Still no widely available internet at my school. We shall see if we switch to Digicel or see if we can get a different kind of service from TVL. I am doubtful we can get the new Flybox device setup without having an 8gig cap on data. That might last a week or a day depending on what the Nivan's do when the service is back up. Most likely they will start chewing up the data immediately.
But I can probably get some money to buy a new power supply and fix the server. That is at least a small victory.
Having no internet though is a major problem and I cannot seem to find a good solution.
3pm
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New power supply did the job, and one computer is back up and running. No luck on configuring network to work for internet. This week is it though, we fix it or switch to Digicel and get off DSL. I am starting to think that the ISP limits the number of addresses or something but I am not sure if they can control that.
Midnight
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There is a virtually dog war going on in my compound at school. I was already awake but when 20 dogs are running around barking their brains out trying to kill each other it is hard to ignore it.
So I went back to reading about network crap... this will put 99% of the population into a coma but this is what I do at midnight read and attempt this on my PC's at school.
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Disabling DHCP on the Router
If you want to manually configure every client, you can disable the router from handing out and managing the addresses automatically. Bring up your router's web-based configuration utility by typing in its IP address; for example 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
Log in and find the section where you can change the DHCP settings, such as on the General, Network, or DHCP tab. Once you find the DHCP settings, there should be a checkbox or option to enable/disable the server (see Figure 5).
Uncheck the appropriate option and save the settings. Then from now on, users won't be able to access the network or Internet until they've configured a static IP on their computer.
Microsoft Windows
DNS settings are specified in the TCP/IP Properties window for the selected network connection.
Way to configure a static IP you input the same IP details:
- IP Address: Pick an address within the same subnet as the router. For example, if your router is 192.168.1.1 (subnet 255.255.255.0), you could go with anything between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.255, or if it's 192.168.0.1 (subnet 255.255.255.0), 192.168.0.2–192.168.0.255 would be the range.
- Subnet Mask: This would be the same as your router, probably 255.255.255.0.
- Default Gateway: This is your router's IP address.
- Preferred DNS: You can either enter a DNS server's IP address, if you know it, or simply enter your router's IP address.
- 4. Disabling DHCP on the Router | Next Section
Changing DNS server settings on Microsoft Windows 7
- Go the Control Panel.
- Click Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Center, and click Change adapter settings.
- Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:
- To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, right-click Local Area Connection, and click Properties.
- To change the settings for a wireless connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection, and click Properties.
- Select the Networking tab. Under This connection uses the following items, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) orInternet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and then click Properties.
- Click Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server IP addresses listed there, write them down for future reference, and remove them from this window.
- Click OK.
- Select Use the following DNS server addresses. If there are any IP addresses listed in the Preferred DNS server or Alternate DNS server, write them down for future reference.
- Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers:
- For IPv4: 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4.
- For IPv6: 2001:4860:4860::8888 and/or 2001:4860:4860::8844
- Restart the connection you selected in step 3.
- Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings below.
- Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change.
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That was cruel or horribly boring of me I bet. Oh well.
6:00pm
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Had a great time talking with Miss. Annie in Minneapolis. She has a new apartment and she looks great. Wish I could fly her out here for a month. She's one of my best friends.
(16) Tuesday
1:30am
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Working on a short story while two dozen dogs run around the compound trying to kill each other, and singing a murder orchestra of howling, shrieking and barking.
6:00am
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Got to talk with my parents on Skype... everything is going ok back home. Guess it is full swing of fall back in MN... temps in the 60's.
11:00am
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It's hopeless! I tried everything I know to get this internet working but I failed. Problem maybe me... I just am not that great at network crap. Or it is TVL, they are a terrible provider.
So my principle yelled at them a lot and now they are shipping us a new flybox router from Port Vila that has a satellite connection. Glad he is yelling at them not me. I know (I believe) this new router will do the trick. I used it once with a data limit of 8 gig and it was worked great until the data ran out. The new box has no data limit. We will be the only location on Santo with the new device. But have to wait for it to arrive. Bet it is going by boat. That means wait wait wait... and wait some more.
So instead of being depressed I am reading some Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge to distract me for a bit. Later tonight we are having a Taco Tuesday party at my place... WooHoo Taco's.
11:30pm
6:00pm
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Had a great time talking with Miss. Annie in Minneapolis. She has a new apartment and she looks great. Wish I could fly her out here for a month. She's one of my best friends.
(16) Tuesday
1:30am
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Working on a short story while two dozen dogs run around the compound trying to kill each other, and singing a murder orchestra of howling, shrieking and barking.
6:00am
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Got to talk with my parents on Skype... everything is going ok back home. Guess it is full swing of fall back in MN... temps in the 60's.
11:00am
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It's hopeless! I tried everything I know to get this internet working but I failed. Problem maybe me... I just am not that great at network crap. Or it is TVL, they are a terrible provider.
So my principle yelled at them a lot and now they are shipping us a new flybox router from Port Vila that has a satellite connection. Glad he is yelling at them not me. I know (I believe) this new router will do the trick. I used it once with a data limit of 8 gig and it was worked great until the data ran out. The new box has no data limit. We will be the only location on Santo with the new device. But have to wait for it to arrive. Bet it is going by boat. That means wait wait wait... and wait some more.
