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Saturday, January 17, 2009

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:57:22 GMT

I’m finally insured!

So I finally got approved for insurance. A brief overview of how I did it:

Researched a ton of plans. Used resources like about.com and Wikipedia and a lot of other Googling to figure out what “short term” coverage exactly meant.
I discovered that short term plans have really high deductibles (at least $500). Given the short duration of my noncoverage, I determined that my health costs were going to be significantly less than the deductible, so I’d have to cough up the money for my doctor’s visits, prescriptions, shots, etc anyways. Thus, it was more important to me to find the cheapest monthly plan with a decent coverage for big accidents.
Then I discovered that there were daily insurance plans (i.e. if you know the exact date x days from now that you’ll get insurance again, there exist plans that cover you for those x days). They turn out to be cheaper, too, because the insurance company knows exactly how long you need coverage for and that adjusts their risk calculations.
I called up my doctor and discovered that they weren’t in the Blue Cross network, so that ruled out a Blue Cross plan (it’s too much trouble to switch doctors right now!).
Most of my plan research was done on ehealthinsurance.com. Why did I choose them? They had the first result on Google and their site looked reasonably trustworthy and was easy to use. No other reasons, really.
I decided to go with the HealthNet QuickNet Daily 2000 PPO plan. I need coverage for ~90 days, and the plan had a $2000 deductible with reasonable emergency care benefits. The cost? I pay about $1.05 a day, so that turned out to be ~$90 total. Hey, that’s reasonable.
I ran through the online application which wasn’t involving at all. You barely need any paperwork on hand to fill it out. I submitted my application in 15 minutes.
Within two days I got a notification saying that I had been approved for the plan. Here’s a tip: check your spam folder for messages. Unsurprisingly, email with “insurance” in the subject line and body gets flagged pretty easily
HealthNet just sent me a policy packet a few days ago, and told me to wait for my cards to arrive in the mail.

So, that’s the end to a relatively painless process. Many of you have been super helpful with some tips on short term insurance. Hopefully they’ll be of some use to you (especially you graduating seniors!):

If you were covered under your parents’ insurance, check with their employer if there is a grace period. Thanks, Bowen!
You can check to see if you are eligible for a COBRA plan (essentially, it extends your eligibility under the plan you used to be under). Thanks, Lena!
Check with your alumni association to see if they offer insurance. Cal grads, CAA offers discounted insurance plans with Liberty Mutual. Thanks, Charissa!
You can pick up part-time classes at a local community college to continue your coverage under your existing plan. Thanks, James!
Angela and Allie recommended Blue Shield plans, Tonik in particular.
Laura points us to the SHIP website to compare coverage plans and discover how you’ll be affected as a SHIP participant after graduation.

An update, and a question about insurance (15.94) I’ve arrived safely back in the States with a minor...

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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:06:47 GMT

An update, and a question about insurance

I’ve arrived safely back in the States with a minor case of jet lag, but none worse for the wear. Look for some updated photos here or on Flickr in the near future.

Meanwhile, I realize that an additional complication of graduating means that i need health insurance (since I’m no longer a dependent under my dad’s insurance plan). Has anybody had experience purchasing insurance post-graduation? Some unique things about my situation:

I only need insurance from January till March (3 months). I start work mid-March, so I’ll be covered by a company plan then.
I’d like my insurance to cover: 1) my monthly asthma prescription (Asmanex) and 2) travel shots/medication (various shots, malaria pills, etc).
The biggest risk I’m going to be taking is a trip to Botswana in February (more on that later). Should I be looking for a health plan that has additional travel risk coverage?

I’d really love your input, if you’ve any experience. Thanks!

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Thursday, December 25, 2008

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:07:03 GMT

Christmas in Shanghai

See more of my Shanghai photos »

I am at the clothes market on Christmas Eve, trying hard not to feel foolish. It is difficult because 1) I have terrible Mandarin abilities and 2) I’m really not that interested in buying anything. The vendors believe otherwise, convinced I’m playing games with them. “Come on,” one of them whines, playfully jabbing me in the arm, “the leather on these shoes are high quality! These are totally in fashion! Why won’t you buy it?”

