For the past month or so, my internet connection at home has been dropping constantly. There hasn't really seemed to be any rhyme or reason to it either. What's interesting is that one of my neighbors with a similar network setup was experiencing similar behavior.

I decided to take this as an opportunity try out some new firmware for my router (a Linksys WRT54G). I first decided to check for updated official firmware. Luckily enough, there was some updated firmware, though it wasn't what I would call current (i.e. 2005).

Taking a failure to update as a bad sign, I instead took Scott Hanselman's advice and decided to try some alternate firmware. So far, it is working with flying colors and my router suddenly has all sorts of new functionality. It is a little frustrating that the hardware could support this out of the box, but the firmware wouldn't allow it.

Here's what the web administration tool looks like with the DD-WRT firmware installed:

Much snazzier than the "official" firmware.

If you're interested in trying out DD-WRT, look no further than http://www.dd-wrt.com/. I was able to find plenty of resources online for getting DD-WRT working, too. Hopefully, this will fix some of the connection issues I've been having.

UPDATE - Interestingly enough, Lifehacker named DD-WRT their number two network utility of their top 10 network utilities.

I'm sure I'm the only one that has ever messed up like this, but anyway...

My TV is one of the 30" HDTV monitors. It was cheaper at the time and the box didn't mention anything about it not being a true "HD" TV. In other words, it doesn't support HD without a tuner. Regardless, though, it was cheap and it has a great picture.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have HDMI input, so when I upgraded from the old HD package from Dish Network to their HD/DVR service, the upgraded receiver I got only had component output and HDMI output.

Big deal, right? Surely I can deal with component.

Except that my Xbox 360 takes up one of my component inputs and my Wii SHOULD take up the other component input. I'm out of component inputs.

I did what any other self-respecting geek would do and headed over to monoprice.com, which is by far the best place to get cables or adapters... period. I ordered an HDMI to DVI converter a few days after ordering my Wii component cables. The Wii cables came first, so my 360 was unhooked for a few days while I could enjoy some 480p Wii goodness (it does look better than the 480i with the prepackaged composite cables by the way).

Today, my HDMI to DVI converter came.

And I goofed up.

I ordered the DVI (male) to HDMI (female) converter.

Not the DVI (female) to HDMI (male) converter.

The plugs don't work that way.

*sigh*

What's even better is I didn't realize this until I had already pulled the TV out, unhooked the satellite receiver from the component and rehooked the 360 component back in.

Moral of the story: double check your cables before you buy new cables.

This Christmas, my wife got me one of those awesome Logitech Harmony remotes (the Harmony 880 for those who are curious, and at a great price, too). I spent the better part of last night attempting to get it set up.

The out-of-box experience is great. The remote looks and feels excellent and the docking station for it is really cool. Of course, you should charge it prior to use. I got the thing charged and then began the installation process... on my Windows Vista box. Like so many things, it doesn't officially support Vista yet. What this means practically is that it doesn't yet support things like Aero Glass (I think because of WDDM support). It kicks the whole thing down to Aero Basic while the program runs. I also had some fun with Logitech's website because of some errors their server was having related to creating some COM objects.

At this point, it doesn't look all that good. Well, to be honest, I was feeling a little upset about the whole thing, but I WAS using the remote on an unsupported OS still and everybody has server issues once in a while. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt so I tried their website a few hours later. The thing worked great - even with the new security settings that Internet Explorer has. The website works by downloading a special file that the Harmony Remote Client opens so that all the settings are customized on their website and then loaded to the remote. I had a few extra security dialogs, but the thing still worked great.

Once I had the remote customized to my liking, I went into the living room to try it out.

POWER!

...

POWER!

...

POWER! POWER! TURN ON! TURN ON!

What is going on?!?

My TV came on, my receiver came on, but my satellite receiver just sat there.

For those who may have read the title of this blog post, you may have already figured out what my problem was. My satellite receiver's remote uses UHF instead of IR. My Harmony remote only uses IR (AFAIK). In other words, my remote cannot talk to my satellite receiver.

*sigh*

I am happy to report that I'm planning on investigating digital cable again anyway, because my satellite company likes new sign-ups better than existing customers. They'll give you an HD receiver without any questions if you're a new customer, but if you want to upgrade your receiver later, they want to charge you $800+ for a new receiver. Yeahhh, I think I'd rather go another route, thank you.

