{"id":2904,"date":"2007-05-03T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-04T02:46:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-03-27T21:30:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T02:30:24","slug":"wi-fi-chair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2007\/05\/03\/wi-fi-chair\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wi-Fi Chair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060440640035312274\"<\/a>Since 1980, my parents have lived in a house on the hill down in the canyons of Tanglewood. It’s a nice old house, but for a techie guy like me, its greatest disadvantage is the lack of Internet. They have a phone line, but I haven’t used a dial-up modem in years. I’m not sure I have the connection numbers any more. Sadly, my mother’s interest in email has faded and I’m not sure I could honestly make the argument for them to get a cable-modem connection. Visiting here for three weeks means long stretches without a connection.<\/p>\n

At the RV, parked over at my sister’s house, there are a couple of connections. One is our Motosat dish, but even better in terms of bandwidth is my sister’s home network. They have a good wifi router connected to an excellent cable-modem. Every night I have my choice of connecting to their system or the RV system. It’s the daytime drought that troubles me.<\/p>\n

Yes, I have my cell phone, and assuming Mary Ann hasn’t swiped it, I can connect for about an hour before the battery runs dry.<\/p>\n

However … after the last trip when I was frequently just out of range of a wifi signal, I made a couple of upgrades. Item one was a Quickertek external wifi tranceiver. Laptop wifi systems are deliberately underpowered as a tradeoff between battery life and usability. The Quicky is a higher powered unit that connects via USB. I can carry it in my pocket unless I need it, and then greatly increase my range by plugging it in. It gets very hot to the touch when I do, so I understand the laptop designer’s decision to have just enough of a transmitter to work comfortable in a house or coffee shop.<\/p>\n

Item two was to replace my RV wireless hub with the new Apple 803.11n router. This gives the RV a greater range.<\/p>\n

So, sitting in the den at my parents house, I can connect to the RV’s satellite feed over at my sister’s house. It’s a half-mile walk, but line of sight, it’s only about 700 feet. With the Quicky plugged in, I can make a fair connection to the RV’s router.<\/p>\n

But only in one chair. Back in 1980 when my father bought this house, he immediately began adding on the den, a large open room with lots of windows. If I sit in the south west corner of the room, in a comfy blue chair, I can hold the laptop’s antenna to the window and only from this location, make my connection. It’s the wifi chair.<\/p>\n

I have tried going outside, but with trees in the way, the only place is just outside that same window, and outside, the sunlight washes out all visibility on my screen.<\/p>\n

So, it works, but within tight constraints. Maybe I need to talk up that cable modem after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 1980, my parents have lived in a house on the hill down in the canyons of Tanglewood. It’s a nice old house, but for a techie guy like me, its greatest disadvantage is the lack of Internet. They have a phone line, but I haven’t used a dial-up modem in years. I’m not sure… Continue reading The Wi-Fi Chair<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/05\/quicky_rnd_2.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-KQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2906,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions\/2906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}