Aaron Baer - Connect the Dots

All of a sudden it’s Friday again. There was so much I was going to write about this week but damn.. I guess I didn’t get to it. So I’ll see if I can re-cap.

Saturday I went on a great ride with Gary. Sunday hrm.. no yoga but that was alright.. bagels with Ian and Danielle. Then into the week. Busy this week it seems. Work has been mellow and I finally got back to finishing Programming C# and some other various things.

Wednesday night was a blast. Hack Night is starting to become quite the event. A freelance writer came to the meeting and was interviewing all of us and hanging out. There was tons of activity around the Mississippi Network and lots of hardware hacking. Which is great to see happening… and then… since I had made my way home after work and rode my bike to the meeting. I got the bug to ride Mt. Tabor. There was still day light and it had to be done. I phoned Ivan, Ivan agreed, we rode. After tearing up Mt. Tabor I headed back to North Portland to the house. It indeed was a great evening. And I’m glad I got a chance to get on my bike in the middle of the week, about 20 miles for the evening.

And so T-Minus 9 until Tour. A week of Mountain Biking in Southern Oregon. I can not wait. For one, I’m much stronger this year than I have been in the past. For another reason, I’m very pleased with my riding so far this year. It’s going to be a great trip.

ALSO!!! Eden and I have finally booked our vacation. Kauai! And for criminy sakes I’m stoked. I really am starting to have a hard time figuring out how to make it through next week with any motivation. I’m sure I can do it.. With day dreams of Mt. Biking and staying here and here. I can make it.. I think..

ALSO ALSO.. Mom and Dad are coming to visit the first week of August! Which is going to be fantastic!

Whew.. I think there’s more too.. but that’s all I can handle.. let alone you.. If you’re still reading this Mozeltov! More later!

Sitting here live.. at the PTP monthly meeting.. Really enjoyable so far tonight.. I had to arrive early to meet with David Pool from New4Neighbors to do an interview for the up coming Presidential election. Very laid back very enjoyable. I have to come up with some more documentation to send to him so “note to self”. Right now Nigel is doing his greetings talk.. people are introducing themselves.. A great showing for how freakin’ sunny it is out tonight, around 25 people. Michael is leading the meeting tonight because Darrin is under the weather.

Today was busy at work. Mostly updated some documentation and entered some tickets on issues that came up as we went to production. And basically really really wanted to be on my bike all day.

More meeting stuff.. Up coming Play Day.. Tom is heading it up once again and it’s going to rock.. June 4th from noon to 4pm at the Urban Grind. If you want to learn about the network, more about the nodes, more about how to use wireless technologies.. Show up.. There will be help for any level of questions that you could possibly have. Also, Adopt a Node. Tom Rocks. This is a great way to become involved in the network. Basically, if you live near a location or you visit a particular node often it would be amazingly helpful to “Adopt” it and keep track of how things are going.

And a large conversation regarding how are we going to manage installing and supporting nodes in the future. In my opinion A. Johnson had the best quote of the day, “We’re an open source project.”

Home finally.. just about to go to bed.. did recycling, trash and laundry after a long day.

And then it’s the morning.. geeze I guess I’d better post this.

Last night Eden was meeting with FuseBox so I took the opportunity to get things back together at Stumptown Downtown after replacing the failed harddrive in the NuCab and rebuilding the Node.

Everything went smoothly with the exception of reconfiguring the original WAP54G that was there. That thing wouldn’t behave at all. So I left the WRT54G that they bought as filler when the system went down a few weeks ago and took the WAP home to work on there. Hopefully, I’ll recover the device and can drop it back in there before the Weekly on Wednesday. But the network lives again. Which is a good thing. Check out a few more shots from the location.

Today so far has just been work. Continued testing and moving processing into Production. It’s probably going to be a quiet afternoon. Definately worth lunch today though as I schooled Graeme in fooseball.

If I’m not mistaken I’m making dinner tonight for Eden and Meghan. A delish stir fry will be prepared. I’ll have to see if I can come up with something tastie to cook the chicken in. I’m getting pretty good at stir fry sauces. Until then more work here..

Everyone is going crazy.. Arbor Lodge Park is always a buzz with people, baseball, dogs, tennis, walking, riding, running.. Spring has sprung and people are lovin’ it outside. This weekend I went on a couple of rides trying to get ready for tour now just over a month away. I rode in Forest Park on Sunday and it was a good ride. I definately think I would have rode more that day if someone else was riding with me but I was able to scope out some good trails that will help build up some lung power and leg power. I’ll go ride there again this weekend probably both Saturday and Sunday.

Right now I’m enjoying a pint of home brew given to me by Sam. Tastie. Extreemly carbonated out of the bottle but it seems to have mellowed after pouring it into a fat pint glass and doesn’t taste overly carbonated when drinking. Thanks Sam.

Eden’s out teaching yoga and will probably be back in 20 minutes or so. I suppose I should start some dinner but I really really don’t feel like cooking tonight.

