I was checking the signal stats on my new link accross the valley. I'm getting 80% signal strength at about 2.5 miles. Thats really good. My old link was getting 52% signal strength. Just by moving my antenna up another 30 feet increased my signal strength by almost 30%. I'm a happy camper. I guess the saying is correct, "the higher the better."

So I was over at a friends house today and brought up my journal on their computer. They are using MSIE for their browser and it pushed all the journal text below the side bar. Very odd. So I spent a few minutes tonight trying to fix it. I finally found the problem with the CSS code. If I set a width using a percent, like width: 35%;, the MSIE does not float the block. So I set it to 300px and the block floated correctly. I'll just chalk it up to a bug in MSIE's CSS rendering system. Stupid MS.

Today UPS brought me a new D-Link DWL-120. Its a USB wireless adapter. I opened it up and got a small surprise. Its tiny. Smaller than a PCMCIA card. A bit taller of course. I plugged the thing into my laptop and tested it out. It works very well. It has a 19dbm transmitter. More power than the Linksys devices. I'm going to try it out over at the neighbors house soon. If it works, then they will be really happy. It's very small so it wont look too bad. I'll have to return the antenna I bought for them that did not work if this new one works.

Well, so far so good on the new Antenna. The system has been running for the past few days without an signal loss. I think its going to be a winner. I still have not drove out to the parts store and ran another test. I will try this week to do that. Maybe tomorrow.

It's Alive!

Today I mounted the WAP11 access point to the tower and hooked up the antenna and power. I plugged in the CAT5 and powered it up. Johnny had his laptop with a WPC11 card in it. We powered up the laptop and it connected to the new access point. Everything worked perfect first try. I'm so happy! The next step in my WISP is to setup the repeater at the parts store and see if I can make a connection. If that work, I'm in business!

Thanks to my dad, Johnny, Randy, Crag, Cyndie, and Jane for helping me get the tower up and running.

I have the tower up! It did not take very long to get set it up. Worked out really well. I have the conduit all run and the cable in it. I just need to setup the AP on the tower and plug everything in. I hope that I get some time tomorrow to finish it up. I only have a few more hours to get the antenna online. I do have to buy some more guide cable to stabilize it a bit more. Other than that, it's all good. It's so BIG.

Antenna Tower Raising Day

Today I put my antenna tower up. I have lots of help right now. It should not take much more than 2 hours to get it up and to the point that I can just run cable. Now that Jane is back with the camera, I can take lots of pictures! Woohooo!

I'll post more later today.

I have used Safari for over a week now. It's a really nice browser, but....

* It has a really fast interface, but the web pages seem to render slower than Mozilla.
* I hate the brushed metal UI. I switched it to the Aqua UI, but it still did not look as clean as Chimera.
* Some web sites just do not render right using Safari.
* Lacks a lot of small things like blocking banner ads and is missing a lot of preferences.
* Does not have usability built in. IE: the HTML TITLE and ALT tags do not work.

I'm going to keep Chimera as my default browser for now. I use Mozilla for doing web site development because even Chimera is missing a lot of stuff. I will miss the spell check, but then again spell check is the cause of bad spellers.

I just got a call from my dad about his truck. Its totaled. The frame is bent. That really sucks because he loved that truck. He was able to get the 5th wheel hitch off before he left. Thats good because its very expensive and he added it after he got the truck. I guess its now time to find a new truck.

The concrete is still drying for my antenna tower pad. I have to let it finish before I put my tower on it (not that I have any one to help put it up yet). I'm thinking that maybe I can get it up and going this weekend. If I get a few people to help, and the weather is good...

Hey, did you guys know that Lowes has CAT5 cable for 7c a foot? I was thinking that I would have to have it shipped here for that kind of price. So I'll have my system going very soon after I get the tower up. I have everything to do it. I can't wait.