This morning I started to set up my new router. I purchased this from a reseller that customizes routers so they will support VPN out of the box, no flashing required. I figured this is the safest approach since flashing a router yourself can result in a decorative brick that may or may not complement the decor in your living room. I will explain shortly my reason for doing this, but as I unplugged the old router and unplugged the Internet provider’s gateway, it occurred to me that there was no WiFi in the house. Imagine that. Silence, of a sort. I decided at this point to put on my coat and go outside and read for a bit, primarily so I can say, if I ever have to, that when the WiFi goes down I simply read a book…
The book I chose was “The Bomber Mafia” by Malcolm Gladwell. I love tech subjects (almost as much as Science Fiction) the subject that Gladwell deals with in this book is particularly fascinating. The invention of the Nordon Bomb Sight, the man that invented it and the men of the Army Air Corp that put it to good use. Without this particular invention the Second World War would have been a much different affair. After a couple of chapters it was time to get back to the task at hand, particularly because someone that still chooses to work for a living would be coming home in a matter of a couple of hours and it would not be good to have her greeted by a WiFi vacuum.
Back to the original task, first though, as I was reading about the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Gladwell’s book, I recalled my bicycle trip across the country. Yes, it’s a bit strange how these connections come up, I hadn’t thought about this incident in some time. While I was making my way through Pensacola Florida I decided to visit the Air Force Museum. The museum is located on the Air Force Base, when I rolled up to the guard booth the (mostly) friendly M.P. informed me that no bicycles were allowed on base. I thought that peculiar, but I assumed it was a liability thing so I turned around and looked for a good place to have some lunch. It turned out all right, I ended up having lunch and chatting with a pilot from the base, that was a real treat, the BBQ was good too.
The new router is set up. I had a bit of a hard time because the router’s configuration app was not responding when I tried to configure my VPN service. I could not figure out why, but I should have. I had a chat with the router support folks and I was simply told to use a different browser. About all I can say is not all browsers are created equal. I recently switched to the Brave browser, as soon as I tried the configuration steps in Firefox everything worked perfectly. I was using Brave for privacy, but now that I have router level VPN up and running, my security concerns have been greatly reduced. That said, I don’t use anything Google because they track you as soon as you log in to their platform. So there you go, the whole point of this exercise is to provide enhanced security, but there is one other reason, I want to watch Mariner’s baseball games on MLB TV. I’m looking forward to the first pitch tonight…