shit. It connected to all three routers in the Apple Store. So I knew it wasn’t the computer. I even exchanged the router, just in case I got a bad one. No dice.

I took the ‘puter to a friend’s house (got WiFi?) last night to see if I could get a connection that was consistent. The verdict? I could connect with great signal quality. And it stayed conected consistently too! This was making me crazy. Really crazy! REALLY REALLY CRAZY!

What the hell is the point of having a laptop if you can’t get any further than 6 or so feet from what is supposed to be a powerful router?

Stopped by my local Best Buy to talk to the nerds there. About all we could come up with was:
Move the router to a different location.
Try a bridge of some kind.
Google it and see if someone had the same issue I did.

I thought, and I still do, that something my neighbor has in the room closest to my property line (and the office) is causing some serious interference.

So I’m typing this entry in MacJournal from my front and back yard. And the living room. The backlit keys are sooooooo cool! And I am stil connected! I jus refreshed my friends page in LiveJournal. There was a litle hesitation, but not much.

I moved the router to the opposite wall in the office. From an outer wall to an inner one. The change in connectivity was phenominal! I haven’t tried to run from upstairs yet and I’m hoping there won’t be too much of a drop in signal.

Oh and I’m gonna need a lot more ethernet cable! Heh!

Gotta run it around two walls and over a door.

I told you no damned machine has ever got the best of me...

Gotta make the coffee for in the morning. See ya!

Transfers

Getting all my music transferred from one machine from the other turned out to be a task. Convinced me that I must have the friggin’ network setup improperly.

Probably had more to do with Windoze file sharing protocols than anything else and my inability to understand windows-ese.

Ended up using my ipod nano to do the transfers. Couldn’t seem to get my 8GB Touch to become a portable disk. Another new change for the new generation of ipod? Or maybe just the Touch.

But I Am So Easily Distracted...

I haven’t taken the Mac into work with me yet. Folks have asked to see it...I know though if it was there, I probably wouldn’t get any real work done for trying to reduce the learning curve. Plus folks would want to see stuff. As yet I don’t have the knowledge or the time to put Mac through his paces.

The Track Pad

Now I’ve been a mouse user for a long time. Never liked the track pads on laptops. Even when i was carrying a laptop for work, I usually carried a mouse in the bag as well. The track pads made me crazy!

This is something that could change, though. That double fingered scrolling thing on the mac is pretty cool! There are (of course!) other built in features available. But one thing at a time, please.

The Experience...

Well being new to macs and the software therein, I thought a good place to start would be with this software, Mac Journal. Perhaps I’ll use it to document my transformation from PC user to PC and mac user. Can’t get completely away as The Support I do in my regular job is of course, windoze based.

I figure I should be smart enough to be able to hold 2 OS’s in my noggin!