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HOWTO: Wireless Internet at 17th St. Diedrich Coffee

Original author: substitute

The Diedrich coffee houses offer free wireless internet access. When access fails, it is often the result of the wireless access point failing to give out addresses and other information. This document describes the procedure for connecting during such service failures.

  1. Introduction

    The arrival of free wireless Internet access at the 17th St. Costa Mesa Coffeehouse was welcomed, but reliability has been spotty. In most cases, a failure to connect is the result of the wireless router’s DHCP server behaving unpredictably. One can see a strong signal, but cannot get to any Internet sites, and service that has been working properly can suddenly stop. To make matters more confusing, other laptops will have connected just fine but not your particular one. Here’s how to fix that.

  2. Document History

    This is the first issue of this document, version 0.01, August 2005.

  3. How to use this HOWTO

    If you cannot reach the Internet but have a wireless signal, follow the instructions in this document. If that does not work, you are S.O.L.

  4. General Information about Wireless Networking at Diedrich Coffee

    The Diedrich coffeehouses offer free 802.11b wireless access to the Internet. They do this by installing open access points made by Linksys, which are connected via NAT to the DSL router; upstream is handled by Covad Communications. In theory, anyone with a standards-compliant wireless card can easily connect to the network and enjoy Internet access along with a beverage or pastry. In practice, it is common to connect and find the network inexplicably unable to route out to the Internet.

  5. Network Configuration when DHCP is not available

    Open your operating system’s network configuration program. On the Mac OS X system this is the Network Preferences Pane in System Preferences; on Windows it will be the Network Control Panel. Other operating systems are not discussed here, since the general information below should be sufficient for users of Unix-like systems.

    Find the screen for your wireless adapter’s TCP/IP connection settings. Change the configuration method from “DHCP” to “Manual”. Insert the following settings:

    IP Address: 192.168.199.200 (see note 1 below)
    Netmask: 255.255.255.0
    Router Address: 192.168.199.1
    DNS Server Addresses: 64.105.132.250 64.105.166.122

    Note 1: If this does not work, choose an address ending in 201, 202, 203 etc. until your operating system stops telling you that the address is already in use.

    Make sure that you have applied these new network settings. At this point you should be able to browse the web, read email, etc. If you still cannot do so, go back to your network settings and change everything back to DHCP the way it was before. You are S.O.L.

  6. Glossary of Terms used in this document

    DHCP: DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. It is a system by which a pool of Internet addresses can be handed out as needed to client computers by a server. A client set to connect via DHCP sends out requests in a predefined manner to the server, which then returns the appropriate configuration information to the client.

    802.11b: The 802.11b standard defines a wireless network access method with a maximum network throughput of 11 MB/sec. It is of the “Wi-Fi” wireless access standards the most available and most compatible.

    S.O.L.: Shit outa luck. Go do something else today.

  7. Acknowledgments

    I would like to thank Lauren Maddox for letting me rant at her tonight about how messed up the wireless is there.

  8. Copyright

    The Diedrich Coffee 17th St. Coffee House Wireless Internet HOWTO is © Copyright 2005 substitute.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Here’s a toast to the jolly hangman

  1. The Marines are attempting to resuscitate helicopters that have been out of service for a decade. maineiac_eric, tell us: is this a GOOD idea?
  2. UbiquityWatch: The next ads to annoy you will arrive on your phone from a billboard.
  3. If you leave your laptop Bluetooth on, you may be announcing its availability to thieves. (via Schneier’s blog)
  4. Welcome back to the hot new gadgets of 1985. My boss in 1986 had one of those ridiculous luggable phones.

The Purple Monkey Dishwasher is writing the San Bernardino Sun

This bar is charming for its with locals some in most in their 40s or 50s.

While patrons sip beer pool, live bands drop and Saturday nights to cover songs. One noteworthy Eliah, sings out when stage.

At the far San Bernardino lies the Inland premier concert known as Roadhouse, Crossroads.

indoor bar, several pool tables expansive with another huge lighted can fit 1,200 Angel’s mostly cover and classic rock Friday through Sunday p.m. Each Wednesday mic hosted by Diatribe, Tuesdays and Thursdays to karaoke crowds.

http://www2.sbsun.com/livinghere/nightlife/ci_2733027

Edit: This entire thing was created by an angry broken robot out of some marketing material. It’s the most amazing piece of “journalism” I’ve seen in a while: http://www2.sbsun.com/livinghere/

We are all The Onion now.

Beep! click click click

ch linked me to this marvelous antidrug filmstrip from the 1970s. I have so many memories of filmstrips from my grammar school education.

To start with they were the bastard stepchild of movies, which we all loved. On a Friday afternoon we’d hope for a movie. At a minimum there would be entertaining footage of animals or cool science stuff, and if we were lucky we’d convince the teacher to play the movie backwards when it was done for double the movie time and the unstoppable belly laughs we got from watching birds walk in reverse, etc. But if the filmstrip projector came out, we were getting second best. Someone would have to thread the filmstrip into the machine and then help out by pressing the advance button.

Filmstrips were always about the most boring topic available. I remember seeing one about Where Borax Comes From, several detailing How the Indians Ground Up Corn With Rocks, a whole series on How Erosion and Silt Change Our World, and maybe fifty different social science filmstrips about How Some People Live in Big Buildings and Others In Little Huts and related topics.

But the most frequent use of filmstrips was to tell us things the teachers didn’t want to discuss. The nearest we got to sex education, for example, was an extremely medical strip about How Your Bodies Are Changing Now That You’re 12 Or So, with terrifying closeups of peach fuzz stubble and line art of Your Head With Squiggly Red Lines Signifying Emotional Stress. There were separate filmstrips for girls and boys. It was incomprehensible. And of course the drugs ones. I’m not sure I saw this particular drug filmstrip, but we had several on Not Taking Stuff From Big Kids Because It Makes Question Marks Fly Out Your Nose, also known as If You Light Something On Fire and Put It In Your Mouth, You’ll Grow a Leather Jacket and Die in a Car Crash.

I think nowadays teachers put in a videotape and dive under their desks when bad topics arise. But to this day when I hear an old antidrug speech I immediately go to that crappy narrator voice wobbling along with the tape, the piercing beep, and the hum of the fan on the filmstrip machine.

One day the teacher left it on too long on one frame while she explained something and the film caught fire. We all had to go outside while the Fire Department came to check it out. I got a face full of burning plastic film smoke and I was light headed for the rest of the day. Drugs are bad!