Currently…

Out for a jog again last night, and the difference in pace within the group is starting to tell. A few of us ended up quite far out in front and ended up turning back… only to end up way out in front again. My new shoes are definitely making a difference though, not a niggle or tweak to be felt. It’s like running on, um, gel-filled trainers I guess.

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Home to some paperwork as it’s re-mortgage time again. We are hoping to use the raised value of our house (it’s gone up by over £20k since we bought it) to get rid of a higher interest loan. Thanks to the Motley Fool website I can now understand people speaking mortgage-ese, and the lovely people at London and Country have been very helpful and very prompt. I spoke to Katie yesterday and received a thick envelope from them this morning, very impressive.

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Tonight we will be visiting my father-in-law as he flies back to Spain tomorrow. Three weeks he lasted, one more than we thought he would, and all told I think Louise will be happier once he’s home. I’ll just be glad that we get our spare Sky box back as the footie season has started and, as we use it for the spare TV upstairs in the bedroom, it means Louise will be able to watch telly when I kick her off the sofa.

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That aside there ain’t much going on. We’re trying to save some cash as we are away for a couple of days at the end of the month, and I’m always wary that the change of mortgage will incur more fees than I expect, so we’re having a quiet, cheap, weekend.

Oh wait, it’s only Thursday. Damn.

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Almost forgot. Netgear Wireless Router (WGT624) installed and working. Yay! I had to switch my cable modem (Webstar 100) from being a USB connection to a CAT (network cable) connection (BlueYonder installation gave me USB, not my choice). It was pretty simple actually, although I’m not completely sure what goes on behind the scenes, here’s what worked for me:

First up you need to release your IP address, go to a command prompt and type “ipconfig /release” (without the quotes).

Next you need to uninstall the USB driver software from your PC, usually from Add/Remove Programs.. in the Control Panel.

Then turn off the cable modem, and remove the USB cable completely.

You need to leave the cable modem off for three or four minutes – apparently they need this so they can ‘forget’ the details passed to it by your ISP.

Then you can turn on your cable modem, and let it start up before doing anything else. My cable modem has flashing lights on the front so just wait until they settle down and you should be OK. Shouldn’t take more than a minute.

Next up, connect the wireless router to the cable modem using a CAT cable and turn on the wireless router. It’ll run through it’s own diagnostics and again mine has lights on the front that indicate what it’s doing (to a point) but shouldn’t take long either, let’s say another minute to be safe.

Then you can connect the wireless router to your PC, CAT cable again, and then step through the setup instructions that came with your wireless router – usually you’ll go to a web address. I didn’t need to specify a domain or system ID for my router.

So I now have the wireless router in my network and can connect through it (via cable) to the internet. Next step is to connect to it wirelessly. And that’s the bit I’m having problems with. My laptop is at work, but I have my Airport Express here. But for some reason I can’t find ANY Wireless connections. It’s almost like Windows has forgotten about them… I’ve got no icon in the system tray, and nothing in Network Connections. Had a quick Google last night but to no avail, I’ll try again over the weekend. Bloody annoying though, especially considering the hassles I had getting the Airport Express to work in the first place!