Luckily my dad has a Sprint EVDO card that he uses to get online with his MacBook, but I didn’t want to have to depend on using his computer during our whole trip. I got to thinking about how we could share his connection and immediately fired up the “Internet Sharing” functionality that is available in Mac OS X.

I flipped open the “Internet Sharing” preference pane, selected to share his EVDO connection through Airport and immediately went to my machine. I saw the new network that was created, immediately connected to the network (thinking “how easy was this?) and… nothing.

I went back into the Network Preference Pane on my computer and saw that while I was connected to my dad’s “Airport Network”, I was not getting a real IP address (getting one of those nasty 169.x.x.x self-assigned addresses). Those are no fun to deal with ever and was thinking “now what?”.

After poking around the network configuration on my dad’s computer, I finally saw that he too had a self-assigned IP address for his Airport. It turns out that the Sprint EVDO card actually uses PPP to connect and there’s no real place to specify an IP address. I decided to flip back to the configuration of his Airport and give him a hard-coded IP address (opting with the ever popular 192.168.1.1). From there I went back to my computer and gave myself a hard-coded IP address (going with the next logical address of 192.168.1.2). I added my dad’s IP of 192.168.1.1 for the Router field within the preference pane and then… nothing.

So now I was getting frustrated and just out of pure frustration, I fired up Terminal and tried to ping my dad’s computer. No problems… Ok, cool. Now for kicks I decided to ping the IP address of the Router that gets populated when he connects through EVDO. Guess what? I was hitting it! It was all coming together now. I had Internet connectivity, I just didn’t have any DNS configured.

I quickly fired up OpenDNS.com (on my dad’s computer, remember I still couldn’t resolve URLs), got the two OpenDNS DNS addresses (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 for those keeping score at home), applied my Network changes and the rest was history.

I know this is a long story but I wanted to put this out here for two reasons…

1.) I wanted to make sure that I put this somewhere so if I ever have to do it again, I’ll remember how to set things up.

2.) Just to prove how great the Mac OS is. I don’t think there’d be anyway to do this on Windows… If there is, I’d love to know. :)

They tend to have a good rotation of authors come in for readings and book signings. I was very surprised when I discovered that Cory Doctorow would be in town to do a reading and signing of his newest book, Little Brother (and yes that link will take you to the full version to download for free ~ and yes it’s legal ~ you can buy it or download it).

For those not familiar (and what the hell is wrong with you), Cory is one of my favorite authors and is famous for his activism in the areas or Digital Rights Management and Copyrights (hence being able to download his books for your use) and also co-editing one of the most popular blogs around: BoingBoing.net.

It was nice to meet someone that you’ve read for years and shake their hand. There was a nice sized crowd tonight and Cory made sure to take time to talk to everyone who came to see him. Kinda fun that this all happened less than 5 minutes from my house.

And who said cool things don’t happen in the suburbs? :)

Don’t worry, though. I’ll keep practicing and pretty soon I’ll get about the base 5,000 experience points (or whatever they call that rating)… :)

My Mario Kart Wii Friend Code is 3866-8418-2060

If you haven’t picked it up yet, I cannot recommend Mario Kart Wii enough. After owning it for about 8 hours, it’s easily in my top 3 Wii games so far.

More information is available over at Croncast.com and you can order tickets directly from Eventbrite…

As I have mentioned to Kris in the past, I will be turning the show into a mini Grateful Dead-like event by bootlegging my own recording with a 17 foot tall mic-stand in the back of the venue and selling soggy grilled cheese sandwiches after the show in the parking lot. :)

With all of that said, the article was finally released/published and has a couple of quotes by yours truly. I am kind of bummed since they were supposed to run a picture or two that I had taken during our little party. It’s not that I really am bummed that the picture(s) weren’t included, I was just looking forward to having Rick publically humiliated.

Oh well, I’ll take things into my own hands with this post! :)

You can check out the article over at the Reuters website…

Besides having so much fun, I can’t help but gloat that I won the trophy for Wii Bowling with my scores of 203 and 205 (even after an attempt to throw off my game by being “forced” to do a tequila shot from Betsy)… :)

I don’t think I ever won a trophy before.

And as everyone can attest, Mr. Smith figured something out and cannot be beat.

