Year: 2009

router trouble

I seem to have more trouble with routers and wireless access points than I should. My first WAP was an original Airport (flying saucer model). I think I was actually still on dial-up when I got that, and had it plugged into a phone line. It worked fine for a couple of years, then just died. I replaced that with an Airport Express, used in conjunction with a Linksys router. The router was fine, but the the Airport Express started flaking out at some point. I found that I could use it at work with no problems, so I took it into work and got a Linksys WRT54G for home, and used that to replace both the old Linksys router and the Airport Express.
In the office, the Airport Express was fine for a while, until it got fried from a power surge. I replaced it with a D-Link WBR-2310 that I got off Woot. That worked fine for me up until we got kicked out of our building a couple of weeks back. (I’m now working from home.)
Back at home, the Linksys WRT54G worked fine, until I got an Apple TV a year ago. It just didn’t work right with that. I replaced the firmware with DD-WRT and tweaked a few parameters, and I got it working acceptably, though it was still a problem to copy large files from my desktop computer down to the Apple TV.
Well, the WRT54G died last week. No clue why; it just stopped working. Since I’m working from home now, I really need a working router, so I hooked up the D-Link that I’d been using in the office. It’s been a bit flaky. I’ve made a bunch of config changes, so we’ll see if it holds up today or not. If not, I’m thinking about one of these two routers. They both should accept the DD-WRT firmware, and have some good reviews out there.
I think my frequent router issues probably have something to do with the variety of equipment I’ve got hooked up, and the density of WAPs in my apartment building. I’ve got a Tivo, Apple TV, PS3, iPod Touch, PSP, Wii, and three notebook computers sharing my wireless. And I’ve got maybe a dozen other wireless access points that I can see from my apartment.

weirdest Christmas ever

I realized yesterday that I’ve spent every Christmas of my life so far with my parents. I always came home from college for Christmas break. After college, I’ve always driven to my folks’ house, either back in Roselle Park or down in Whiting, for Christmas.

I did drive over to my Mom’s assisted living facility this morning and spend a little time with her, but she’s not really in a condition where it would make sense to take her home with me for the day, or take her out to dinner or anything. She had a minor fall this morning, and is a bit unsteady on her feet right now, so I don’t think it would be a good idea to take her out and risk another fall.

So I’m spending most of the day alone here in my apartment, watching MythBusters, and taking care of a few miscellaneous chores. I’ve been trying to think of something I could do today to honor Dad. I think maybe just relaxing today, and continuing to be responsible about taking care of Mom, would make him happy.

If anyone reading this is feeling any charitable impulses today, consider the Alzheimer’s Association. They’ve been quite helpful over the last few months, as I tried to figure out what was going on with Mom, and how best to deal with it.

one day at a time

The last few months have been… eventful. That’s the best word I can think of for it. My dad was in the hospital from the end of August until the end of September, when he passed away. I spent a lot of time in October starting to settle Dad’s estate, and doing a lot of stuff for Mom. At the beginning of November, I found out that the company I work for was not going to make it out of Chapter 11, and my entire staff was laid off. Right after Thanksgiving, I moved Mom from her home in Ocean County to an assisted living facility here in Somerset County. After only a few days there, she wound up in the hospital. She got a pacemaker, and some adjustments to her medications, and went back to assisted living in about a week. Her dementia seemed to get a lot worse while she was in the hospital though. They discovered that she had a C. Diff. infection, and started treating that. She’s a bit better now, but still not back to “normal”. Meanwhile, at work, we got kicked out of our building at the end of last week. We were bought by a larger company, and all our servers are in Michigan now, and I’m working out of my home, mostly.

I still have a lot of work in front of me, with regard to making sure Mom is OK and taken care of, Dad’s estate getting settled, keeping my old company’s systems running for a little longer, and trying to help the new company take over all of our operations.

Sometimes I feel sorry for myself, but I try to remember that I do still have a job, unlike many of my friends, and, due to my Dad’s diligence and thriftiness, I should be more than able to pay Mom’s assisted living bills.

