Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I upgraded my iPhone to the .... new iPhone 3G S

I was a good little boy and stuck with my first gen iPhone 2G from day 1, 2 years ago. On launch day of the 3G S though, I lucked out when my local AT&T store had a few 32Gb models still in stock. It's black...who cares! I put it in a case anyway. They also really pushed screen protectors, which made me think that Apple had maybe degraded the quality of the screen since the original model. After 2 years, my original iPhone has exactly ZERO scratches on it. It's in an Incase leather sleeve, and I usually carry it in a pocket by itself (no keys!). I checked, but I could not, however, find any reference that Apple had moved away from the cz (cubic zirconia) screen from the gen 1 phone. I did buy a pack of screen protectors, and they are damn near impossible to install. It's so flippin' hard to get it lined up, that by the time you do finally get it lined up correctly, there's now dust and junk on the screen, which makes it impossible to get all the bubbles out. What a pain. So far, discussions on the Apple forums seem to indicate that the screens are the same, so I should be safe w/o the protector. I hope so!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Is my AT&T U-verse RG flaking out on the wireless end?

My son has reported that his gaming will occasionally hang for 20-30 seconds, which is long enough for the WOW server to boot him out. He said this never happened when we had the Linksys router and has only started since the switch to AT&T U-verse from Comcast. He is on the 2nd floor, which is 2 floors above the RG/router. His signal strength is excellent, so it's very likely a product of the wireless fuctionality of the Residential Gateway (RG). He is the only heavy user of the wireless network (I have several devices, but he gives it the biggest workout...BY FAR). In any case, my old Linksys router is just sitting in a box, so I found this site that explains how to use a Linksys WRT54G as an access point instead of a router. I changed the channel the RG wireless is using to see if that helps, but if the hangs continue, I will put the Linksys back into service, utilizing my WRT54G as an access point (and disable wireless on the RG).