1. The upgrade was much faster and easier than I was anticipating. After writing down some settings I had with the default firmware, I flashed the router. A couple minutes later, I was in the tomato interface completing the last of the installation steps and configuring my wireless network.
2. The first thing I noticed was that my laptop (connected via wifi) is noticeably faster loading web pages. I think it had been having trouble with DNS lookups. I don’t know exactly what is different now, but that was a nice bonus.
3. I boosted the wireless transmit power (from 42 to 84 dB), and am now (finally) able to get wifi throughout my house. I walked to the farthest corners of my house and still had a very usable connection.

I haven’t yet played with the more advanced settings (other than boosting wifi power), but so far I am quite impressed.

This is the view from my office according to Google’s new 3D buildings in Downtown Memphis:

Have I ever mentioned that technology is freaking amazing?

The other day, Dr. Paul held a press conference with all most of the “other” national candidates and urged voters to reject the two-party system by voting for someone else.  He came together with those four candidates to agree on four principles that set them apart from the established candidates.

So, in light of that, I’ve thrown up a new site: voteforsomeoneelse.com.  It’s a blog-type thing where I’ll be posting news and thoughts that will hopefully convince a few people to not vote for the status quo.   Let me know your thoughts and suggestions.

Special Thanks to: The very fitting theme is by an old colleague, thanks James!

We could not have been more wrong.  In less than a week, we had an offer that we could simply not turn down and — despite not really being mentally prepared to do so — we accepted it.  That put the pressure on, we had to find a place to move to one month later…. So the next weekend (this past weekend) we spent most of the day Saturday looking for a house.  There were a lot of houses that would have been good for us that we could afford, but most were nothing really special.   But in the afternoon we happened upon one that was simply charming and very fitting for us.  We made another appointment to see it again that night with our parents, and they were as amazed as we were.  The next afternoon we met with our Realtor to put together an offer.  Our realistic expectations did not expect them to come back the next morning and accept.  But, of course, this post is all about us being very wrong.

So, there you have it…. in about three weeks, we have gone from considering moving to selling one house and buying another.  We’ll be moving into our wonderful home in Bartlett on July 12.  Let’s just hope the rest of the process goes as unexpectedly smooth as it has so far.

We will miss Oxford pretty sorely.  We’ve been here for four years, and I was mostly here the six years prior to that.  We have had unbelievable oppurtunities here, and have simply fallen in love with this place.  I don’t doubt that life will be grand in Bartlett, but I know it will never be Oxford.  We have wonderful friends here that we will be sad to see less often, and our little house has treated us so nice… It will be hard to leave.

If you are one of the two people that reads this blog, we would like to invite you to our new home.  If you’re coming from Oxford, bring some Ajax.

I’ve enjoyed my almost four years with D2 Interactive/US Networx, but this is a great opportunity and will lead me to greater things. For the time being, Janna and I will be staying in Oxford and I’ll commute to Memphis (Here’s hoping Bernanke stops devaluing the dollar so I can afford the gas).

On top of that exciting news, We’re leaving for the Bahamas next week for my cousin’s wedding. Let’s just say that my motivation to get anything done is less than spectacular right now, which you can tell because I wrote this post on the clock

For that challenge, they put up a flash app with a thermometer that showed the progress of the fund raising that updated in (near) real time, showing the exact total and the name and location of recent donors. Paul fans web wide were glued to their browser that week watching the amazing speed of the mercury rising.

This quarter, the campaign is continuing the openness by “letting everyone track our progress throughout the quarter – the first campaign in history to disclose immediately every cent that is raised.” But not only can you see the current total on Ron Paul’s site, in the form of “Lighting Up Lady Liberty”, but a few people are aggregating this data and making it available in the form of some neato graphs.

Update: I’ve made a Live Title generator that will display the total raised for the quarter as the bookmark title.

So, I’ll have to learn more about this: It’s nice to have a good, simple, definition-based way to express some of the things that have been swimming aimlessly in my head. It’s also funny to juxtapose these terms with our political parties that claim them as namesakes. I’m finding it hard to figure out exactly how they justify calling themselves either.

Ron Paul caught my attention after the last Republican debate. I started reading up on him and watching videos of some of his speeches. Basically, he believes in the things that make this a great country, specifically the Constitution. To be honest, there are things that the government has been doing that I didn’t know went against the Constitution: the Federal Reserve, income tax, going to war without it passing both houses of Congress, etc. Why didn’t the media alert me to these things?!

But really, if we don’t have and uphold the Constitution, what do we have? Not much. I urge you to watch the debate tonight (8 pm Central on Fox News, I think) and pay attention to Dr. Paul. Until then, go to his campaign site, and search Google Video, Blog Search and Technorati for more info.

Edit: Bruce Schneier is smarter than me.