RhymePhile's Rat Race

Do do do do do doooooooooooooooo, dun na na na na na, dun na na na na na, doo doo doo!!!

That's me singing the X-Files theme song. Y'know, I wasn't really excited about the film at first for some reason, probably because it was so far off, but now that it's premiering tomorrow I CAN'T WAIT. All my old XF fangirly squeeishness is coming to the forefront! Mulder! Scully! Aliens! YAY! I even got out one of my old T-shirts (and I mean old, from 1995!) to wear.

I am also completely unspoiled. COMPLETELY. Which means, shhhh, nothing in the comments, please.

In honor of the movie, I put two episodes of the show onto my Playstation Portable. I used a great, free piece of software called DVD Catalyst that converts DVD files into mp4. Mp4 is also the format needed for iPod video. In a few minutes you too can have Mulder and Scully on your iPod or PSP, for free! I put "Bad Blood" and "Small Potatoes" on there, and they look fantastic.

*bounces*

And here's a great article about Scully from Slate writer Rebecca Traister (thanks to dashenka).

I'm going to see it tomorrow night. *squee*!!!!

Well, my wireless router is, anyway!

I wanted to secure my wireless router a few months ago and did the research on it, but I never got around to doing it. If you're not following me, by securing I mean setting a password for my network at home, so that no one in my apartment complex can steal my innernetz via the juicy wireless waves. I pay $43 a month to Comcast for the ability to get online quickly, and I don't want anyone yoinking the precious, precious download speeds.

I didn't catch anyone doing it (there's a freeware program called AirSnare that allows you to see if anyone is trying to get into your network to steal free internet), but I wanted to be safe.

A lot of people advocate running an open network and allowing whomever to access the wireless waves whenever they want. Me, I don't like people stealing my shit. And I don't want to run the risk of someone using my connection to download bad stuff.

I was reading Lifehacker.com yesterday, and they had yet another post about securing your network, and I decided I needed to do it.

I have a Linksys gateway, which is a modem and router combined. After reading all about it online, I shut off my Windows firewall and virus software, reset the router (because the default password wouldn't work), and tried to access it. It didn't work, so I had to call my brother the computer guru to help me.

Me: Stsve, I need help with this. I shut off the firewall, reset the router, but it still won't let me access the default IP address to get into the router's setup menu to change the password...

Steve: (yelling in the background) Why are you out of bed?

Harmony: I wanna glass of water. I'm hot.

Steve: You're hot because you have too many covers on. You already had water before you want to bed.

Harmony: But I neeeeeed it. Who you talkin' to?

Steve: Chuchi [an Americanized variation of the word "aunt" or "auntie" in Polish, ciocia, a word our family always used in our mixed Ukrainian/Polish/Slovak heritage]

Harmony: I wanna say hi to Chuchi...

Steve: Go back to bed!

Harmony: But...

Steve: Harmony Grace!


LOL. I had to wait a while for the computer guru to help. I got it figured out following Steve's instructions, which was basically flushing the DNS and doing a release and renew via the command menu. It sounds complicated but it really wasn't. That got me the right IP address of my router, and I was able to go into it and change the name of my network to a super sekkrit one.

For more information, check out Lifehacker's post about securing your home wi-fi network.