It's still yucky and cold outside. I'm actually getting sick of it already. I want it to warm up, but there is like two more month go to. All well.

The wireless internet business is going good. Got all my changes that I wanted to make this year done. Went back to static IP addresses. That makes it a lot easier to track who is doing what. Since I have them all in the DNS, I can see them by name.

One thing I still need to figure out is the routing. I've read a bunch of stuff, and I've tested things before to get it to route right, but I just can't get it to work in real life.

Internet Router AP1 Clients

I need to figure out how to route my /26 network's to the .0/26. Here is an example of what I need:

AP1
net 63.192.118.64/26
inet eth0 63.192.118.6 netmask 255.255.255.192 broadcast 63.192.118.63
route add default gw 63.192.118.1
inet wlan0 63.192.118.65 netmask 255.255.255.192 broadcast 63.192.118.127
route add -net 63.192.118.0/26 eth0
route add -net 63.192.118.64/26 wlan0

I would think that would route the network, but it doesn't. I can't ping 63.192.118.1 from the 64/26 network. It just does not make any sense to me that it won't work. I've got to be missing something.

It would be much easier if I could just bridge the wireless cards, but since that doesn't work I have to use routing.

Hmm.. Maybe I'll try bridging the two wireless cards to the ethernet card. That works for AP1...

Or maybe I'll just wait for m0n0wall to use the new FreeBSD kernel that fixes wireless bugs.

Wheeling this weekend was fun. I added a new movie to the side bar. Sammy Sliding. We found a ice pond and couldn't resist driving on it. It was fun. We had a blast.

On sunday we watch that movie Anchorman. It totally sucked. I don't recommend it. It was lame.

Now it's monday all over again. The weekend went by too quickly. Well, back to the grind.

My network has about 50 users and about 70 email addresses. Out of 70 email addresses my email server detects 4000 Spam messages a week. 4000 per week for 70 people! It's 45% of all email coming into the system. I know that my spam filters miss about 20 emails a day for me. So I'd guess that's another 1000 emails that aren't being detected for 70 users. That would mean my email server gets 5000 spam emails a week. That's 20,000 a month.

20,000 Junk Email a Month!

That's just down right ridiculous. I need to start recovering some of the expense of processing all that email. What is amazing about this is that large ISP's must be processing billions of junk email a month. BILLIONS! It's about 300 junk emails per user. Some ISP's have 50,000 users.

That is just amazing.

I've been reading that a lot of people like the new Mac Mini, but then there are a bunch of people that don't. They say it's an awful mistake. One complains that it doesn't come with a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Another at a school says that nothing small enough to fit in a backpack doesn't belong at a school.

I think they are all missing the point. The Mac Mini is targeted at only one consumer type. The person wanting to move from Win/Tel to the Mac. That's it. No one else. The Mac Mini will plug right into their existing keyboard, mouse, and monitor. At $499 there is no reason not to switch. It is designed to get people to move into something better without the great expense.

One thing they forgot to include in the package is a way to transfer all the data from their old system to their new system. With Mac's it's easy. Just plug them together using Firewire. But Win/Tel doesn't have Firewire, nor a way to share the HDD. What Apple should have done was bundle Move2Mac with the Mini.

Steve said specifically that the Mini is for people wanting to move from Win/Tel to Mac. Part of the whole BYODKM (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, Mouse).

Apple Computers has done it again! The Apple Mac Mini is awesome. Now there is no reason not to get a Mac. You can't say they cost too much any more. At $499 it's a great little box. It's only 6.5"x6.5"x2" big. Just think, for $500 you can get rid of viruses, spyware, malware, crashes, and finally just get your work (or play) done.

I'm going to start recommending it to all my customers and everyone I know. It's an awesome little box.

Still snowing here. It was snowing all day today. Crazy. I went wheeling in it, and that was fun. It was a bit wet though. Got stuck twice, but it's easy to get out of that. The Samurai is a very capable rig.

I'm thinking of doing some wheeling tomorrow also. I can't wait.

Oh, and my dad came home today. It was one of the worse snow days I've ever seen and he trekked over the mountain to come home. He is de-frosting now. ;-)

The snow is melting.... But it's going to be snowing again this weekend! Snow is fun to drive around in. You can get all crazy in it and do donuts and stuff. When you drive a Samurai, you need all the help you can get to do a donut. ;-)

I can't believe it's Thursday already. I've been working so hard that my days are blurring together. The garbage truck came today and took our Christmas tree away. I was wanting to burn it, but Jane just wanted to get it out of here. All well, it's too wet out right now anyway.

I can't wait to start working on my new Samurai. I've been looking at photo's of other setups, and planning my moves. I have started a list of what I want to do. I'm going to keep track of everything as I go. It's going to be a whole lot of work building it up, but I think it's going to be worth it. Now all I need to do is figure out how to get all the money for it.

My old transfer case shipped off last night. Sold it for $50. Not much, but it did need a bit of work and cleaning. I hope the guy is happy with it. I hope I got all the oil out of it before I shipped it. ;-)

Next to go is my blue Samurai. Then I'm going looking for another Samurai that I can get the frame off of it. There is a guy that wants to buy the rest.

I still need to buy a lot of stuff. Transfer case, drive shafts, engine parts, wheels and tires, tubing, other metal, and paint. I figure about $6,000 worth of stuff. So I need to get selling. Hopefully I can sell enough stuff to make up for most of the cost.

Anyway, I need to get back to work.

It's been quiet around here. There is still snow on the ground. Wheeling last weekend was fun. Got to see some new stuff. Checked out the old tire place off 95. The tires were bigger than my Samurai.

Not much else to report on. Just been busy at work and stuff. Internet seems to be running good.

Went wheeling over the weekend in CA. It was a blast.

Well, first I went wheeling here in Silver Springs. Just drove around in the “back yard” a bit. Then about noon I left for Emigrant Gap. I met up with the guys and we drove up to the top of the mountain. It was a nice drive. It was really cool at the top.

After messing around at the top we started our way down. On the way we found some snow! That was fun. Getting all sideways while driving up the hills and stuff was a blast. We also had a snow ball fight.

That night we had dinner at the church and played some glow-in-the-dark miniature golf. That was fun. I was +20 when it was all over.

The next day we drove to Sacramento to drive in the off road park there. Ends up it was closed for a special event. That sucked because we called on Saturday night to get the hours and it said nothing about being closed. If you ever decide to go to Prairie City Offroad Park, call them and make sure you speak to a live person to find out if they are open. They don’t update their web site, nor their phone message.

We ended up going to the Folsom Lake instead. It was fun. More fun than we expected. We did a bit of crawling, mud bogging, and playing. I was able to get a few good video parts. It was cool. I even got stuck in the mud.

So the weekend was a blast even if there was a small set back. I had fun hanging out with everyone and can't wait for next time.

Happy New Year!