wireless is cool

[Ben Pfaff]

So I'm here at Stanford and I've got an office in the (*shudder*)
Gates Building.  And this building has a wireless IEEE 802.11b
network in it.  I don't have a wireless card of my own, but I do
have this laptop lent me for the year by the department, which is
running MS Something (I haven't even turned it on so I don't know
what species), and *it* has a wireless card.  Today, I carefully
liberated this card and plugged it into my own laptop.

It was not exactly an instant success.  I fought with the driver
for a while.  But after a bit I figured out how to do it.  And
now I have 11 Mbps connectivity, unplugged, anywhere in the
building, and everything happens correctly, including routes and
ifconfigs and all, just by plugging in the card.  It's like
magic, except that I know how it works because I wrote (or
modified and fixed, more like) a bit of the tool that does it.

Wireless is cool.

(I have a patch for Debian's ifupdown tools, BTW, that makes
certain unusual configurations (like mine) a little easier.  You
can have it if you want it.)

-- 
"Welcome to the Slippery Slope. Here is your handbasket.
 Say, can you work 70 hours this week?"
--Ron Mansolino