So instead of being depressed I am reading some Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge to distract me for a bit. Later tonight we are having a Taco Tuesday party at my place... WooHoo Taco's.
11:30pm
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Had the majority of Santo's Peace Corps over for our first Taco Tuesday, Hunter, Mike Stafford and Hawkins, Jes, Kate and Bryan and Rich only Sam did not join... which is too bad she woulda liked it I think. Kate is pretty skilled at cooking compared to me, guess that is no surprise, if anyone knows me I rarely cooked back in the states. She did most of the work adding spices to the ground beef and making a tomato sauce but everyone chipped in nicely. The hard shell taco's I found in town were not crunchy like I was hoping they would be but they were still ok. The wrap style ones Bryan brough were probably better.
I put on some Tv shows I torrented... Broad City 2, 3... thought I had them all on a flash drive but did not find them... so I threw on Robocop. Half made it through to the end. I forgot it was a long movie like 2 hours. They left about ten. I stayed up till about midnight then took a nap until 2 am. I think the gecko's making their loud chirping noise woke me up, but since I have internet again I figured I would blog.
(17) Wednesday
Hardly slept... too much internet... 4:22am... then work up again at 9am.
Checked the lab, internet dead. TVL totally not working. I wash my hands of that for now. If the new router shows up great. Until then I will work on other problems.
My friend Annie back home had some tragic news, her brother died. Not sure how, or what happened but I am thinking of her and wish I could talk with her and listen.
Had the majority of Santo's Peace Corps over for our first Taco Tuesday, Hunter, Mike Stafford and Hawkins, Jes, Kate and Bryan and Rich only Sam did not join... which is too bad she woulda liked it I think. Kate is pretty skilled at cooking compared to me, guess that is no surprise, if anyone knows me I rarely cooked back in the states. She did most of the work adding spices to the ground beef and making a tomato sauce but everyone chipped in nicely. The hard shell taco's I found in town were not crunchy like I was hoping they would be but they were still ok. The wrap style ones Bryan brough were probably better.
I put on some Tv shows I torrented... Broad City 2, 3... thought I had them all on a flash drive but did not find them... so I threw on Robocop. Half made it through to the end. I forgot it was a long movie like 2 hours. They left about ten. I stayed up till about midnight then took a nap until 2 am. I think the gecko's making their loud chirping noise woke me up, but since I have internet again I figured I would blog.
(17) Wednesday
Hardly slept... too much internet... 4:22am... then work up again at 9am.
Checked the lab, internet dead. TVL totally not working. I wash my hands of that for now. If the new router shows up great. Until then I will work on other problems.
My friend Annie back home had some tragic news, her brother died. Not sure how, or what happened but I am thinking of her and wish I could talk with her and listen.
2:00pm
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Just ate an awesome hot and spicy pizza at Nemo's with two of my Peace Corps friends: Jes and mike hawkins... NICE LUNCH, as Mike would say, in a really loud funny voice and Jes would shake her head in frustration sort of. I am going to miss Jes and Mike's reactions to each other when Jessica leaves in November. I think she misperceives what I enjoy about their interaction. She think (wrongly) that I like seeing her suffer or be in misery from all of Mike's semi absurd but usually hilarious comments. This is not case.
What I find enjoyable is the fact that they differ so dramatically in personality types and yet tolerate each other enough to hangout. I like it how Jes corrects Mike when he says something ridiculous on purpose to get rise out of Jes and how she is able to fend that off telling him how he's wrong. I theorize that when she first got so site here in Santo, that maybe she was less vocal and now she is more out of her shell and does not take crap anymore. I like how Mike is always Mike just being loud and funny. That's it. Bet she never reads this blog, but I know Mike does.
6:00pm
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One of my best friends talked with me on skype for the last hour about her brother recent death. He died alone and no one knew about it for days until they found his body. It was really hard listening to all the details and I feel terrible for her and her family. It brings back a flood of memories of when my best friend David Potosky died in 2012 from brain cancer. So painful to think about her experience and how it makes me remember mine. Wish I could have been there to console her in person.
(18) Thursday
Not a whole lot going on at the moment... I should get a T-Shirt that says that. Fixed two computer for students and reading a book. Very underwhelming, trivial, help desk tasks.
11:30 am
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TVL showed up with a new modem from Vila. I was disappointed that it was not the new model aka the Flybox but we plugged it in and the lab is back online. Will test the computers in the office when they come back at 1:30pm. Fingers crossed.
7:oo pm
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Whew....... SO, My counterpart and I used the most absolute brute force approach to discovering all cables and pathways to my schools Janky internet setup. This involved labeling all cables with ID's and pulling all the plugs and testing each one, 50 or more cables to find out where each lead. This in addition to removing all the old decaying junk they were using, switches that might be burning out with new shiny parts we brought. If I only ignored my Peace Corps advisor and brought my 100lbs case of hardware I would have been able to repair everything 3 weeks ago, but I did not bring all my equipment. Oh well.