Hopefully, the digital cable box uses an IR signal instead of a UHF signal.

For those who may be scared away from the Harmony remotes, don't be. The thing works great with everything else. I entered in the model numbers for my receiver, TV, XBox 360, and PlayStation 2 and it talks with all of them without any problems. I'd been lazy and not using my receiver for sound before because I had to get out 2+ remotes everytime, but now, I'll be enjoying some surround sound when I play games on my 360 now.

Colin has raved about the joys of middle clicking for a while now, but I was never able to enjoy it because clicking my mouse's middle button never seemed to do all of the cool things that his did. Mine brought up a really weird multi-directional arrow thing that was supposed to let me scroll in any direction I wanted - except that it rarely worked the way I wanted it to.

Well, I finally decided it was time to fix it once and for all so that I could enjoy middle clicking like the rest of the world.

The mouse in question that I'm using is the Logitech MX700 *.

Here's what my mouse settings dialog looked like when it didn't work:

Now that it does work, it looks like this:

The difference is subtle, but all I did was change the functionality for the middle button from "Universal Scroll" to "Middle Button." That was way too easy for me to have missed it for this long, but I'm glad I finally found it. If you're having a similar problem getting your MX700 (or other similar Logitech mouse) doing middle clicks the way you want, check out what your setting is.

* - The Logitech MX700 is a great mouse that has a recharging dock so you don't have to buy batteries all of time... I've been using mine for almost 3 years without any new batteries. I can also highly recommend the Logitech MX1000, which I use at home. I plan on sticking with Logitech mice unless Microsoft ever releases a wireless mouse with a rechargeable dock. That rechargeable dock makes all of the difference.

Yesterday, after I had been at work for about an hour, Outlook started giving me some weird errors (something about cyclic redundancy checks). I googled the error and found a KB article that suggested that I try chkdsk. I tried that and it found some bad sectors on my drive. Afterwards, my computer booted back up and from then on... utter mayhem. Explorer would die with "Unknown hard errors" all over the place.

Below is a screenshot of my eventvwr after my disk was ghosted to a new, working drive. As you can see, the all-wise eventvwr knew there were problems before I did.

Words can't describe this. You've got to see it for yourself.

(Can you imagine programming at 10240x3072?)

(via Digg)

How about FOUR?!?

Dell just announced at CES 2006 their XPS Renegade gaming system that utilizes FOUR GPUs with a 4.26 GHz processor. Here is the link at IGN and here is the direct link to Dell's Flash site.

That's just insane.

And for just over $2,000, you can purchase their 30-inch monitor, too.

Can we say overkill?

Over a year ago, I built a new PC from the ground up. This wasn't my first PC to build mind you. I hand-picked all of the parts and had a great time putting it together. If you've ever built a PC, you know the feeling of hitting the power button after hooking the final jumpers and hearing that familiar whirr as the PC boots up. Boy, is it a scare when it doesn't do that! That's what happened with this PC... absolutely nothing. Long story short, I got the PC to come on finally, but everytime I shut it down, it wouldn't come back on without my resetting the CMOS by using a jumper on the motherboard. I tried replacing the CMOS battery, changing out the memory... everything. I finally found some people online in a hardware forum with a similar problem. Their solution? RMA. *sigh* What was MY solution? Get a Dell. Okay, okay, I'll admit it. I chickened out. I just didn't want to get burned again. I'm still using that Dell, too.

Flash forward to the present. I wanted to build a PC for my wife and I still had that motherboard sitting around. I ended up RMA'ing it and I got a replacement back. I hooked it all up a few nights ago and, miraculously, it worked! I had a few strange lock-ups, but they seemed to stop. Tonight, it won't turn on. I took the case off and reset the CMOS to see if anything would happen. Something did happen, but only for a second. I heard the whirr for about a second and then silence. I would guess a short, but I don't know. Building a PC is a lot of fun, but it can be great source of frustration when it doesn't work.

My recommendation for building PC's (ha, like you'll listen to me now) is do a Google search on some of the hardware you're interested in, but put words in there like "problem" or "this piece of crap won't work" or something. If you find a lot of results, check them. It can save you some stress later on.