Router Troubles

My LinkSys 802.11g Wireless Router and Hub is crashing under the load from the iTVN feed.  It'll run at 1MBS for about an hour and then tear down the network and it'll take a serious time unplugged to come back.

Anybody out there come across this?  I'm wondering if I have to change the router, or if this is a know software problem and I can download a patch.

England Lite

We went to Victoria on Vancouver Island on Saturday to collect mum.  This involved a 6am start to catch the 8.30am "Clipper", because you have to have ID Checks and the like we had to be there for 7.30am.  The boat itself was uncomfortable.

Victoria on the other hand was England Lite, I can see why people from Seattle wax lyrical about it, but I don't think we'll be rushing back.  Mum was met, a meal was eaten, an early night was followed by more site seeing and then home.

We arrived at the Ferry Terminal to find the queue snaking out of the door.  We hit upon a cunning plan to play upon the "frailty" of my elderly mother - not entirely a con, while she works out reguarly and swims a lot, she's not used to long walks and the 3 miles around town had left her feeling tired and aching.  So the ferry people checked her 76 years on her ID and ushered her through to pre-board.  Cool.  We then started the long trek home.

Victoria was nice, but the trip wasn't, I'm not sure we'll try it again.

Books Wot I Have Read...

25 - Capacity - Tony Ballantyne

I read the first book in this series "Recursion", some time last year and realised that while some of the names were familar, I actually couldn't really remember a thing.  That's never a good sign.

This certainly had its moments.  There's a dash of interesting police procedural in a high tech post-singularity culture where the protagonists are working to track down a network who are using Personality Constructs of real people in a virtual version of the movie "Hostel".  Things take a sideways turn as the story meshes with that of a researcher investigating the "sucides" of a number of AIs on a planet on the edge of the M32 cluster.

There's some good stuff in here, but it didn't quite work.  Some of the writing was stilted and I found that the message was unclear.  Was this an appeal for Free Will within the context of deterministic computing?  It's really hard to tell at the end of the book which message you should have taken away.  I will read the next book, out of curiosity, but it didn't really grip me.

The Week Ahead...

Tomorrow it's seconds out, round 2 with the Osteopath.  We've also got a health screening at MS - apparently it's a free service they offer - BP, chlolesterol etc...  Then in the evening we've dinner at El Gaucho.

El Guacho is something of an interesting case.  A few weeks ago we took a client to dinner at a local Italian, nobody was enamoured with their deserts, and we had been discussing the sinfully nice Bananas Foster at El Gaucho.  As it is under the same owners, they arranged a taxi and sent us up there.  Frankly, we shouldn't have bothered.  They made the Bananas with bad grace and dumped us with a bill and then didn't take our credit card.  No offer of coffee, no offer of a medicinal Brandy - all of which we would have happily bought.   I've previously spent thousands on customer dinners there and I was pretty miffed.

So was Maryse, who wrote an email to thank the first restuarant and rounded off by saying the staff at El Gaucho could learn something.  She may as well have said that her fork was dirty.  The manager of El Gaucho chased her down to find out the problem.  He was disappointed to hear our story, probably more disappointed that his staff let us leave a few hundred dollars richer than we would have been if they'd bothered to ask us if we'd like a digestif.  We were prepared not to go again, when he offered us $150 off our next meal.  Oh, well, if you put it like that.  $150 and the manager wants some serious sucking up?  I'm sold.  This is a pricey place.  I know of one business dinner there which ended up with a tab close to $1100 a head (the wine list gets silly).  So, it's mum's last night and we can get to spoil her and not break the bank.

Wednesday: Working from home.  The cable company are coming in the morning to figure out why half our channels are FUBAR'd.  This is a second call out for the same problem, I'm getting annoyed.  Not only is their service crud, but they charge through the nose for it.

In the afternoon it's off to SeaTac to get mum off home.

Thursday: Meeting with a financial advisor that MS have.  We need to get better about what to do with our money, especially now we're going to have 2 salaries again.

Friday: Work

Saturday: Las Vegas - this is a weird one.  My brother and his family are on holiday and we're going to see them for a couple of days.  We've booked to see The Blue Man Group in the evening and we'll probably have a nice meal or something.