Evidence of a great time can be found here (and I have video that I need to figure out what to do with). We have to do this more often… :)

(I promise to quit being such a nerd sometime soon ~ keyword = sometime)

Technorati Tags: nintendo, tshirt

With that said, here is my Wii Friend Code: 3575 5405 5746 7447

I’m ready to see a Mii parade so add me and I will do the same! :)

Yesterday was a bit of a crazy day as we did the usual Saturday stuff. You know the typical… Go to the mall, drive around, go to a car dealer and buy a new car (long story for another post) type of stuff that you don’t plan on doing but it just happens. Anyways, when we finally got home my concentration switched to what was really my main priority of the day ~ going to a midnight sale at Meijer to get a Nintendo Wii…

Unfortunately, everyone and their brother had the same plan (I blame the “popularity” of marusin.com and my post from the other day ~ yes, there is sarcasm there). My friend, Rick, was going to join me and we had our plan. However, Rick had started making some phone calls earlier and it seemed that everywhere that was on our radar was either already sold-out (with people waiting) or via pre-orders that they had sold a while back. Now, I was getting really nervous. I’m not kidding. I was straight-up nervous with anticipation in trying to figure out what my best plan would be. My thoughts were to set the alarm clock, wake up early and head to Target. After making a few phone calls and talking with the local Target, they were mentioning that people had already started lining up.

My loving wife could sense my anxiety and did what any geek-loving spouse would do: she convinced me to camp out. Now, you have to remember that things are a blur because of my anxiety, but I could swear she told me to go camp out “and not get shot” (I do remember her saying that). Within 5 minutes, I had my fleece-lined pants on and a bag packed with anything I thought I would need (my Nintendo DS, iPod, Nalgene of water, some candy and my sleeping bag). I started heading towards the Target and as I approached I saw the line outside. Now, if you don’t live in the Chicago-area you may not realize that it’s really cold right now. I’m talking easily in the 20′s/30′s overnight. I then looked over to Wal-Mart which is across the street and didn’t see anyone lined up. “That’s interesting”, I thought…

I parked and headed into Wal-Mart. I figured out where the electronics department was and inquired about their inventory and where the line was. I was told that they had 20′s Wiis to sell and they had chairs setup at the somewhat out-of-the-way entrance. I headed over to this somewhat out-of-the-way entrance and discovered that there were still a handful of seats available (I ended up being #16 out of 20) and that they were actually going to let everyone “camp” inside the entrance way (this is the area where they keep the carts, etc). It was somewhat heated and would definitely be warmer than staying outside all night at the Target across the street.

I quickly ran to my car and grabbed my “camping” supplies and claimed seat #16. All in all, the camping experience was kind of fun. There was a very interesting mix of people ranging from what you would expect (um, they’re called nerds) to parents waiting with their kids to hipsters from the local college to people like me (who I like to consider a step up from the “typical crowd” at something like this)… :) I listened to lots of music, played lots of games with some other people waiting (multiplayer DS is so fun), watched the group of people who sent someone to go bring in their XBox 360 + TV play games (there was power in this entrance area) and even slept for a few hours. Could I do this every weekend? No way. Could I do it every once and a while? Without a doubt. It was fun and kind of cool that all of these different kinds of people all had the same goal in mind. It was kind of like “The Breakfast Club” (with several Anthony Michael Hall characters at once).

When 7:00am came around we all got our tickets that guaranteed our console and headed to the service desk. I got my machine, etc. and headed home. It was really a surreal experience that I went through and while I was there for about 11 hours total, it honestly felt like 15 minutes.

Was it worth “camping out”?
Is that even a real question? The system is way fun and while we had a zillion things going on today, you better believe that I got some time in playing Wii Sports and Zelda. The controllers are really cool and I cannot stop thinking about how much I need to stop writing here and get another round of bowling in before I go to bed (did I mention that I’m tired at all?)… Yes, I know that there will be more shipments coming in and probably in a couple of weeks you’ll be able to walk into a store and pick up a Wii off the shelf. Part of the fun, though, is the adventure and things like that make the whole launch event that much more memorable.

I will tell you that I don’t think that anyone who picks up a controller and plays the Wii cannot help but have a smile on their face. I really can picture tons of these sold to the non-traditional gamer. The controller and interface are so unique and unlike anything that you have ever seen/witnessed. I think you would have a hard time not wanting one after playing with it for a few minutes.

If you’re looking for me online, my console’s Wii Number is: 3575 5405 5746 7447 Feel free to send me a message and say hi and see if my back has recovered from sleeping on a concrete floor last night… :)