So, I’ve been playing with PC-BSD on my Acer Aspire One 532h, and I was having problems with WiFi.  Turns out that my use of WEP with a shared key instead of open causes many problems with the automatic setup of wireless by various operating systems, Windows Vista and 7 included.  Turns out the answer is to manually configure it for all the operating systems

For PC-BSD I had to remove the lagg0 interface and manually configure the wlan0 interface for direct connect rather than using wpa_supplicant.

And yes, I am posting this from PC-BSD.

The magic lines in rc.conf

wlans_ath0=”wlan0″
ifconfig_wlan0=”ssid <yourSSID> wepmode on authmode SHARED deftxkey 1 wepkey 1:0x<yourkey> up DHCP”

It makes me sad, but it seems my FranklinCovery quote-of-the-day widget is no longer updating.  So, I have removed it from the site.  Maybe I will find another quote-of-the-day widget later, but right now my daughter just told me she needs a diaper change (by grabbing my arm and trying to drag me out of my chair).  Gotta go.

Yes, that is right you blog spammers. Go away. You don’t get to post here. Besides, I moderate all comments. So stop trying to spam my site.

Merry Christmas everyone!   I hope you will treasure everything you receive today.  I know I treasure my family very much.

So while I was having all the fun of the broken tooth, I still had to do everything else scheduled for Saturday.  First was Lilia’s swim class and Carys’ first gymnastics class.  Lilia’s class was parent/child and I was the designated parent.  So I went swimming with her, which was a lot of fun, even with a giant hole in my tooth.  Amy went with Carys and watched her class and I was told Carys had lots of fun.

After we got back from the YMCA, we headed to the Pierce County Fair at Frontier Park.  The Pierce County Fair is lots of fun, as it is a small fair, and the fairgrounds are set in trees.  I dropped off Amy and the kids at the fair, then ran across the street to my conveniently located dentist for my temporary filling.  When I got back I was so happy to eat that I didn’t even pay attention to most of the Fair.

After lunch Carys gave me the ground tour of the rides and wanted to go in the jungle gym.  Which she did, 5 times.  In between trips to the jungle gym (complete with ball pit), we did manage to see most of the animals and exhibits.  Lilia spent most of the time in the stroller as she is still too little to go on the rides.  Poor Lilia.

So there I was yesterday morning minding my own business eating my Raisin Bran, when a large part of one of my lower left molars breaks off.  I found myself on a Saturday morning with a quarter of a tooth missing and having to schedule some emergency dental work.  I did make it in to the Dentist, and they put in a temporary filling, but I am going to have to have a crown.  And then I will have to have another crown on the same tooth on the right side.

You see, when my permanent teeth came in several of them were improperly formed with some rather large holes and cracks in them.  My pediatric dentist filled them all with silver fillings – top of the line technology at the time.  The problem with silver fillings is that they slowly cause the teeth to fracture because the fillings expand and contract at  a different rate from the tooth.  So two of my teeth are full of cracks now and have to have the old fillings removed, and crowns put on.  Hopefully the other teeth with silver fillings will hold out longer.

You know, this 7 Habits stuff is hard.  It isn’t easy to sit there and write out what you value, what things mean to yourself, or a personal mission statement.  It sounds easy.  But really examining what it means to you is very difficult.  No wonder they don’t teach this stuff in schools.  It’s too hard for the teachers to understand.

I also suppose that if you don’t have the fall back position of a religion to tell you what you should think and be, that it could be harder for you to come up with the answers.  Yet I think you will have better answers for coming up with them yourself rather than just cribbing something from religion or someone else’s belief system.

This reminds me of when I was on Jury Duty.  One of the attorneys asked if we thought consensus would be better reached by having everyone on the Jury being the same, instead of diverse.  My answer was “It may not be an easy consensus, but it will be a better consensus” for having the diverse Jury.  Same thing with your life.  It may not be easy to plan your life yourself, but you will have a better life for it.

Yesterday I decided I had had it with being quarantined so I went back downstairs.  I still have a bit of a cough, but otherwise I feel much better.  I got to sleep in my own bed again.  Of course, this also means I am headed back into work today.  I feel ambivalent about work, but I am out of sick leave and really don’t want to use up anymore of my vacation leave.

So I am now reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  I have heard about this book for a long time, but I always resisted reading it.  I’m not sure why I was resisting it, as it is a very good book, and I agree with much of the content within it.  The reason I finally picked it up was because I have started to use a FranklinCovey planner (yes, a paper planner).  I was intrigued by some of the pages within it that have you identify your values and write a personal mission statement, so I decided to pick up the book.

I woke up on Thursday with a sore throat and a fever. I decided to not go into work and went to the doctor. They ran tests for Strep, Flu, and Mono. All came back negative. So I’ve been home the past few days (might explain some of the work on the blog).

Because Amy and the kids just got over being sick, I didn’t want to infect them with whatever I had. So my dad came up and helped install our old window AC unit in our bonus room (which is not connected to the duct work for the heat pump). I’ve since quarantined myself up here. It’s very boring, as there is no TV. Thankfully there is Hulu.  I got to watch the new Robotech: Shadow Chronicles movie.   Pretty cool.

I just hope I get over this soon and can rejoin my family.  I really miss getting to hang out with them.  Amy is having to do too much of the chores right now.  She never gets a break.