One of them, upon discovering I’m from America, grabs me by the arm, “Look, it’s Christmas Eve! It’s your holiday! Let me give you a present.” She proceeds to name a price. Ouch, it’s ridiculous.

—

Shanghai, my Dad decides, is a colorless city. “It’s nothing like Spain or France,” he remarks. “Look, it’s all black and grey!” Really, all we can see are winter’s clouds and pollution’s haze. Dad, toting a big digital camera and photographic aspirations to proportion, comes away a bit disappointed. The city compensates at night by wearing a neon quilt for us; its dizzying arrays of lights and colors keeping us warm.

—

Christmas morning enters with a shattering roar; I hear car alarms herald the intruder’s song. Hark! The doormen shiver in their long, trench coats.

It is business as usual. People walk to and fro. Lights, signs, and brands assault the landscape and the senses. 可口可乐! NOKIA! Somebody, everybody, is shouting something, selling you something, pushing cards and flyers into your face. You learn to find shelter in a steely, forward gaze.

Somebody has broken into our neighbor’s car; we see the shattered glass as we walk out into the bitter cold. The thief has, however, overlooked a stuffed animal in the back seat.

—

You should see all the plastic Santa figurines, far skinnier than the canonical Coca-Cola Santa, pale-skinned and decked out in red outerwear, on sale at the tourist markets. They wear eerie gazes, plasticky smiles, unnaturally wide grins. I’m not sure how to think about it: is Santa a jolly good fellow, spreading Christmas cheer to the East as an American ambassador? Or perhaps he’s a cultural hostage, created, altered and marketed in the image of the Chinese? Perhaps he’s the love child of globalization and free trade — born in the West, manufactured in the East and sold to both.

Whatever. All I know is I can’t look at him. He’s creepy.

—

Xintiandi (新天地) means “New Heaven and Earth” in Chinese, and by the looks of it, Heaven looks like an upscale shopping mall.

Christmas, my mom says, is largely a Western holiday. “They see it as a time to go shopping.” Sounds like the West.

But what does Christmas mean to them?

Salespeople in Santa hats beckon me from tables brimming with scarves and gloves. I wonder if China’s Christmas is a caricature of Christmas in the West, or the other way around.

—

She clenches her teeth and wrests her baby away from the wind’s icy clutches. She’s trapped by construction cranes and chain-link gates. The cold, the cold, she cannot escape. It bleeds through her tattered clothes, her pants are stained with soot. She cannot make eye contact, but bows even lower. Her baby, swathed in a thin jacket, is peacefully asleep.

What is this place? I cannot sleep. Maranatha.

Merry Christmas :) It was all rather embarrassing. I was on the BART...
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Friday, December 19, 2008

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:45:09 GMT

A Brother Like Me

The police come knocking one day on Belinda’s father’s door, looking for Mike. “I get a call from Belinda’s daddy, saying, ‘hey Mike, the police out here looking for you. You better get yourself over there and explain yourself.’ I say, ‘I didn’t do nothing!’”

Mike and I are standing in front of the food court again. He looks haggard as he relays his story.

“They got me on jaywalking charges. You know those cameras they put up on intersections to catch red light runners? Two years ago they caught me jaywalking at 3AM across an empty intersection, no cars on either side. The other jaywalking charges they say they have on me they don’t even have evidence for! Can you believe it?!”

Mike walked into the police station to see what the fuss was all about. They told him that he’d have to pay a $400 fine, or do 40 hours of community service. Incredible.

“Look, man,” Mike is weary. “They’re looking to get me on anything they can. First it’s for sittin’ on a milk crate, or playing my boombox, and now this. You know what?” Mike lowers his voice. “They’re doing a crackdown. They’re just trying to clean up, clean this place up before the holidays.”

Every semester, the Berkeley Police rounds up the homeless in Berkeley and shuffles them out before parents picking up their students can see them. It’s just how it works.

“I got a place, this church, where I know I can do my hours. But man! I can’t believe this. And my birthday’s coming up on the 23rd, right before Christmas. Hah!”

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:53:53 GMT

All about, you know, life.

There are big changes on the horizon. I feel like I could expand on each of these, but I’ll just bullet point them for now. They may be entries in their own right in the future…

Now that Annie, Esther and I have all graduated, my parents have moved to Shanghai (my dad’s found a new job there). So it’s a big change for our family, and I’ve been grappling with the changes that come with it. Among the themes: the loss of home, the power of parents’ love, growing up and… yardwork.
I’m graduating in December, and am watching my college career draw to a close. With it comes the inevitability of shifting relationships and a different lifestyle that I can no longer deny or dodge.
I’ll take a month off in January to relax at home, then in February, Sarah and I are taking a missions trip to Botswana to visit her old missions agency. It’s a place that’s held a huge place in her heart for a long time, and I’m going with my eyes, ears and heart open to see what Africa’s all about. More on this soon — I can’t wait!
That wild and wacky ride known as recruiting has drawn to a close, and I’m entering the working world! I interviewed widely, and was blessed with two job offers (in an economy like this one, having an offer is a blessing in itself). I had to take a good long look at myself and ask: what are my passions? What am I great at? Where do I want to live, what kind of work environment do I want to have, and how easy is it to make relationships? How much do salary and perks actually mean to me?In the end, I had to make a decision between a position at Salesforce and a position at Riverbed. It was a tough decision that came down to the wire, but in the end I chose to join Riverbed. I’ll be working as a UI designer; my team will design management interfaces on Riverbed’s family of network appliances.
I was attracted to Riverbed’s friendly engineering culture and felt that I had the greatest opportunity there to develop and exercise creative design skills. I’ll start in March, which leads me to…
I’m in the process of searching for an apartment in San Francisco (or Berkeley). My buddy Jack and I are planning on living together, and we’re looking for a third roommate. If you’re interested… let me know!

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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:53:31 GMT

A Brother Like Me

“Listen, Drew” Mike tells me, “They cut off my general assistance a long time ago. I got no money to pay the phone bill.” We’re standing in front of the ghetto again, and Mike’s pacing back in forth in front of his milk crate. He rattles off a long list of errands he’s got to do. But he can’t; he has no money, and no phone.

A few months ago, Mike’s lawyer in San Jose abruptly terminated their relationship after hearing about his purchase of a stolen bike. It made her jittery enough to dump him from her caseload. Mike’s switched over to a new lawyer in Berkeley since, but the transition process has slowed down his application for Social Security assistance.

It’s a chilly evening, and I’d like nothing better than to get to get back to my apartment and get some work done on my projects. I do a little hop and watch wisps of hot breath fall upwards into the night.

Mike’s somewhat changed the subject. “You know my cousin? He left me in Sacramento that one time. He said, ‘Hey Mike, I’m gonna be staying up here a little longer.’ Well I got to get back to Oakland and I tell him that. But he refused and he lock me out of his girlfriend’s place. Well I had nowhere to stay and no choice but to leave without him. I got on an Amtrak back to Oakland.”

Mike’s waiting for me to say something, and I’m honestly in no mood to wait around. “You want me to pay your bill, Mike?” It comes out a little harsher than I meant it to.

Mike stops and gives me a sidelong glance. “You would do that, Drew? It’s fifty dollars.”

Inside, I gasp at the figure, but figure this is as good a chance as ever to figure out a cheaper plan for Mike. “Yeah, man. Do you have a phone bill?”

Mike looks at me quizzically. “What’s that?”

“You know. A paper statement telling you how much you’ve got to pay and a list of everybody that you call and how long you call them for.”

“No, I don’t got that. I pay my bill on my phone.”

I take Mike’s phone, a MetroPCS model, into my hands and poke around at the options. Sure enough, there’s an option for on-phone bill payment. Fifty dollars? I think to myself. Ridiculous.

I look up at Mike. “You gonna be out here tomorrow?” Mike nods affirmatively. “Meet me out here tomorrow at 10AM.”

—

Mike’s old bike was stolen in September. He had walked in to Kingpin Donuts for a cup of coffee, and when he walked out, it was gone. He claims he knows who did it; a shady figure from Oakland was seen riding his bike up the street shortly after. “I know who he is. Don’t he dare to ever show his face around here again,” Mike growls. I imagine the shady man’s eyes to be thin slits, venom pouring out his fingers.

Mike tells me later that the very same shady figure from Oakland ambled up to him a couple of weeks later, a brand-new Trek bike in his hands. “That’s a nice bike,” Mike tells the snake man, and I’m surprised that Mike doesn’t clobber him right then and there. The man smiles an enigmatic smile, and offers it to Mike for twenty dollars. Mike only has fifteen, and that’s just enough.

Nobody can prove that the new bike was a stolen, but it makes Mike’s attorney nervous enough to dump him. I wonder if it bothers Mike at all: a stolen bike for a stolen bike (it appears the same in the grand calculus of things).

—

These days Mike doesn’t have cell phone service, and he has no means for his attorney to contact him. I go home and research cell phone plans. Monthly or prepaid plans? AT&T, Alltel, Virgin, MetroPCS, Sprint, Verizon? Does he need long distance, voice mail, text messaging? Argh, if I only had Mike’s bill and could figure out the best plan for his usage patterns.

I’m internally conflicted as to how I should present this to Mike. I want to tell him to ditch his cell phone, let him know that he doesn’t need one. Why can’t he just use a calling card? Sarah puts some sense into me: “He lives in a world where he depends on his connection to others. In some ways, it could almost be necessary.” I don’t fully understand the truth of that statement. I suppose the least I could do is find him a cheaper plan.

I am appalled to find that single-line monthly cell plans all seem to begin at $40; and knowing the way Mike uses his phone, a pay-as-you-go plan wouldn’t be that much cheaper (edit: Virgin Mobile just might be). I don’t have enough information to go on: I know Mike calls San Jose often to contact his old attorney, and I know he splits his time between Oakland, Berkeley and Sacramento. I don’t know if he makes more long calls, short calls, daytime calls or nighttime calls. In short, I just really don’t know.

I decide to just advise Mike to downgrade his MetroPCS plan to the $40 basic plan with voice mail, a step down from his $50 bill.

—

I meet him the next day at 10 at the food court. Aaliyah purrs through his boombox. He waves to me, bends over to shut off the stereo and slings it into the back seat. It’s a silent drive to the phone store on Ashby, so I turn up Miles Davis on the car radio. We pass restaurants and car dealerships and thrift stores.

“You got class today, Drew?”

“Naw, but I gotta get back to school by 12.”

Mike’s boombox suddenly sputters to life, Aaliyah’s smooth coos chopped up by a jammed tape deck: It’s been too long- STOP and I’m lo- STOP -st without- STOP -you. “What the — ” Mike cries, turning around to finger with knobs and switches and buttons before he finally puts Aaliyah to rest. “My cousin sold me this busted boombox last month.”

“How much was it?”

“Fifteen dollars. I took it home and tried it out and the CD player was broken. Took it back to him and complained. He did something to fix it, but it busted itself up again when I got home.”

We pull up to the curb and walk into the battered phone store. Various customers are impatiently waiting around as the cashier up front fumbles with a pack of phones. Mike finds a seat near the door and we wait. And wait.

Fifteen minutes later, the cashier finally figures out how to activate the phones. A woman walks up to the front counter, examines the phones, and asks to see the faceplates.

Mike looks a bit agitated. “You okay, Drew? We should go to Emeryville. They got a store there. Line’s probably shorter.”

But it’s just a little longer, and soon enough it’s our turn. We walk up to the counter, where we ask to downgrade Mike’s plan.

The cashier gives us a quizzical look. “You’re already on the $40 plan,” he says.

“Then why’s he getting charged fifty bucks?”

“Taxes and fees,” the cashier replies, and swivels the computer monitor to show us the damning evidence.

Well that goes all out the window. I pay his month’s bill and we walk out of the store. “Thanks Drew,” Mike tells me as we get back into the car. I give him a grin, but don’t let him know I’m silently fuming.

Later, I relate the story to Sarah. “Welcome to the world of institutional discrimination,” she says. I wish it weren’t so true.

—

Mike and I are eating lunch at Smart Alec’s down the corner from the food court. The lunchtime crowd presses in on us like hot steam against a winter window. Mike cradles Aaliyah and his boombox in his lap. Two officers pass us by, and I notice Mike’s eyes flicker and move downward, knowing he’s out of place in the restaurant.

“You see them?” Mike gestures over at the officers, now mounting their bikes. “They like me. They know me.” We still feel nervous, sitting there in the corner of Smart Alec’s, chowing on burgers and garlic fries and sharing a Coke and sticking out like sore thumbs.

I ask him about how Belinda’s doing. “She’s doing okay” he tells me, and spends five minutes telling me a hair-raising story about how Belinda nearly got in a fight with her son’s girlfriend’s mother after the girlfriend had stolen Belinda’s food stamps — or something like that. I can only loosely follow the story between Mike’s mouthfuls of food.

Mike stops suddenly, a smile passing over his face. He dials a number. “Hey Belinda,” he speaks to the voice on the other side, “how you doing? … I’m here in Berkeley now just eating with Andrew … yeah I’ll tell him you say hi … Hey, remember last week, how nice it was? I was just telling you how nice it would be if we got married.” The voice on the line is speaking now, and Mike deep in his thoughts, smiling at an unknown stranger just past me. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice, ha! Wouldn’t that be something.”

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Saturday, November 08, 2008

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:42:45 GMT

Dating 101, continued

I’m continuing an entry detailing new (and always-humbling) insights into myself, life, God, and affection as Sarah and I continue our dating relationship.

On friendship and figuring each other out

What Sarah’s helping me realize is that any romantic relationship must be, at its foundation, a great friendship. At the beginning we both assumed we were fantastic friends, which was true in the sense that we’d known each other for a long time and had been involved in similar activities and shared similar worldviews and had mutual friends and similar theologies and had a blast hanging out together. However, I underestimated how much of a “soul-connection” and a chemistry there was to build.

How would you describe chemistry? It’s like “clicking” the way you would with your best friend. A friend is someone who knows you, who knows when you’re lying, when you’re putting on airs or when you’re wearing a mask. A friend is someone who you love spending time with, whether it’s productive or wasteful. A friend is someone who shows you their humanity and gives you an authentic look at their ugly sides and fears and insecurities. A friend is someone you can be yourself around and know you’re accepted for who you are.

Quite frankly, we’ve had our share of struggles figuring each other out, and that’s made us realize that we’ve got a long ways to go as a friend and as romantic interests. I think we both were frustrated by a lot of Totally Normal friction points. You know, the little stuff that results in conversations which leave neither of us feeling heard or understood. I can be overly rational and logic-driven; she can be overly feelings-centric and impulsive at times. I had trouble adapting to her playful, button-pushing personality and she often felt stifled by my straightlaced by-the-rules philosophy. We come from families with different cultures and generational differences. The list goes on.

We both agree we’ve got a lot to learn about each other, and it’s been hard accepting that fact in light of high expectations. There is that expectation that we’re the closest of friends, yet we’ve had tons of times where she feels like I don’t get her. We’ve been acknowledging that we’ve really got to give each other a lot of grace and forgiveness in the times when we feel unheard, and we need to be patient. It’s been tough, but we know it’s worth it.

I’m learning how to be a good friend

I’ve begun to realize how important it is to be a good friend. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m starting to realize how my self-sufficiency negatively impact my friendships and relationship with Sarah. There’s a distance that I’ve maintained with other people, a distance that I easily maintained whenever I got involved with too many activities and gave lame excuses of “I’m too busy” to hang out. Maybe I’ve got a deep fear of intimacy (maybe, but I don’t think it’s totally true). Maybe I’m too task-oriented or goals-driven, so much that I have to get involved with 999 different things at the expense of my friendships.

I’d like to change. I’d like to be that friend who knows another at a heart level, who can tell when a friend’s lying or hurting without any words. I’d like to kick it with a buddy simply for the sake of kicking it with him, no matter what I’m missing out on. I’d like to be a heck of a lot more transparent with people about my hopes and my fears.

The horrifying depths of emotional intimacy!

I know it means that I really fully open up to Sarah and tell her about my thoughts and insecurities and dreams. It means telling her always what’s really on my mind. There’s this emotional vulnerability and interdependency that I’ve never revealed to anybody (except God and my journal) will open up gradually (and when appropriate), with time, to friends and to Sarah.

It’s scary, but I know once again it’s worth it. It’s like I’m slowly able to take a step back and see who I am, warts and all.

But it’s actually tons of fun

Seriously. Dating is great. It’s loads of fun. I think Sarah’s playful side brings mine out as well, and we have a blast from simple things like taking walks (just laughing about random things), to trying out new places to eat (and since our standards are so low, everything’s delicious), to playing sports (it’s my dream to beat her once in bowling. And tennis). I feel totally at home with her.

One thing I totally like about her is how she reminds me of infinite reservoirs of Grace — every time I tend to get down on myself, she reminds me that I’m not too far away from God’s love. And it’s because she’s grounded in it — she depends on it, like air for breathing. Not only that, but I’ve been really blown away by Forgiveness. When we wrong each other, we apologize and forgive. And let me tell you that it is the most amazing feeling to be forgiven by somebody you’ve wronged and it always gives me this sensation that the Father’s forgiveness is far weightier and far more significant than I had imagined.

All this to say, it’s been a humbling nine months. When I first started dating, I only had a rough idea of what it meant to be working things out to this detail with somebody else. I knew that dating would be awesome and it would be rough. But it wasn’t till I actually got up close and wrangled with these issues did I realize how much junk there was to work out in me. Sarah and I have a ways to go, and this process of patiently working things out between us has been tiring, but it has been good.

I’m thankful for this girl.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:35:59 GMT

Dating 101

I’m going to be candid and share with you some dating lessons I’ve learned (with Sarah’s permission!). My buddy Jeff was right when he told me, “Dating’s a good way to learn how much you need grace.” And I need boatloads of it. Here we goooo…

Transitioning from self-sufficiency to dependency

From very early on in my life, I’ve learned to be pretty self-sufficient. That means that I’d always be doing things on my own, doing things on my own initiative, making things happen for myself, you get the gist of it. It’d be totally me centered: I’m going to do this, and I’ll follow it up with that. I’ll make my own decisions, and you can ask me about how it was afterwards.

Sarah and I have had our moments where I’d show up and tell her “Hey, I’m going to be doing this on Saturday” with an implicit assumption she wouldn’t be a part of it. She’d feel hurt that I’d left her out, and I realize now that I had assumed that she just wasn’t interested in them or that I didn’t need her help.

I’m learning to invite her into all parts of my life, from the boring mundane things to the big events. Even if I think I can do these things by myself, I’m starting to learn to ask for help when I feel like I don’t need any. When I show Sarah that I’m dependent on her, it gives her a way to show me that she cares.

Transparency, and how it’s okay to not have it all together

There was a period in our relationship where I felt incredibly insecure about us. I felt like I was losing her, I felt like I was being disrespected or I wasn’t good enough, and there was all this crap I was going through.

I didn’t know how to talk about it though, so I acted the opposite of how I felt. I acted more confidently around her when inside my insecurities spoke louder. I doubled my efforts of pursuing her when really I was scared. I realize now that by acting like everything was peachy, I delegitimized communication that “something was wrong”.

