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My home network

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Last week was my birthday. From my eldest son, Timmy, I received a new wireless router! Yay! This upgrade will allow me to improve the wireless network in my home by increasing the bandwidth, increasing the range, and also beefing up the security.

So why didn’t I upgrade sooner? To put it simply, my home network has become so complicated as to make it somewhat scary to make any changes to it. Let me elaborate.

Wireless devices

The following devices have access to and use my home wireless network on a regular basis:

  • 2 cell phones: Marlene’s and mine
  • My laptop (both the Ubuntu and the Windows OS; I dual-boot)
  • Marlene’s chromebook
  • Marlene’s old laptop
  • 4 security cameras
  • 2 Android devices for Timmy and Nora
  • The Wii
  • The XBox 360
  • Marlene’s Kindle
  • The downstairs TV

And then there are various devices that access the wireless network less frequently:

  • My old laptop
  • Nora’s (somewhat dead) Kindle Fire
  • The Android device for our TV
  • Jacob’s Nintendo 2DS
  • Nora’s Nintendo 3DS
  • My Dad’s laptop
  • My sister’s laptop and phone
  • Various devices (phones, tablets, and laptops) that the Skidmores have configured to use our network when they visit us

Not including “guest” devices, I count 21 devices that will need to be reconfigured before I can say “goodbye” to the old wireless network. Have I forgotten anything? That’s the tricky thing with wireless networks. You tend to forget about all the devices that are using it until the network goes away and things stop working properly.

Wired devices

The wired devices aren’t typically as much of a problem. I can find them all. Just follow the patch cables from the cable modem to each device, and keep a list of what I encounter.  However, due to the complex workings of my LAN, my wired devices may actually require more reconfiguration than my wireless ones if the basic structure of my wired network were ever to change. More on that later. For now, here is a list of the devices that make up my wired network.

  • The cable modem (a router in its own right)
  • 5 routers, including the new one I just got for my birthday
  • 2 switches
  • My server with 6 virtual machines running on it
  • The server IPMI controller
  • My main PC with 2 virtual machines running on it
  • Our “home” phone system
  • Marlene’s “Purple” video phone
  • The Roku
  • The Blu-Ray player
  • 2 media player PCs, one for each TV
  • The HD-Homerun (a TV recording device)
  • The upstairs TV
  • The laser printer

That’s 26 devices (including virtual machines) that rely on the current configuration of our wired network. So how do they all talk to each other?

Network structure

network3

A picture is worth a thousand words. This diagram shows how my home network is structured. The green box labeled “Modem” is my cable modem, and is the connection between my entire house and the outside world. As I mentioned before, this modem is actually a wireless router, but I have disabled all the capabilities of the box, and it is now just operating strictly as a modem.

I consider the blue box labeled “Router 1” to be the “brain” of my network. It is the DHCP server for the entire house, and also handles routing all traffic between my LAN and the internet. The other blue “Routers” are all configured to be simple 100 Mb/s switches, and perform no actual logic, though Router 2 is also configured to host my old wireless network until I can switch all my wireless devices over to the new wireless router: the orange box labeled “Router 5”.

The blue lines in the diagram represent 100 Mb/s connections, and the red lines represent 1000 Mb/s connections. The two red “Switch” boxes are both 1000 Mb/s switches. I consider the long red line between the basement and ground floor to be the “backbone” of my LAN. Most devices (other than my server and main computer) access the Internet over this line. This is also the only means of access to the server for most devices on the LAN.

Network functions

So I mentioned that my network harbors enough complexity to make me wary about making configuration changes. What services do all these various devices provide? Here is a list of some of the functions:

