For the longest time, AT&T/Cingular was the only GSM cellphone carrier available in North Carolina. The only other major GSM carrier in the U.S. is T-Mobile, but the only way you could use T-Mobile here was to order a phone (and phone number) in a neighboring state and use it in roaming mode here. I hoped for T-Mobile as their rates were significantly cheaper than Cingular’s.

A billboard told me T-Mobile now offers service here in North Carolina, which is great. I believe they bought SunCom when AT&T bought all of Cingular.

While I’m happy with my super-cheap pay-per-use mobile plan, I’m glad there is now some GSM competition here in North Carolina.

I tried configuring my Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel last night but could not get out anywhere. Using ping6 to ping a site such as ipv6.google.com gave me a “network down” message, yet the sit interfaces are up and I can ping HE’s gateway.

I noticed when I configure the tunnel on the HE page that I get packets from their gateway of type PROTO=41. Anyone know what these are all about?

I’ll have to dig into things a bit further when I have more time (i.e., not this week).

No sooner do I get prepped to jump into Earthlnk’s IPv6 project that I learn that tomorrow the project comes to an end. The project’s sponsor was given notice of his impending layoff from Earthlnk in February and tomorrow is his last day.

Fortunately, I found another free source of IPv6 addresses, Hurricane Electric’s Tunnelbroker.Net. Tunnelbroker’s forums seem to be chock-full of good IPv6 information, too. It looks like Tunnelbroker will get me into IPv6 with the exception of not providing the low latency my tunnel would’ve had being on the native Earthlink network.

While I can start using IPv6 on my WRT54G, I found this on Earthlink’s IPv6 FAQ:

18. Why do I even need to use a WRT54G for this? It seems to me I could accomplish the same thing using my Linux or FreeBSD box.

You’re right, you could. But it involves some pretty serious Unix System Administration skills. You have to know how to configure IPSEC, how to configure DHCPv6, how to configure route advertisements, how to configure IPv6 routing, and several other things. And it would be very difficult for us to help people debug their configurations as they tried to get it all to work.

Ah, a challenge! I am well-versed in IPSEC configuration. I live and breathe it, actually. And I can pick up DHCPv6 fairly quickly. The IPv6 routing and advertisements would be all new to me, but with the help of my buddy Greg it could happen.

This could turn into a very interesting TriLUG presentation! I don’t think Earthlink even requires one to be their customer to use this, so anyone with an Internet connection could conceivably get IPv6 addresses through this program. And Earthlink doesn’t mind as it doesn’t cost them anything. Pretty cool!

So my amigo Greg Brown has been raving about the wonders of IPv6 so much that I’m sick of hearing it. Thus, I will also take the plunge into the world of Even Longer IP Addresses.

Fortunately, I’m an Earthlink cable-modem subscriber and have an extra WRT54G lying around. Earthlink’s R&D department created a special firmware for the WRT54G to turn it into an IPv6 6to4 router, instantly making one’s network addressable by IPv6. Also fortunately, Earthlink packages their WRT54G firmware with a restrictive firewall so that all of your suddenly-addressable internal hosts are not completely exposed to the Internets.

I can’t let my geek friend have all the fun, you know. After all, I’ve got my Alpha Geek reputation to uphold. So its off to the Earthlink site tonight to void another warranty and get started on the IP Addressing Of The Future.

I’m forced against my will to use Microsoft Outlook at $WORK. Frequently, Outlook will pop up a message balloon informing me that its accessing the network.

“Well, duh!” I say. “That’s what you’re supposed to be doing! Thanks for interrupting my work so you can bring me that critical information!” Talking to my computer is no use, though, as it just stares blankly back at me like a stupid dog.

Luckily I’ve found the recipe to turn off these useless messages for Outlook 2003. I made these registry changes and, voila, problem solved!

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons]
"Exchange"=dword:00000000
"NetConn"=dword:00000000
"NetWarn"=dword:00000000

(Hat tip, the Microsoft forums)

Here are the commands I’m using for importing DVDs into the iPod. Shown is the script for the Muppets DVD. It requires the libdvdcss libraries to be added, as well as the MP4Box app. MP4Box takes the mencoder-encoded file and stamps it with the appropriate iPod bits to make it show.

GUEST="Vincent_Price"; time mencoder dvd://8 -dvd-device /dev/scd0 -sws 9 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -vf scale=320:240 -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=1381:vbv_maxrate=1500:vbv_bufsize=2000:nocabac:me=umh:trellis=1:level_idc=30:global_header:threads=2:pass=1:turbo -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:br=160:raw -channels 2 -srate 48000 -o Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && MP4Box -add Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 output/Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && [ -f output/Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 ] && rm Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && echo "done."

Also see this helpful Ubuntu forum post for other cool tools.