Making the House Wireless

I've got two really old printers that both have problems. Last year, I was  able to get at least one of them to work when I needed to print. I have several left-over ink cartridges left to use, so instead of buying a new 3-1 wireless printer/scanner/photocopier I at least want to wait until both of these units has died/used up their last ink cartridge. So how best to make use of them?

Fortunately, I have a very old desktop that's still usable. Since my Toshiba notebook died when I was on tour last fall and had to be serviced 4 other times as well, I had to buy a new cheap laptop as well. But now the manufacturing flaw for which the lawsuit was filed seems to have been fixed. So I have three machines available to deploy in this 3 story house! (each story is quite tiny). One runs English XP and Ubuntu Linux, a second runs Chinese XP, and the third runs English Vista.

I thought setting them up wirelessly would be a synch. However, I soon found out that Vista has flaws... It shows up in the XP networks, but cannot detect the XP machines. After downloading a patch from Microsoft and installing it on the two XP machines, it was able to detect one XP computer.

The final difficulty was in getting the Chinese XP desktop to show up on either my Vista laptop or old Toshiba XP/Ubuntu laptop. For the longest while I thought it might have something to do with the base language being different. But then I found a post that reminded me of the obvious: maybe its firewall was blocking detection. Sure enough, the Sysgate firewall I have running on that machine made it unnetworkable. Now that it has been enabled, I have three machines I can place in different parts of the house--- allowing my working class/farmer neighborsto surf the internet and for me to use my printers while I'm downstairs in the common areas. Now only to get the 10 year old Epson printer's black cartridge unclogged, and the rest of the house unpacked and orderly! 

Slow in Settling In

Today in one coworker couples' list of prayer requests, I came across one that is equally valid for me:

"It is discouraging that it is taking so long to set up our house.  Each week we make progress, but it is taking a lot of time, and energy....Please pray for emotional stability and that we will set realistic expectations."

In the countryside here, that's the way things are unfortunately. For example, the other day I had my 2nd AC window unit put in. But in putting it in over my back door on the 2nd floor, the guy said the brand new screen door (which didn't overlap the AC frame) would have to come out and be cut down. So he left the door in a permanently open position which now won't shut. Well, after he left, I've had a couple of people tell me that was ludicrous. But getting him to come back (or the guy who referred him) to trim the frame will waste a few more days before I can open the door and let the evening breeze flow through....

It took over a week for a sliding plastic door to be delivered and installed, and several days now waiting for someone else to come and do another quick job which should have been done by now. And I've got a long list of small time-consuming projects for each room that I'll gradually be taking care of myself. But at the same time, I'm thankful for the daily progress in cleaning up my mess and gradually beginning to settle in!