Internet at home is hosed.

So my roommate and I last year spent some time making this elaborate (Rube Goldbergian, if you will) system to get free internet at home. It consists of a home-brew high-gain antenna carefully placed on the roof which is fed into a wireless-B bridge, then a wireless-G router, both of which have their MAC addresses spoofed to trick the VT wireless LAN to think it's my laptop. The antenna we made consists of a DTV reflective satellite dish and a circular waveguide feed point made from, well... an old can of soup.

Anyway, sometime over the summer the signal cut out. Last week I found out why:


Needless to say I was rather surprised when I climbed on the roof to investigate. Anyone know what the RF characteristics of a nest of 30 hornets is? I'm betting not good.

Just for Suze

Blogger.com has been mucking up my blog lately. It is, at the very least, upsetting. So this update is just for my dear sister who loves blogging more than I had ever anticipated =)

I passed my qualifying exam the first week of classes near the end of August despite the University being shut down the first day of classes due to a killer nut on the loose. I speak, of course, of Will Morva, the loveable Blacksburg townie we all knew to hang out in Bollo's and occasionally the Cellar. The strangest part was going to a party that weekend to meet a guy wearing a "William Morva is an asshole" t-shirt that had been made up by some Blacksburgians several years ago. The story goes like this: Morva used someone's credit card to run up a $200 bar tab. The victim made up the t-shirts to make back some of what he lost. It was both appropriate and a little disturbing to see someone wearing this shirt just days after the tragedy.

Amazing.

He will get the death penalty for sure... and I don't know what to think of that.