2018: Day 57 the one with a new wireless router
Word count 135,258 + 1,280 or 136,538 of 1,000,000

Dear Reader,

Today was the day that I had to update my wireless router. It was really a pretty easy thing to do today. I just had to drive to the cable company store and exchange my old modem for a newer model one. They gave me the XB6 Wireless Gateway TG3482G voice and data modem. Getting it plugged in was easy enough. The power cable was dangled behind my desk and plugged into my UPS to protect it from surges and outages. Strangely enough the device only has 2 ethernet ports on it. I plugged in two different category 7 cables. One 3 foot Cat7 patch cable to my ASUS RT-AC87U Wireless-AC2400 Dual Band Gigabit Router. The other port is plugged directly into my Storm Stryker customer computer bild via a 6 foot Cat7 cable. Things are all setup and it worked out well enough. It really only has the one blinking light on the top. It took about 10 minutes for the modem to get setup and start providing internet. It does not beep or anything, but the little light flashed and started over. I was kind of expecting to see it turn green. My only real sign that it was up and running was when my ASUS AC2400 went fully active and started connecting devices to the internet.

Today was one of those days where I thought it might be a good idea to mess with my Fitbit Aria scale. Well you might be surprised to find out that for the first time this year my Fitbit Aria scale connected to one of my wireless networks. It was really weird. This time around it could only find one of my home networks, but it connected to it. That is a big step forward on the tracking my weight loss front. Replacing two meals a day with Soylent has really changed my diet and contributed to a bit of a weight loss. The good news is that my Fitbit Aria scale will be able to track my weight loss journey this time around. That is assuming the device does not somehow manage to forget the network. Seriously, Fitbit engineers did not make the original Fitbit Aria very easy to setup or modify. If I thought it was difficult and annoying to get setup, then imagine what other people who are not as persistent think about using the technology.

Tonight is a night that I’m watching some University of Kansas Basketball on ESPN via YouTube TV. Tonight I’m just watching the game on my phone. We have been using the Chromecast Ultra to watch the games on the old Sony Bravia television. Tonight I’m mostly listening to the game on my Bose Qc35 headphones and watching a little bit while typing this blog post. This may not be a very long post tonight. I’m struggling to keep up with my daily word count. Today was a very very busy day. Mix in the wireless router replacement and you can see how I just started right during the first half of the Jayhawks game today. On the brighter side of things the game has been really pretty exciting to watch. This is my type of game. The Jayhawks are playing pretty well tonight in the first half.

Topic 1: Flashing back to this morning…

I totally forgot that this morning I had started writing a blog post…

Ok. I have 15 minutes here to write this morning, I just hooked up my Microsoft Universal Keyboard to my Pixel 2 XL phone. It has been some time since this device was charged. Right now it is charging in the car from a standard USB car charger. About half my devices are running USB Type-C and the rest are using the regular old USB connection. That makes charging interesting. It means that every time I travel or even in my car two sets of plugs are required. That is not the worst thing ever, but it is something that has to be managed. Right now I’m sitting in front of the school waiting for the doors to open and hammering on the keyboard. I’m hopeful that right now I can contribute 500 words to my daily writing goal.

I realized right after writing that paragraph that it would have been easier to just bring my Chromebook with me vs. trying to use that wild Microsoft Universal Keyboard. This ASUS Chromebook flip C101P is built to travel around and instead of doing that I elected to carry around an older keyboard. Now for a long time I thought that it might be a good idea to condense down to only using my smartphone to write. Following that set of thoughts lead me to buy a ton of different wireless keyboards. I think part of it was messing around with my Nexus 9 tablet and trying to figure out a solid way to use it like a laptop. I do have to say that the Microsoft Universal Wireless Keyboard was one of the better ones. It is rugged and it still works. I just do not use it very often.

I took a couple of pictures of my old Pixel XL linked up with the keyboard this morning. That was almost my thumbnail today. It was going to be the thumbnail for this blog post. Something happened today that dethroned that thumbnail. It was a wild day. The kind of day that involved getting a new wireless router. A photo of that new router sitting on my desk had to be the thumbnail today. The new router is about 1/3 the size of the older one. It also does not appear to be as well ventilated, but I’m sure it is an epic and awesome device. I ran a quick speedtest and pulled 290 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up. That is a little bit faster than the last modem. I’ll take it. It works.

Topic 2: Getting ready for the 2nd half of basketball

This blog post has already exceeded the 1,000 word threshold that this month seems to be geared toward. Maybe just maybe I’ll be able to sit down and keep writing for the next hour or so. At the moment, Captain Pickles is asleep and almost snoring. The Jayhawks on senior night are playing pretty well and ESPN is not really adding value to the game. The announcers have lost their way. They no longer try to provide true play by play mixed with insightful commentary. I would volunteer to show them how it is done, but I just don’t have enough time to help ESPN figure out how to orchestrate live game coverage.

Ohhhh —- I almost forgot to mention that during my trip to the cable company story I got heckled. All of the news swirling around college basketball these days and the NCAA in general has been at the forefront of college basketball fans consideration. The salesperson/technician asked me about Kansas being a semi-pro team and engaged in a little bit of heckling. My blog posts are pretty much stream of consciousness and are published as written. I really do not go back and edit things after the fact. This year that is really true. I just don’t have enough time. That being said my sincere hope is that Coach Bill Self is not tied to any tomfoolery. The Jayhawks teams have been very full of players that are not one and done competitors. I guess we will see how things end up, but I’m hopeful they turn out well.

Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs