election surprise

In one of the democratic primary races - the SC Senate race, the results are a big surprise - Alvin Greene won over Vic Rawl, with 59% of the vote. It's a surprise because Greene was a virtual unknown, did no fundraising or official campaigning, and did not even have a website.

Before the election, this article was about all the info I could find online about Greene. I decided to vote for Rawl. It seemed strange to me for an unemployed (presumably non-wealthy) person to spend $11k of their own money to be a candidate in an election, and then not even do the normal kind of campaign things. It made me question his mental state. On the other hand, Vic Rawl had a good website which provided info about himself.

Here is a page with an interview with Greene, after the election. He seems like a nice enough person, although I don't claim to be a good judge of character. He doesn't seem charismatic to me, other than in a 'seems like a humble, regular guy, as opposed to a slick politician' kind of way. I wonder what caused him to be honorably discharged from the military; what exactly the details are behind the "it wasn't working out" bit that he mentioned.

It all seems very curious indeed. It could go to show that some elections are won by mere chance... perhaps people simply liked one person's name more than the other (this wouldn't be a good thing, but wouldn't personally surprise me). Or that even a total underdog has a democratic chance of winning (this would be a good thing). Or perhaps there was some kind of problem with the voting machines (this would not be a good thing).

for fuck's sake

I've just spent about 10 fucking hours trying to get a wireless internet camera server to work. It's a TrendNet TV-IP201W which Qiao must have bought a few years ago, but never really used.

It's default IP was not on the same subnet as my router, so not wanting to change my working router's settings, I got out an old router and set that router's IP subnet to match the camera's. Then with the camera connected to the old router via a network cable, I was able to open the camera's setup webpage and reconfigure it's IP # to match my other router's subnet.

Then I was able to connect it to the regular router. Then I discovered the camera's settings only supported WEP wireless, not WPA. Taking a chance, I downloaded and installed some firmware updates to the camera. In order to do that, I had to set it back to it's default IP # and use the old router again. And do a few factory resets. After having managed to get the firmware upgraded, lo and behold, the camera's wireless settings now included an option for WPA! We're almost there, I thought (mistakenly).

I changed the camera's IP # back to match my regular router again, and tried to get it to work wirelessly. It was working fine when connected to the router with a network cable, but it .just. .did. .not. .want. .to. .work. .wirelessly!!! I tried changing umpteen things in both the camera's setup and the router's setup, but it still did not work.

I tried port forwarding, address reservation, using TKIP instead of AES, unplugging the darn thing and plugging it back in many times, DHCP.....

One thing I can't figure out is why, even when the camera was working while connected to the router with a network cable, the router did not list the camera as an attached device. The router does list my laptop as an attached device, regardless of whether the laptop is connected via wireless or a network cable. So why wasn't the camera listed? How can I figure out why the router and camera aren't talking to each other wirelessly, when I can't even see them talking to each other over a wire?

And now to top it all off, I'm not even able to connect to the camera while using the cable anymore! It may be because I had set the camera to use DHCP. The camera is not responding at the original IP # I had set up for it, nor with the IP # which I'd expect the router to assign to it dynamically. I suppose I have to do a reset on it.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.