Friday, August 05, 2011

Friday again! Storm free and wireless, too

Can't believe it's Friday. It's been difficult getting a handle on what day it is due to focussing on Tropical Storm Emily which made the beginning of the week feel like a weekend to me.

Fortunately, Tropical Storm Emily was not a threat to us in the Lesser Antilles and passed about 150 miles to the south of us. According to wunderground.com, we had a maximum wind speed of 28MPH and a maximum gust of 41MPH. It was a little bit bouncy here, but no worse than some days.

I'm NOT complaining! Hoping that Emily will be the only storm that happens in our neck of the woods this summer.  Could be... Look at 2006...

Tropical Storms, 2006 (click image to enlarge)

So, while dealing with T.S. Emily I had some time to play with the new Alfa R36 AP/Router which works with our Engenius bridge (ethernet) and our Alfa AWUS036H (1000mW USB Wifi Adapter).

FIRST THING TO DO:  Download the latest firmware for the Alfa R36 here:
and install it. It is very easy to do. I did not know this had to be done and experienced many problems which now appear to have been solved.

We are currently using the R36 with our Engenius bridge as our hotspot is linked to its MAC address. I'll have to call our ISP before I can use the USB WiFi Adapter as they will have to change the MAC address to that particular unit.

So, another change that I had to make to my router settings was to configure it for the Bridge because the default had it set up for the USB adapter. This is what was probably causing another problem we were having.

It would have helped to have a "Quick Start" & full User Manual. They probably have some instructions on the mini CD that came with the unit but I cannot use it in my MacBook as it will get stuck.  Believe me, don't try this at home :)

Get your most current Alfa drivers here:
* Info as of August 2011: AWUS036H does NOT support Mac OS 10.6.7 and later versions.

Get your Alfa user manuals here:

I'm enjoying reading my R36's configuration file and seeing how it is affected by changing various settings. Yes, I'm a bit of a geek.  I miss being a programmer (back in the good old days when file size and concise, compact coding was important) but I do NOT miss the bureaucracy and associated political stupidity of working for an organization.

It is so wonderful not to be tethered down by our old router's ethernet connections. Everytime the internet comes to a standstill I reach to make sure the cable hasn't come out yet once again, but it has... we are wireless now!

We have to do some laundry this morning and then it's back to working on the mast. Get that momentum going again. It's not too rolly in the anchorage right now and it appears that we will have several clear & sunny days.

By the way, Bob has an excellent clip from the film "Used Cars" on his BoatBits blog post today. It made me laugh and you might enjoy it, too! There's also some good info about rigging.

JUST IN:  I just received an email for what's happening in Carcassonne (canal du midi, Languedoc-Roussillon, south of France) this week:

Eddy Mitchell is performing in Carcassonne TONIGHT at 9:30pm... If we had sailed to France this summer, we'd probably be there :)
Eddy Mitchell est de retour. Du rock au grand écran, de la country aux salles obscures, du blues aux dernières séances, quarante ans d'une vie dédiée à ses passions qu'il a réuni dans cette tournée magistrale. Pour ce nouveau spectacle, conçu comme une dernière séance, Eddy Mitchell choisira dans son répertoire les meilleurs crus de ces quarante dernières années pour accompagner un menu copieux, où le rock des pionniers ouvrira l'appétit avant de laisser la place à la puissance d'un orchestre big band qui fait alors que notre crooner se plait à mettre naturellement un tigre dans son moteur.
M.Eddy sur scène pour une dernière séance...un événement à ne pas manquer !
eddymitchell.artistes.universalmusic.fr
We used to love his "What-A-Burger" fastfood restaurant commercials that played in the cinemas.


I don't remember him as being that young... What happened???

So It's Going...