I have no idea what 2010 will bring, but my mantra right now is “one day at a time.”

assisted living

I stumbled across the site for the Mature Market Institute today. They do an annual market survey on costs for assisted living, nursing homes, and stuff like that. It’s no surprise that the Bridgewater NJ area is one of the most expensive in the country for assisted living. The national average is $3131 monthly. Wilmington, DE is the most expensive, at $5219. Bridgewater NJ is $4354. I’m paying more than that for Mom, since she’s in an Alzheimer’s unit, and requires a pretty high level of care. I’ve got a claim open on her long-term care insurance, but I haven’t gotten an answer from them yet, so I’m paying for Mom’s care out of Dad’s retirement savings right now.

There are a bunch of other interesting (and sometimes useful) papers on their site. There are a couple on “discovering what matters” that look like they might be worth reading. And there’s a caregiver’s guide for Alzheimer’s Disease that has some good info in it.

This site is run by MetLife, so I’m guessing that there may be a certain bias on certain subjects, but everything I’ve read there so far seems reasonable.

Windows XP Mode

I’m installing Windows XP Mode on my Windows 7 laptop right now. It’s taking quite a while, but I guess what it’s doing under the covers is installing Windows XP under Virtual PC.

Oh, hey, it just started up Windows XP. Now it’s going through all the normal annoying things you get on a new XP machine, the warning about unused icons on your desktop, the warning about not having any anti-virus software, and all that.

Okay, so I played around with it a bit and it looks like your usual Windows XP virtual machine, only with a few differences. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to shut the machine down; you can only log off and hibernate it. And there’s a fixed user that is automatically logged in. I guess I don’t know much about Windows XP Mode yet. I’ll have to play with it some more.

Mom

I’ve mentioned previously that my Mom is suffering from dementia, and I’m looking to get her into assisted living. I just thought I’d post a couple of useful links for anyone in a similar situation. First, there’s a paper titled Understanding the Dementia Experience [PDF] that I found quite helpful in trying to understand what my Mom is going through. And I’ve started reading a book called Long-Term Care: How to Plan & Pay for It that seems to be a pretty good book, though I haven’t gotten too far through it yet. I have to say that my Dad did a great job in preparing for this, since he bought long-term care insurance for my Mom several years ago. The LTC insurance should help us out a lot.

WIndows 7 upgrade – Inspiron

There was a huge bombshell dropped at work yesterday, which I may blog about in a week or two after it’s all sorted out. And things are still going on with my Mom, which I may or may not blog more about at some point. Somehow, I found time to install Windows 7 on my Dell Inspiron while all this stuff was going on, and I’m going to blog about that, since it’s a lot more straightforward than any of the work or family stuff.

I used Easy Transfer (as mentioned previously) to back up my stuff, then did a clean install of Win 7, then used Easy Transfer to put the data back, then re-installed all my applications. This went pretty well. Most of the apps found their data, no problem. The one exception was Lotus Notes, which kept its data under the Program Files folder, so Easy Transfer didn’t save it. No big deal, though, since I had a fairly plain Notes install on this laptop, so it was easy to just go through the setup again.

So now I’ve got the 64-bit version of Win 7 Pro running on my laptop, with the usual tools installed — Office 2007, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, Notes 8.5.1, and a bunch of other random stuff. Everything seems to be working, though I haven’t really tested everything yet.

Windows 7

I’ve been so busy with family stuff, that I haven’t even thought about upgrading any of my machines to Windows 7. I had planned to upgrade my desktop machine and my Inspiron laptop to Win 7 Pro, and my Acer netbook to Win 7 Home. My copy of Win 7 Home hasn’t shown up in the mail yet, so I can’t do that one yet. And the desktop machine is too important for me to mess with it right now.

So, I’m playing with the Inspiron tonight. It had Vista Ultimate, 32-bit, on it. I’m replacing that with Win 7 Pro, 64-bit. I used Windows Easy Transfer to save my files and settings from the old install to an external drive. I got through the basic Win 7 install fine, and now I’m restoring those files backed up with Easy Transfer. Assuming that works out, then I’ve got about a dozen programs to install.

I do wish that there had been a reasonable in-place upgrade option to get me from Vista Ultimate to 7 Pro. Even if I had to stick with 32-bit, that would have been fine. Or if there was a way to migrate installed programs along with the files via Easy Transfer. Well, I guess it’s not a huge deal. I’m just hoping it’s all worth it. I never really had time to play with the Win 7 betas or RC or even the RTM off MSDN, so I don’t have much of a clue as to how it’ll work out. People keep saying that it’s a lot better than Vista, but I have my doubts!