Month: July 2012

WARNING: If you are at all squeemish, do not click on any of these links. Obviously this is not all fun and games. Some of these people are in real pain and it’s not funny… at all. In fact, it’s all rather horrible.

I recently somehow stumbled upon this thing called a Guinea Worm… it’s this crazy parasite that people get when they drink water infected with the larvae of the worm. The good news is that our old friend Jimmy Carter has helped nearly eradicate this scourge form the Earth.

Like an idiot, I went and googled pictures of this worm. Man! Then, like a train wreck I went and googled videos. My god. Watch this documentary for a pretty complete picture. It’s not pretty.

Youtube recommend that I watch videos on human bot fly removal. What can be worse than a guinea worm? Well, nothing really, but a motherfucking bot fly is a close second.

This video opens up, “In 2009, I went on an 8 day hike with a couple of friends in the Bolivian Amazon.” With an opening like that you know how this ends. After you watch the video you’ll agree that he should have stayed home sucking down macchiatos at Starbucks. This video where people try and take it out themselves is even worse. Oh, and this one where they remove it from a little boy (warning: vertical video). It’s huge, and horrible. And here’s another one removed from a young boy. Nate had one removed. And this one is the mother of all bot fly removal videos: three huge mothers.

My friends, it gets worse. If you want more, you’re a sick and need help. But ok:

• Check out this video of an exploding chin. I warned you.
• Want to see liters of puss coming out of some guys back?
• Want to see someone popping an MRSA (staph infection boil)? This video is for you.
• Popping cysts? Bam!
• Parasite grub in the leg? I guarantee you jump.
• Worm in woman’s brain? Ewww.
• Always wanted to see a June Bug removed from someone’s ear? This is your lucky day!
• Cockroach emergency!

Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

I was having problems with WiFi at home. The most worrisome problem was not having a reliable connection from my backyard. This was useful because when I have parties I use AirPlay to play music over my outdoor speakers. People can connect to my WiFi network with the iOS devices and if they have the free “Remote” app installed, they can vote on songs like a JukeBox. Or, I just pass around my phone. But when the WiFi signal is weak, you keep getting disconnected and people just don’t bother. I also noticed weak signals inside the house, which was strange.

I have three WiFi access points in my house. One is an older AirPort express I use for the AirPlay/outdoor speakers. The other is a Time Capsule/AirPort Extreme. The AirPort Extreme one also sports a 5Ghz/N network. Finally, I have my Verizon home router which has a wireless feature.

I always figured things were not configured optimally and only recently did I do something about it.

I did three things:

• Physically reposition my AirPort Express from a floor socket where there was probably a lot of electrical interference and moved it to place on my cork board about chest level.
• Manually configured the channels both of my routers are on to make sure they were distinct and non-interfering and tried to also navigate away from neighboring networks in the vicinity of my house.
• I completely wiped away my Verizon routers config to eliminate any crazy routing rules, DNS settings, or DHCP madness I may have tweaked over  the years.

To help me see what’s going on, I searched for an iOS or Mac app which would help figure out what the situation was. I found a Mac app called WiFi Explorer I think it’s $3.99 on the Apple Mac Store. Here are some of the near graphs it produces.

You can also view signal strength, noise, and signal-to-noise ratio… but not all networks on one graph, for some reason.

And here is some tabular info that’s pretty interesting:

After all of this tuning, my WiFi signals are very strong and I have no issues maintaining a stable connection from my backyard.