So lets see. I set up dns, including reverse dns, for my entire PTPnet subnet here Node134. Soon to be NodeSlyness. I can’t wait for it to get easier for us to join our networks together via openvpn.. slyness.ptp is ready to go. Keegan and Jimmy are definately kicking ass still on the infrustructure side. We need to get buick installed for the Mississippi Network and this week I’ll be ordering 5 Mark II’s which is going to be exciting and we’ll have some time to hack on them before we go and install them. Install on those is going to be sometime before my Mountain Biking trip on June 19th.

Also, people are going crazy with the new Netgear Wgt634u and roofnet and I think that is awesome. If we find that it’s useable (which I don’t fear) this is going to make the Mississippi Network kick much much ass..

Keep up the great work.

Must do some more Mentor work tonight and probably some of my own hackin’..

The Personal Telco Project is having a media blitz this week. The news of our ~$15,000 dollar grant from Meyer Memorial Trust has been followed up by quite a few articles in the Portland Area media. Pick up today’s (April 7th, 2005) Oregonian and in the inPortland section we’re the featured cover story.

So here we go..

Oregonian (main feature)

Oregonian (smaller piece that ran in the main paper)

Willamette Week

BlueOregon.com

Dailywireless.org

So awesome.. This is the picture that ran with the featured article.

Having an awesome time in New Hampshire with Amy, Travis and Reid. Today we went to Portmouth and had a great time. It’s been a really relaxing and totaly fun weekend on the Farm here just outside of New Boston, New Hampshire. I just finished fixing Amy’s email issues and making sure that everything is working properly again with her laptop. Found much more wireless in the area that I expected. Free wi-fi at the pub in Portsmouth today and a free wireless network in a near by small town that looked like it covered most of the downtown area. I didn’t have a laptop to check it out but I overheard some people talking about it and found the source on a near by building. Looked like a great setup for the area.

Tomorrow we’re going back to the airport in Manchester to pick up a rental car and then we’re driving to Vermont to drop Eden off at the Vermont Studio Center. I’ll be heading back on Monday on my own as she starts her month Artist residence.. Going to miss her for realz but I’m very excited for her oportunity. It’s going to be excelent..

It’s been such a fantastic week. Thank you so much Amy and Travis!!!

Chicken soup again tonight. Eden with a hurt neck and Danielle with a cold I’m just hanging out and taking care of people. It’s been nice to take a week or so to stay home in the evenings and rest. I was feeling a little bit burnt out for a good week or so. I must say my batteries are feeling recharged and I’m gaining the gumption to preceed on with regularly scheduled programs.

It’s interesting to see the Personal Telco Project growing into an organization where people are taking initiative to dream to keep PTP moving. I’m really exicted about where this year is going to take us.

Work going well.. Blah… di di Blah.. .. testing.. one .. two..

Geeze.. A couple of crazy weeks. I’ve been busy, Work, PTP, life.. Seems the last two weeks are a blur. I crashed last night and finally got some sleep. I could use some more.

Node674 went up so nicely last weekend. We’re covering about a 4 block radius with that sucker. I should try and get some pics this weekend if I can.

Node675 and Node676 are this weekend. Both are Linksys Wrt54g’s running OpenWrt. I think I’ve finally started to get the hang of OpenWrt after a couple of sporatic days of use.

And we had our PTP Monthly this week. PodCasted for the first time by the beloved Tom Higgins. You can get at them here http://www.personaltelco.net/~tom/podcast/rss.xml
That’s me doing the meeting stuff.

Shit. That’s it for now.

Sitting here.. enjoying time.. Glad that the week is over and that an extra day is available for relaxation. Friday is a day off. Awesome. Jeremy and Meghan are coming over tomorrow night for dinner, movies and fun. And I have a ton of fun new wireless gear to play with..

I’m building a network for a house in North East Portland. So this week I ordered and received an awesome device called the Mark I together with a 9dbi omni with downtilt and all the other fixin’s that go along with that it’s going to be one sweet setup. Look for pictures later this weekend.

I also picked up the rest of the gear to help Meghan set up the Mother Ship with a wireless network. So I’m going to have to work out some time to get over there to finish up that. I’m sure to talk with her tomorrow about it.

Tis the season.. People are doing.. having.. and being.. I think I’m just going to sit here and be right now.

Late.

Oh by the way.. Eden and I went to the coast last Friday. It was beautiful.. great weather and a wonderful sunset.. check it out

The Personal Telco Project Holiday Party was last night. It was absolutely the best party to date. Hosted at Nocturnal the music was great, the food was plentiful and the drink was on. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it and thanks to the awesome awesome people at Nocturnal.

I also took care of registering slyness for the next year. _sweet_ , don’t have to worry about that for quiet a few months now.

Today.. Presentation run through for the official presentation Jim and I are giving tomorrow to the department here at work. Also, we have our Department Holiday party today. That should be blast.