Ben Benner’s Blog

My wife has recently become addicted to technology, one might go so far as to call her a TechnoSnob. I just got off the phone with Gina a few minutes ago, she is in Florida for the next few days on vacation with her mom and a few of her cousins. They are all in town for Bubba’s wedding, one of her cousins from Lansing who has since moved to the Florida (somewhere in the Ormond Beach Area).

Well, apparently there is no Wi-Fi in the vicinity of their hotel. Gina told me that she was not able to find any available networks when she booted up her macbook earlier.

NO INTERWEBS!!!!

Whatever is she to do?

Apparently, the correct course of action is to text me and ask for locations that are nearby that have wifi access. I found a couple of places, the one that actually looks pretty neat is 15 miles north. I didn’t bother to send her the link for the BeachHouse Beanery. Maybe if she gets online and reads this post, she might think about heading 15 miles north for some wifi and coffee on the beach.

The only time that I have ever really been without access to hi-speed Internet access was up at the cottage and well I kind of found a way around that as well.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

UPDATE: I was looking over the hotel website and it says “We also offer our guests a lobby business center with complimentary high speed internet access.” I read this as them offering wi-fi in the lobby, it could just mean they offer a computer that is hooked to the Internet. I have yet to hear from Gina as to what form the “complimentary high speed Internet access” comes as.

bdbenner Technology, gina, travel, vacation florida, gina, travel, vacation, wifi

So last year up at the cottage I found two wireless networks.

One was secured and one was not. Neither signal was strong enough to connect to from within the walls of the cottage. The unsecured network was strong enough from the edge of the driveway.

This led me to think about a ‘Pringles can range extender‘, however that typically only works well with a point-to-point network, where both sides are using the same range extending gear (ie Pringles cans).

Then I found some instructions for a uni-directional range extender that uses a “Steamer Basket”.

My DIY project worked and I am able to get onto the unsecured network just fine from the dining room table here. My father-in-law, Tom is already talking about mounting it to the outside of the cottage as to make the signal better.

My mother-in-law, Brenda has made breakfast so I better quit blogging and get eating.

Laterz

bdbenner Technology, diy, travel, vacation diy, diy range extender, summer, travel, vacation 2008, wifi