I had somehow constructed this image of a super-boyfriend, who never spoke of trouble but instead slugged through hard times by the force of sheer will and corny jokes. And Sarah could see through all of it — and my inability to articulate how I was really feeling pushed her further away.

After a long, awkward and painful week, we confronted it. By finally admitting to her that things were off, we were free to finally talk about it.

To be continued!

In transitions I I've been moving in-to & in-between identities lately. As a...

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:21:11 GMT

Setting up a multi-AP wireless network

A few weeks ago, I couldn’t seem to connect my laptop to the wireless AP in my apartment. Additionally, I’d be getting weak signals from all these weird corners in my apartment. Since I had a spare AP lying around at home, I decided to do some online research to see if I could get it to behave as a second wireless AP on the same network, extending my network range, allowing our network to handle more wireless users and playing nicely with my laptop.

The desired setup:

Two wireless routers on the same network: one router acts as the gateway and DHCP server, the other is a simple switch + wireless AP. One router is the Netgear WGR614, the other is the DLink DI-624.
Workload: many wired connections, many wireless connections. We have 3 wired computers for me and my roommates’ computers, and up to 10 people connected via wireless at the same time (we tend to have a lot of visitors).

After a bit of research, I found a forum thread online that details how to set it up:

The host router (the Netgear in my case) stays the DHCP server and broadband gateway. Settings:
- Assign a static IP on the MAC address of the secondary router. It’s 192.168.1.3 on my network. That way you’ll always have an IP address to the second router’s admin panel.
Run an Ethernet cable from the host router’s LAN port in to the LAN port of the second router (the DLink). (Note: it’s especially important that you plug this wire in to the LAN port instead of the WAN port).
With a computer connected on the network, send your browser on over to the D-Link admin panel at 192.168.1.3. Your settings on the DI-624 should be as follows:
- “WAN Settings” section (Note the 20.2.20.x IP is just a random IP address so the AP doesn’t go off and try to dynamically resolve a IP address)
  - “Static IP Address” radio button selected
  - IP Address: 20.2.20.20
  - Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
  - ISP Gateway Address: 20.2.20.21
  - Primary DNS address: 20.2.20.22
- “LAN Settings” section:
  - Static IP: 192.168.1.3
  - Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
  - DNS Relay: Disabled.
- “DHCP Settings” section:
  - DHCP Server: Disabled
- “Wireless” section:
  - Set up your wireless AP settings however you’d like!

Though these instructions are specific to setting up the DI-624, I’m pretty sure you could get your old router to work on an existing network.You can now extend the range of your home’s wireless network without any fancy signal booster tricks or expensive repeater equipment. How cool is that?

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Saturday, October 11, 2008

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:10:40 GMT

The Eat to Survive Diaries: Soup Edition

They tell me that soup is one of the easiest things you can make: just grab a bunch of random stuff together and throw it in a pot to boil.

So I tried it out.

How to live!

Two stalks bok choy, diced
1 carrot, sliced
1 potato, diced
2 leftover radishes, sliced
A handful of leftover mushrooms, sliced
1 can chicken broth
Some seasonings. I just Googled this.

Go!

Pour in 1 cup water with the can of chicken broth and bring to boil
Throw everything in.
Wait.
Add some garlic salt. Some thyme. Don’t ask me how much because.. I don’t remember.
Wait Long Enough. When it Smells Tasty or your hunger takes over, serve over rice.

Not bad! On a chilly night like tonight, it really hit the spot. Hey mom, I’m gonna do you proud!

The Eat to Survive Diaries: A Typical Breakfast I’m writing this series to chronicle my forays into cooking....
The Eat to Survive Diaries: Part 1 I'm writing this series to chronicle my forays into cooking....
chicken soup (aka: just babble) i hate it when i waste hours surfing the net...

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Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Eat to Survive Diaries: Soup Edition