laptop

Strong gusts of wind blow
I left my windows open
Cooling but dusty.

After weeks of using my laptop, I learnt some interesting things.

1) The laptop's LCD which is only 14.1 inches big is too small. After prolonged use of the laptop and switching back to my desktop with my lovely 19 inch LCD monitor, my eyes feel so refreshed. Each time I got 'refreshed' I will wonder why the hell people need 24 inch LCDs when my 19 inch looks so big and nice. Haha.

I also wonder how I survived my primary school days when my 80486 came with a 14 inch CRT. Haha.

2) I don't like wireless connections. Maybe because of dropped packets or the authentications, I find myself running into time-outs more often on my laptop than on my desktop while surfing the net. RJ45 for the win!

3) Back in the days of Starhub, things were simple. Starhub gave a modem; we bought a cheap router-cum-switch, and we were happily connected. Now with S1ngnet, a stupid 'Mi0b0x' was given to us, which is essentially a modem, router, switch, wireless access point, and hardware firewall all in one.

Due to gaming and *ahem* torrenting, the firewall is obviously an obstacle, but we are not allowed to switch it off. The only way is to set the computer to an 'elevated' mode, where the computer will 'share' the same IP address as the 'Mi0b0x', so all packets will now route to the computer, 'bypassing' the firewall.

So I set my desktop to this 'elevated' mode then.

The problem is only one computer can be set to this stupid 'elevated' mode, so now I have a laptop, the laptop only gets an internal IP address, aka 'normal' mode.

Since my desktop and laptop have IP addresses that are in different families, I can't get them to see each other, even though they are connected to the same 'Mi0b0x', which makes sense logically but not physically.

Worst of all, the 'Mi0b0x' comes with S1ngnet's custom firmware, which is rather restricted. I am guessing static routing might work, but am lazy to find out how.

I understand they are trying to make things user-friendly, but sometimes things get too simple, they become too difficult to use instead.