A Wireless Experience

Last night a few of us from the class went out for a drink and a meal, while in the drinking phase of the evening I decided I might take the opportunity to sync up my e-mail via the wireless access point in the pub. While the transfer was happening a Darren Neimke IM’d me (is IM now a word? If not, I would like to submit it for consideration) to give me some feedback on my code review idea (which is going gang busters by the way).

At that point I reflected on how connected we are these days, when its possible to knock away some of the amber stuff and geek out at the same time.

Because of my earlier sync in the evening I decided not to get another twenty four hours of “broadband” Internet access when I got back to the hotel room since I was checking out the next day.

Actually I wanted to do some other things like transfer about 100MB of files to the company server via Offline Files, but given the recent performance of the hotel internet connection I doubted that it would be up for the challenge so the $20 wouldn’t be worth it. It could wait until the morning when I went down to the cafe outside Cliftons early to grab a cappuccino.

Or so I thought. I got down to the cafe just before 8am sat down make an order and whipped out the laptop. For some strange reason I couldn’t see the Azure wireless network. This happens quite a bit because I think the shop owners accidentally kick the cables out that support the wireless access points.

No problem thought I, because my wireless card had picked up six other unsecured networks in range. Being the nice guy that I am, I decided not to hijack someone elses network (there were some big names in that list). Instead I looked for the public access points. The strongest signal (four bars) was “Telstra CBD”. I hadn’t seen Telstra CBD before since the Telstra hotspots at the airport are all called “Telstra”.

Unfortunately, while this network was not secured, it didn’t seem to want to allocate me an IP address. I speculate that this is for one of two reasons, the first possibility is that it is in fact NOT a public access point, but rather an exposed internal Telstra network. The second possibility is that it was getting so much traffic that it had not addresses left to allocate.

So here I am, sitting in the training room, typing this blog entry with no means of getting it to the server. You’ll just have to wait – until now.

(9 links – man I’m handing out the GoogleJuice today)

Mobile Access to MSDN Product Keys

On the weekend I paved my machine to do an install of VS.NET 2003 for a course that I am teaching. Unfortunately earlier that week my wifes machine had a catastrophic hardware failure and is out of action. Of course, due to my superior planning technique I forgot to write down the MSDN Product Key for my Windows XP install.

So when it came to type it in I thought, no problem, and just whipped out my Pocket PC which has wireless and surfed on over to the MSDN sites. I found the Subscriber Downloads link and had a heart attack when it redirected me to a minimalist news page for MSDN articles.

At this point I had to call my little brother in law and give him my Passport account details so he could log in over his satellite connection and read out the key to me.

Sure, you could say its my fault for not writing down the number first, but I would like to blame someone else (afterall, it is always someone elses fault).

What would be cool is if when I hit the subscriber downloads site, it hits me up for my passport credentials and gives me two options – one to go and list out my product keys, and another to get some kind of subscription index (also something I’ve wanted occasionally). It is helpful for just these situations when you are doing an OS install and need a key but you have limited access to a terminal.

Another neat feature for the Longhorn timeframe would be a “tip” when the installer starts to suggest that you cancel out and go and get the key (just in case you forgot). That would help complete dodo’s like me.

</rant>