Archive for October, 2009
October 21st, 2009
I came home tonight to find that my Internet connection had crapped out, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about how Billion – that is, the company rather than the oft-misused numerical value – software engineers are perhaps not the sharpest tools in the box.
After restarting my router, the syslog spat out the following:
Jan 1 00:01:33 DDNS: DynDNS can not be reliable if SNTP -time server do not
reply to modem correctly, Please fix SNTP -server address.
Oct 21 19:13:50 syslog: NTP current time is Wed Oct 21 19:13:50 2009
That’s the DDNS service complaining that things might go wrong if it doesn’t know the current time – followed by the NTP service updating to the current time. Apparently making those two things run the other way around is too logical.
October 8th, 2009
It’s not often that a mere sign – even one displaying a frankly staggering ineptitude with the English language – leaves me speechless, but this particular example of apostrophe abuse came close.
Note the shotgun-like approach to grammar involved in this image, where every single S is preceded by an errant apostrophe – with the exception of “brows” and “extensions,” which I can only assume were missed by mistake.
The sign may declare that “Beauty Matterz,” but I posit that grammar ‘matterz’ more.
October 2nd, 2009
Ever since switching to WPA2-AES security on my wireless network I’ve been having some problems with my Pinnacle-branded Roku SoundBridge wireless MP3 player. Problems like “strange, this used to be connected to the network.”
It seems that after a few days of working perfectly happily the device drops off the network. Well, not quite ‘off’ – it sits there continually sending out DHCP request after DHCP request. My router, being a good router that does as it’s told, sends out DHCP offers in response to these requests – which are routinely ignored by the SoundBridge.
Switching to a static IP on the SoundBridge doesn’t do a lot of good: although it fixes the Herring Sandwich Experiment qualities of the issue by removing the continuous DHCP requests, the device still drops off the network.
I’ve upgraded the firmware to the latest beta release, but there’s still no joy. Next step is an e-mail to Roku.
