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A few weeks ago I signed up to receive a free FON wifi router. FON’s concept is simple, build a community of users willing to share their bandwidth through an open Wifi connection. The only problem is it requires purchasing a $30 wifi router from FON. Well, that was until they ran a promotion to hand out a few thousand free routers. I filled out a form and didn’t expect much. FON literally asked me for only my name and address.

To my surprise I received a little package this week. Sure enough, I had been sent a little FON wifi router. The router itself is nothing too impressive. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of my hand and has three LED status lights on it. All I needed to do was to plug it in to my existing wired network.

The router uses the OpenWRT firmware originally created to run on Linksys hardware. I thought this was pretty ingenious of FON. By utilizing existing software they are able to provide some pretty slick functionality. The router has a public and private side. The private side can be used for a secure internet connection like any other wifi router. The public side, though, is a proxy into the FON community.

When I first set up the router I was redirected to FON’s website to configure the router to work with the community. I had to choose what type of node I wanted to be. My choices were either 1. be free and then be granted access to other community routers or 2. charge people $3 to connect to my router. Being in a suburb and right next to a Caribou with free internet connectivity I can’t imagine making much money off of it. I choose to be a free node.

So, if you’re ever cruising the streets of Crystal looking for free wifi, check out my drive way. It’s got the best there is to offer…in a driveway.

Strollometer – I need this. It’ll tell me how fast I’m movin’ with the stroller. Frickin’ sweet.

For all you iPod owners out there:

You know how your iPod flashes a big NO sign when it’s plugged into the computer? Its supposed to stop you from unplugging the iPod at an inappropriate time. I’m here to tell you that it’s not a joke, you are NOT supposed to just unplug it. Especially while it’s synchronizing with iTunes. I have my podcasts synching down to my iPod and I accidently unplugged it from the computer while it was doing it’s thing. It corrupted the entire iPod disk. iTunes told me to run chkdsk against it. I’m still waiting to see if it saves my little guy.

UPDATE : Yep, the hard drivve got toasted. All my music has once again be erased from it. grrrrr.

If you’ve spent 5 minutes in a room with me in the last 6 months you know that I’m completely and utterly obsessed with the new HTC Wizard cellphone about to hit the streets. The only problem: it was supposed to be available 6 months ago. I have been waiting patiently for it since September, every day checking the normal cellphone geek hangouts reading messages proclaiming its releasing “any day now”. As a Type-A personality I’m am completely convinced it will bring absolute and total order to my life.

I grow tired of waiting. I’m scatterbrained. Ideas, thoughts, lists, apointments, all lost. They are going in one ear and out the other. I finally decided I needed a solution today, I could not wait any longer. I went out and purchased a Hipster PDA, specifically a Mead 5-Star mini notebook. Its an investment in my sanity. I know, you think I’m crazy, but I swear by this thing. Let me give you a rundown of it’s specs:

Size: ~3 inches W x 4 inches H x 1/2 inch thick

Processor: My writing hand and the nearest writing utensil

Functionality: Free-form sortable information, a.k.a. stream-of-conciousness. Ability to quickly output information (by ripping the pages out)

Portablity: Fits in my jacket pocket

Applications: Jason’s TODO list, Jason’s calendar, Jason’s random lists, Jason’s reminders

Price: $1.89 (Target)

I used to give a friend grief for carrying around postcards for notes. I now understand why he used them. No matter what crazy/stupid thing I think, I can write it down so I don’t forget. I’m hoping it will cut down on the crazy rants Courtney has to listen to.

I’ll probably pick up the Wizard when it finally arrives. But for now, I’m satisfied with my current PDA. It’s working out well.

Sidenote: I also picked up a Dymo labeler so I can label and file all my crazy stuff.

I recently went to visit my grandparents who live on the Mississippi River in La Crescent, MN. For the longest time their neighborhood has been comprised of cottages and cabins. 20 years ago their river-front property wasn’t more than a weekend get-away for most. But over the course of the last 8 or so years builders have moved in, bulldozed most of the cottages, and built monsterous houses that span entire property lots.

I don’t typically bring my laptop with me when I go to visit. My grandparents use dial-up for internet. This time I decided to, just to have something to occupy my time. Before I left I had installed an application called NetStumbler that does a pretty good job locating and listing wireless access points. I fired it up at the grandparents and was surprised to find someone in the neighborhood had a Linksys router. Gitty with excitement I got to work.

The signal was weak and seemed to come and go. I spent the better part of a night trying to figure out where the signal was coming from. After a little “war-walking” (That’s what Courtney calls it) I found that it was coming from a house to the south. The signal was still too faint for my to get solid communication to the DHCP server on the router. I attempted to set my IP address manually guessing the network default was either a 10.0.x or 192.168.0.x based network. I had no luck and gave up for the night.

The next morning the fog was hanging a little lower than before and the clouds were moving in. Perfect for bouncing a wifi signal my way! I fired up my laptop again and started away. After letting my Intel wifi card do its thing for a few extra minutes I was finally able to retrieve an IP address from the DHCP server, on the 192.168.1.x network. I was sooo close! Damn! The signal was still very weak and I had a hard time doing much of anything. I pulled up a web page and showed off my trimuph to the family. They were less than impressed but it solitified my nerd status.

So I did it. I accomplished getting on to the internet through a wireless connection no faster than my grantparents dial-up connection that already existed. But it was fun nonetheless.