Through this three hour exercise of misery I managed, as did Samuel, to discover where every cable goes. By doing so we fixed all the connections to the school. We have internet again. Yeah me. I still wish I had a pisant network admin to do this menial task versus having to perform it myself.
Now if that is the case in the morning I will be shocked, since it seems every time I am on the brink of success, it all falls apart the next day.
midnight
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There was a power outage, then i stumble across this once the power came back: The Earth Is About to Be Bombarded by Two Solar Storms
On Monday night, a minor solar flare gave off a first magnetic cloud. Then on Wednesday afternoon, a major flare from the same sunspot region gave off a bigger CME. Thomas Berger, the director of the Space Weather Prediction Center at NOAA, said that both are aimed at the Earth. The first burst is forecast to hit Earth sometime Thursday night, and the second should arrive around midday on Friday.
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I wonder if the power outage here was caused by the solar flare.
(19) Friday
The power outage might be the reason for the internet access being mostly down. Strangest thing is that the server, the lab and the most of the office PC's have no connection yet, the secretary's PC, which is usually the worst one of the lot at getting a connection has on this morning.
I cannot fathom a reason for that. I cannot even make a direction connection to the router using 192.168.1.1 not even the login screen appears after 3 reboots and a direct connection. Did the storm burn out the new router. Maybe... is my school possessed by internet demons maybe... That is just as likely a cuase as anything else.
10:19pm
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So Lets see.. I basically have no confidence that TVL will ever provide help enough to solve the lack of internet working at my school ever. They lied about sending the FlyBox and send a shitty netcom box to use DSL which I SAID NOT to... but come monday I will try demanding a flybox setup or recommend switching to Digicel.
But the best part of the day was in indoctrinating Rich in the cult of Rick and Morty TV. We watched 7 episodes and had some of my homemade fries and a chicken sammy er sandwich. Great time. Contracts to Rich's friend Calvin for his kid which he texted about 40 times during the watching of the shows... Uhm... can't sleep as usual... so I will read the internet stuff until 3am. Yeah.
(20) Saturday
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Just Sitting around my house updating my iphone... IOS-8.0 and took a panorama of my living room/kitchen:
Guess I am going to go workout with my Rich and Bryan at 10am... but I am a little sick... hm. oh well.
10am
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Worked out with Rich and Bryan early morning torture. Then played a old/new video game called Escape Velocity Nova... made in 2007 I think. Goofy game.
3:30pm
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After a decent nap I went over to Santo East and played Ultimate Frisbee with the 15-20 regulars. Decent game of ultimate very competitive. I think I have gotten a bit better lung capacity of that game is pretty taxing. The Ni-van guy that play with us can run at nearly light speed.
7:00pm
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Then hung out with Jes and Mike at a kava bar. Shared some stories... Mike found a place that had Dad's root beer... that is pretty unusual here oh and its Mike's b-day tomorrow... sadly he seems mostly interested in hanging out with his best friend Jazz Dave. Maybe he'll swing by town though.
Just as I was typing this, a drop of water hits my computer, then I look up and see guilty faced lizard, A gecko pooped on my mousepad... Yeah little jerk. oh well, it was kind of funny.
(21) Sunday
Can't sleep as usual 12:56am Sunday just barely... The dog war has begun again sounds like one is being murdered or something. Looking forward to a paycheck.
3:48am
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So after a few hours of trying to get the jist of this Escape Velocity game (which annoys me because I get killed by these raiders after a short bit of work) I quit and went back to reading. I am almost done with Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge. The ending is building up to be a little too perfect and that is annoying. I think he got a little too idealistic probably for him a natural evolution of his writing hoping to make his fictional world, a future world of humanity, governed by non-corrupt benevolent rulers like the Philosopher kings idea that wrote about in Utopian kingdom Kallipolis... but it all all too cute and perfect for me. I should probably sleep... but I am thinking about my friend Annie hoping she ok, and also curious if I am going to hangout at home or go to Aore island tomorrow with Kate and Bryan. I have no money though... probably have to pass.
Ahh here comes a small rain storm... sounds nice on the tin roof... wipes out the sound of stupid dogs and roosters... thy have to take shelter and shut up.
8:14am
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Well about 4 hours sleep average. Trying to get my parents attention on their computer... I hacked/logged into it remotely and am blasting some Alice in Chains until they hear it and go downstairs and see whats up... Then I can turn it off and we can skype. Pretty funny.
3:30
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Rich and I biked over to Lope-Lope Resort/beach later in the day than normal. It is the first time I have been there... great spot because it has a river that form a decent sized pool of cool water and then just 20 yards away the ocean and river meet. This is good because after being in the salt water you can rise off in the fresh water. Took a couple photos on my iphone.
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The Santo crew met Mike at Maklin's Nokemal for his birthday shell... even hunter showed up an hour into the event. I gave mike a can of MUG rootbeer. We have Mug on the island now... hope we can keep getting it... nice to have some decent root beer from time to time.
