Darkoshi

My plan was to simply go for a walk around the neighborhood with my mom, both of us wearing face masks and keeping some distance between us. I did not plan to go inside her house, to avoid bringing germs in or out.

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In between me having ordered cloth face masks, and Qiao having ordered regular surgical style face-masks which were delivered yesterday, we have several now.

The first cloth face masks I got are the rectangular, pleated/fold style. They don't impede my breathing very much as they aren't snug against the face. They tend to ride up and start rubbing the bottom of my eyes, which bothers me. Using a chin movement, I can pull it downwards without touching it with my hands, but then it feels too low on my nose. The elastic ear loops become uncomfortable after a while.

So last week I ordered some of the other kind of face masks which are contoured upwards over the nose, without pleats. Their elastic goes around the back of the head instead of around the ears. I tried one of these on today, after having washed it. It is much snugger against my face than the other ones! One can even see the cloth moving in and out from my breath. It also has a pocket into which one can put an extra filter.

I decided to wear one of the surgical masks for the walk.. it's snugger than the rectangular cloth mask, but easier to breath in than the contoured cloth mask. But I took the contoured cloth mask along too, just in case.

My mom has the N-95 mask which I gave her a couple months ago, and some surgical masks a friend gave her.

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The walk was fine and lovely. A very nice day for a walk. Sunny, not hot, not cool.

The problem was that my mom's internet had stopped working, and she wanted me to fix it. She was bothered that I didn't want to go inside her house to fix it. She needs the internet to work for her census job that's she's doing online training for.

My first approach was to stay outside while instructing her on what to do. She unplugged and plugged the surge protector back in. She took a photo of the cables and surge protectors, which looked fine to me.

I had her bring her laptop outside to help her with another problem (she'd accidentally switched it to high-contrast mode), pointing out to her what to click on to fix it. The laptop showed a wi-fi connection, but it was very slow and disconnected.

My phone was able to connect to the wi-fi, but only when I held it up right by the windows outside of the room with the router.

I finally had to go inside her house to troubleshoot further. I put the snug cloth mask on over my surgical mask, and still tried to avoid touching anything inside the house. But eventually that failed too (my mom couldn't figure out how to insert the ethernet cable into her laptop), and I had to start touching things.

There must be something wrong with the AT&T router, that it's signal strength has dropped such that it doesn't reach my mom's office room anymore. Per the router settings, it's already set to the max signal strength.

There may or may not be something else wrong with the router. I had trouble getting it to work even with a direct ethernet cable connection to the laptop, but after swapping cables around it finally, inexplicably, worked.

In the end, I touched her laptop, mouse, phone, flashlight, router, ethernet cables, doorknob, sink faucet handles...

I eventually lifted the mask in order to blow my nose into my pocket kleenex, because doggonit, by then, why not. It had been several hours since I first put on the mask. I felt bamboozled into having to go inside my mom's house and touch her things. And if she doesn't care... bah. It's no worse than what an AT&T tech would have to do, coming inside to fix it.

For a while I was very frustrated that everything I tried wasn't working, and it felt like I was starting to slowly asphyxiate under the face masks. I had to step outside and take the masks off to breathe. When I went back in, I put the surgical mask away in my backpack, and only wore the cloth face mask.

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My mom had mentioned seeing a fox in her yard before, and we both saw it today. It's a gray fox, grayish on the back, but with reddish legs.

I've recently noticed that my wireless network connection list (in Win 7) displays 2 entries for my wireless network. One of them shows the router's configured SSID, and the other one shows an SSID of "Other Network". My router is set up with a non-default SSID, does not broadcast the SSID, and has security configured. The "Other Network" is definitely my own network and not someone else's, as it displays the exact same signal strength and security type/radio type as is shown for my normal connection. It also goes away when I turn my router off.

While researching the above, I noticed that in the Windows 7 "Manually connect to a wireless network" dialog window, there are 2 checkboxes, "Start this connection automatically" and "Connect even if the network is not broadcasting". Under the 2nd checkbox, there is a warning which states: "If you select this option, your computer's privacy might be at risk."

This confused me, as from what I've learned in the past, having the wireless router not broadcast the SSID is more secure than having it be broadcast.

Based on a comment on this page: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1636208
and based on a part in this book "Windows 7 Annoyances: Tips, Secrets, and Solutions By David A. Karp",

it seems that when a computer tries to connect to a network that is not broadcasting the SSID, the computer itself sends out the SSID while trying to connect. If someone else in the physical vicinity is spying on wireless signals during that timeframe, they could in that way find out what the network's SSID is. If the network is configured *without* any other security, then it would be possible for the other person to set up their own unsecured network with the same SSID as yours, and to thereby trick your computer into connecting to their network instead of your own. Connecting to their network would be a security risk. That is apparently what is meant by "your privacy might be at risk".

Based on the above, I would think that as long as your network is using encryption, it should still be more secure to have the router NOT broadcast the SSID, because then someone else can only capture the SSID when your laptop is initially trying to connect to the network. If the router is broadcasting the SSID, then someone else can capture the SSID anytime the router is turned on.

However, after reading some more webpages on the topic, I'm still not sure. If your laptop is configured to automatically connect to a network that is not broadcasting the SSID, the laptop itself sends out the SSID while trying to connect. If the laptop is used while traveling, the laptop will continually send out signals which include that SSID, while looking for that default connection.

I'm not sure, but apparently the laptop may also continuously send out the unencrypted SSID, even while it is connected to the encrypted network?

These webpages advise against turning off SSID broadcasting:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb726942.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/43836/automatically-connecting-to-hidden-ssid-wifi-network

This page says that your security is either the same or better when not broadcasting SSID
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33820

I'm still not clear on why having broadcast turned off for an encrypted network might possibly be less secure than having broadcast turned on. Or if that is the case or not.

Even though hackers can easily determine the SSID when it's not being broadcast, I still prefer it not to be broadcast, so that my neighbors won't see it in their network list (even though they wouldn't be able to connect to it even if they did see it). As long as my network has strong encryption turned on, hackers will find it as hard to break in with or without the SSID being broadcast. For further security, to avoid my laptop from continually sending out the SSID while I'm traveling, I could temporarily change my home network properties to not automatically try to connect.

My handwriting is messy even when I'm purposefully trying to write slowly and legibly.

It's a new year, hurrah! Only a few months till the weather gets warm again.

My brother and his girlfriend/wife are immigrating to the U.S. from Germany.

Brrr.

Product Review: LinkSys WRT160N V2 Wireless-N Broadband router (N Ultra RangePlus).
Some minor problems installing it (following the instructions, we kept getting "302 Internal Error"). Configuring it manually worked ok, but we kept having problems with the internet connection. In the end, there seems to be some kind of issue with the router and DNS, as on both the wired computer and the wireless computer, we sporadically but frequently get page load errors... if we keep retrying to reload the page, eventually it works. Sometimes, one website would work and others would not. Sometimes, everything would work fine for a while, and then we'd start getting the page load errors again. This did not happen when connected directly to the modem, or when using the old router (which we've reverted to now again), so it is not a problem with the DNS servers themselves. Tried searching online for a solution to the problem, to no avail. It might be a problem with the latest firmware build, but LinkSys does not have the previous build available for download, so we could not try downgrading to it.
So, thumbs down on this product :(
Although, it does look nifty. Nice sleek shiny black plastic; looks sort of like a stealth bomber in comparison to the old router.