Back to the stone age

Have you ever had one of those days where you look around you and think "The whole world is crazy" OR maybe, "This place is Crazy" ??

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UPDATE 3-Italian truck strike stops fuel, food supplies

Italy truck strike causes chaos

Italian Truck Driver Strike To Continue Until Friday

Italian truck strike causes chaos

It amazes me some days that this country has made it to the technological level that it has. (And that really isn't saying that much)

Here we have a Union, that is striking for what would seem to be a good reason. The price of diesel fuel in Italy is 30-40 cents/liter higher than in surrounding countries because of the taxes the current government has implemented in an effort to reduce the national debt to below the 2.2% of GNP required by the EU. The truck drivers are obviously not happy with this. What kills me, is that initial estimates are that this strike could cost the country upwards of 5 BILLION Euros in lost revenues, rotten fruit and dropping stock value, (FIAT stock dropped 2.3 % after the news that the factories had to shutdown due to a lack of parts.)

So, wouldn't that mean they will actually be making the problem worse.

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As Ankin Skywalker said: "IT'S WORKING!"

In my quest for reasonable internet access at my house in the middle of nowhere, this solution seems to be the final chapter.

My first setup was with a Vodafone UMTS Connect card in a PC in the computer. Sadly, the signal strength was just not strong enough to maintain a workable connection.

I picked up a WRT54G3G at the local Media World, and popped in the express card version of the Vodafone connect card. With a quick linksys firmware upgrade, it was up and working, but still week signal strength. I Switched to X-WRT white russian and moved the router to the roof. Mounted in a water tight box with and external wifi antenna, the signal strength was better, but still I was dropping too many connections.

I picked up a new SIM from 3, another Cell carrier in Italy. 3 has built their network in the last few years and focused on data and video, so I reasoned that they should give better data support. I was right. The signal with the 3 SIM in the Vodafone connect card was stronger, and the data transfers were faster with less latency. (~300ms vs ~150ms) Now all I needed to do was get 3 to activate their higher data payment plan on my SIM.

"We can't do that." the store told me. We can only enable the 5Gig a month plan on a SIM purchased with a new modem. The standard plan, the one I used to test the 3 network, only allowed for 50MB a day. That doesn't last very long. So, we bought another 3G modem. This one, a USB model. At the time, I just wanted the SIM with the 5Gig Plan. But I awoke the next morning with an idea. I dug out an old PCMCIA USB 2 card, plugged it into the WRT54G3G, and plugged in the new USB 3G modem. a few quick hacks at the usbserial loading, and I was connected.


Yes, that's Vesuvius in the background. Monte Somma, to be specific, which is the peak on the left in most photos of Vesuvius.

You can see the whole set here.

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December

Well, another month has passed. We have been in the new house now for almost a month. So naturally, we went on another trip to get away from it. We spent last weekend in Cologne Germany. These low cost airlines are awesome. We flew with TUI Fly. We mainly wanted to go to a German Christmas market. Naturally, I took loads of pictures, but since the computer room is still a big pile of boxes, I can't really do too much with them. At some point in the what seems like the far distant future right now, we'll get the house straightened out, and I'll spend a few days working on pictures, and updating flickr. Until then, text only updates .... :(

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