I've been camped out at my friend's house in Virginia Beach for the Thanksgiving holiday. I actually had to do a double-pak for this trip. Four laptops. 2 for my outside of work projects, and then 2 for work (my company provided one and the personal laptop I use for work). I've been spending the working day on the 2 work laptops and then the evening on others. My buddy is like I used to be, with a  32-bit encryption key on his wireless network. Does he have any idea how much of a pain it is to enter a 32-bit encryption key into four laptops?

I had problems the first night as I was trying to connect with the Gateway P-6860FX. This is a tale of one choice leading to multiple results. I have been unable to get Zone Alarm to run on 64-bit Vista, so I use COMODO Firewall instead. Turns out that Comodo actually installs a Firewall driver that is paired in multiple instances with each of your computer's LAN connections. I had tried downing the firewall, and then completely exiting out of COMODO completely, to no avail. In each instance I was able to connect to my buddy's network, but could not gain internet access. At first, I thought we needed to cycle power to his router in order for it to recognize the new PC on the network and grant it full access. But I was loathe to do this for fear that it might spawn a two hour troubleshooting event if something went wonky with PCs that were already communicating on the network. I used my AT&T 875u Sierra Wireless Card for the first night. In another note on strangeness, for some reason my AT&T Tilt is connected via 3G at his house, but my data modem only connects at EDGE speeds.

The next morning, I was able to connect with my work provided HP nw8440 (running Windows XP and no software firewall) as well as my Dell XPS M1330 (running Windows Vista 64-bit, but not COMODO). I was stumped, but at least it keyed me in to the fact that it was something to do with the wireless settings on the Gateway, and not something inherent to 64-bit Vista. When I logged back into the Gateway later that day, I discovered the aforementioned COMODO Firewall driver in my Wireless Adapter Properties page. So I've toggled that off and the Gateway is surfing fine. I'll have to keep this in mind if I have any other problems with wireless connectivity with the Gateway. I am not ready to load shed COMODO; with this one exception, it seems to have fit the requirement the last several months. For now, it is just something to keep an eye on.

I have not been able to get AdAware 2007 to run on the Gateway this trip. This is my second iteration of this particular fault. The last time, I uninstalled and re-instsalled the latest AdAware version. While I was adverse to doing this now, I just remembered that I am not sure if that uninstall/re-install was done before the System Restore I did recently. Even if it was, it could just be that something was broken in the Registry during the System Restore that has to do with the AdAware install. My feeling yesterday was that Windows Defender (normally my secondary Anti-Spyware app) is working well, so maybe for the Gateway I would just roll down to a single Anti-Spyware app. However, I think I will give one more go with trying to uninstall and re-install AdAware.

I loaded some old episodes of Red Versus Blue onto the Acer Aspire ONE for this trip, and have since been playing them back with VLC Player. I still love the way VLC can not be defeated; pretty much throw any codec at it and it hits the web, finds the plug-in required for it, and away it goes. I have also finally jumped on the phenomenon of using the web to stream current TV shows. I've been using ABC.com for the first entering experiment. While not my normal ilk, due to all of the hype over the recent years, I used Dancing with the Stars and Desperate Housewives, both on the Gateway and on the XPS M1330, for my first test cases.

I got in a little "PainKiller!" last night before going to bed. I know that I always rant and rave about how Clive Barker's Undying is the scariest game I have ever played. But I gotta tell you...PainKiller had me jumping out of my skin last night, too.  In fact, because there is so much less theatrical workup to get you prepared for the thrills, it is a bit scarier when an enemy pops up beside you out of nowhere. This is a game that I could potentially finish, so I will continue slogging away at it today.

Next on the agenda is an update for the main site. I think I need to get back to the OpEd article I was writing up about my concerns about Windows 7.

With projects moving forward, I should also be looking intently at Black Friday sales, but honestly, there is nothing that I need or want that I either (a) actually have time to use or (b) is not going to be a hassle to initially set up and get configured well enough to my liking. A new TV sounds nice, but it could take weeks for me to figure out how to get rid of my current (floor model) TV. Plus, since it is not going to be another floor model, it means needing to get an entertainment stand, potentially new cables, and who knows what else. Of course, it is not just enough to get the TV. I'll need a receiver, maybe, that can accept optical inputs and a set-top Blu-Ray player. Nope, that definitely has to wait.

But for the rest of ya's, get out there, coordinate with your Black Friday Strike Teams so that everyone gets what they want; work out trades later. And shop some for the rest of us who will be staying at home. Happy turkey day, and take care.

  - Vr/GulliverJr.