My Smart Phone upgrade!

Well, I finally went out and upgraded to a nice new Samsung Captivate Smart Phone with Android OS on the AT&T Wireless Network. Now I can surf and talk on the phone at the same time but with a lot more ease. I also picked up a Plantronix Bluetooth ear piece to make this easier. This is an upgrade for my Windows Smart Phone (NO more Windows phones for me). I dislike that phone now that I've had to live with it. Basically I'm tired of the OS and apps getting in the way of using the phone as a portable information platform. So I've started setting up the Samsung and so far it is working great. I'll need to organize the apps and where everything is but I've become very comfortable with the phone. I like the fact I can see it in direct sun light (or that I can just read everything on the phone!). I've started downloading apps (Facebook, Twitter, Mail etc) but I have a lot work more to go. I had been waiting on the iPhone but as I am an employee of AT&T I have to wait until our customers are pretty well settled out before I can get my hands on an iPhone. Now I'm glad I had to wait. :-) Don't get me wrong the iPhone is wonderful (I have an iPod Touch, great interface) but I've also wanted to get my hands on Android. So this became the chance I needed to do that. For now I'll withhold any more comments until I've lived with the phone a while (let the honeymoon wear off first). I'm also hoping to develop a few apps for Android but that will have to wait also. First I need to work on my web pages to make them more browser friendly. I think I'll visit the AT&T forums and look for tips and also read the online manual (probably with the phone). This is definitely a step up

Linux frustrations!!!

What a weekend, I decided that I should get my IPv6 network up and properly running (I was missing the proper firewall rules so I couldn't leave the IPv6 up). After a great deal of frustration with ip6tables I finally managed to get a mostly workable firewall (icmpv6 packets are dropped). It really needs some more work and I'll work on that a little later on. I'll post all my related OpenWRT/IPv6 information on my Home IPv6 page. At the moment I've got the related information (IPv6, firewall and RADVD information) all over the place and I need to 'write' it all down. While I was at it I decided to consolidate my servers (actually the whole point of all these servers). I've been having a little bit of trouble with my main server (write errors). To make matters worse the 'new' server was behaving odd. At first the machine was geting stalls and I thought it might be Centos (I hate SELINUX and I was getting audit errors). I then tried Ubuntu but ran into the same stalls. At the same time I installed Ubuntu server on a laptop with no LCD screen to handle some server work. Well when the laptop rebooted the network wouldn't come up. I found that it was missing the auto in the interfaces file. I found out about it accidentally while researching something else. Now understand that I come from a SYSV, Red Hat background and I'm no way familiar with where everything is under Ubuntu. This makes it very frustrating to manage a server without some GUI (and I dislike GUIs). So I now have 6 computers (1 a desktop) in various states of disarray. But I'm just beginning to make a little bit of progress and hope to have at least one fully working server up and running tonight. After which I'll put all my necessary services in my OpenWRT gateway and the network server. Then I can turn off all the extra computers.

To add to my frustration I spent the weekend also working on my fall graduate class schedule (and necessary prep work) for NJIT. This might not have been so difficult except that I've had problems with my email and the various files were on the stalling computer. I've managed to get the information backed up to a NSLU and I was able to get the information from the files. Still the work that goes into a new school is difficult and I still need to do a few more things.