10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but these days, if I’m not connected to the internet, it’s like my computer is broken.
Things look sorted out now. To recap, my Airport, which has been flaky since the holiday trip, started to ignore my request to share an IP address over the WAN port. This, coincidentally, started on the day that Apple released the Airport Extreme upgrade. I’ve read many conspiracy theories over the years, and in case this was a deliberate plot by Apple, c’mon guys, at least make it look like aliens or the mafia did it. Anyway, I reverted to my old cable router for a short while, which meant no AppleTalk, but we have an external Zip drive, so this would do in a pinch, but the “pinch” lasted about 6 hours, after which my ISP developed a serious case of wonkitis. It’s enough of a pain to troubleshoot home network problems, but when you can’t even be sure that it’s supposed to work, it makes my work problems seem trivial.
To make a long story short, re-uploading the firmware to the Airport seems to have resolved the NAT problem, and manually releasing my DHCP lease on the one Mac I’d managed to connect cleared the way for the Airport to resume its dirty business. Now I just have to get through my email backlog and post a few VP stories, and I can go to work.
“Work” involves, on top of frantic coding of objects I never ever understood, configuring 10 new development PCs. Why am I in charge of installing PCs? I have no idea. If I’m in fact the best qualified, I really should sell my shares in the company. The best part? I’m having network trouble.
On to what can now be considered “old business”, the Piebald/Choke concert was mostly disappointing. Maybe it’s the concept of an all ages event where the band goes on at 11 on a Tuesday. Maybe it’s the fact that “100% no alcohol” really meant no alcohol this time, even in the front section of the Horseshoe, where the barstools were sitting on the bar. I’ve no idea, but Piebald seemed like they were dong a recital or something. I’ve never seen them live before, but I could have saved myself the trouble and just listened to a CD. When I go to a live show, I expect some kind of added value – witty banter, clever song introductions, some form of energy, etc. I saw nothing of this nature from Piebald, although the earlier Choke performance was great, and I didn’t really like their stuff the one time I heard it a week or two ago. Now I want their CD. Go figure. My music week may yet be saved, as The Golden Dogs are doing a just-announced show Friday night at the El Mocambo, and I’m tabling for the vegetarian folks at some ska thing Saturday. That’s three concerts in one week, which I think is a new high score.
There is no music of the moment, lest I wake someone.