  • Host all our media:
    • More than 700 home videos
    • More than 3,500 anime episodes
    • More than 3,000 TV show episodes
    • More than 800 movies
    • More than 30,000 photos
    • More than 10,000 music tracks
  • Host our web site (in fact, this blog is hosted from the server in my basement)
  • Provide instant access to all that media on both TVs
  • Host our family photo album
  • Provide access to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime on both TVs
  • Provide access to all our documents on all PCs in our house
  • Keep a history of all past versions of our documents and files (including all media) so they can be retrieved in the event of an undesired change or deletion
  • Backup all documents and files (including all media) to “the cloud”
  • Filter all internet access from all devices connected through my network to prevent connections to undesirable web sites
  • Host two phone systems, with two separate phone numbers: our main home phone, and Marlene’s video phone
  • Provide access to 4 video surveillance cameras on 2 TVs, and 4 Android devices
  • Record all 4 surveillance cameras 24×7 and provide access to the recorded video on both TVs
  • Synchronize all 4 Android devices with our server so that any pictures taken with any device are instantly and automatically added to our family photo album
  • Record specific broadcast TV shows on a specified schedule and make the recordings available on both TVs
  • Provide me access to the server, main PC, and two media PCs from any computer in the house (or from any computer outside the house via the internet) so that I can perform maintenance when necessary

That’s quite the busy network, with quite an array of custom capabilities. It can be a bit challenging sometimes to keep all that in flight, hence my resistance to making arbitrary changes.

– danBhentschel

 

All Things Dad

The face game

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I over-think things. I’m well aware of this. I have even put quite a bit of thought into the games I play with my babies. Scary, I know, but with more than six babies living in my house across a span of 11 years, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to analyze. My favorite game is one I call “the face game”. The face game goes like this:

  • <point to Beth’s nose>
  • Beth’s nose
  • <point to my nose>
  • Daddy’s nose
  • <point to Beth’s nose>
  • Beth’s nose
  • <point to my nose>
  • Daddy’s nose
  • <point to Beth’s nose>
  • Beth’s nose

And that’s pretty much it. I repeat the procedure for various parts of the face: ears, mouth, eyes (carefully), cheek, chin, neck, etc. I always do hair last, and when we do the hair, I always help them to tousle my hair a bit. For each body part, I do baby first, then me, then baby, then me again, then baby again. After hair I end with:

  • <pat Beth’s chest>
  • Beth
  • <pat my chest>
  • Daddy
  • <pat Beth’s chest>
  • Beth
  • <pat my chest>
  • Daddy
  • <pat Beth’s chest>
  • Beth

What makes this game so special?

  • The face game works for a wide variety of ages. I can start playing the game with a baby immediately after birth, but kids continue to get enjoyment from the game up through age 3 or 4.
  • The face game encourages face-to-face time. We are looking at each other, studying each other’s faces while playing. It’s quite intimate.
  • The face game is very relaxing. I play at a very deliberate, unhurried pace. I use voice inflection, rather than bouncing and tickling, to maintain interest. It is almost hypnotic.
  • The face game is repetitive. It encourages pattern recognition. As baby gets older, she learns to anticipate what’s going to happen next. Inevitably, she starts to take control, and tries to run the game herself, and that’s just fine.
  • The face game encourages basic classification. Toss in a finger or an elbow. Sounds simple, but at a certain age, baby starts to recognize that these are not face body parts, and it’s a funny joke to her.
  • The face game is science. Baby is learning basic anatomy while she plays.
  • The face game teaches identity. Daddy is Daddy, and I am me. We are separate individuals, and yet we have a lot in common too.
  • The face game is calming and reassuring. Once baby is used to the procedure, that familiarity can have a comforting effect in confusing or upsetting situations.
  • The face game easily expands to multiple participants. I currently have a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a four-year-old in my house. If I start playing with my youngest, the other two will frequently want to join in. Even my kindergartner occasionally wants to be part of the action.

Maybe this particular game is not for you, and that’s just fine, but I encourage you to put some thought into the activities that you do with your baby. What are the games teaching? What behaviors do they promote? What other benefits do they provide? Be deliberate about your parenting.

– danBhentschel

Health

On Losing Weight (Part 3 – Noom)

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Marlene and I have had “smartphones” of a sort since the early 2000s. Our first was the Kyocera 6035, back in 2001. It was an ugly brick of a phone based on the Palm operating system; clunky, and barely functional. Over the next 10 years, I limped along with various incarnations of Palm OS. The Treo 300 lasted me from 2003-2007. The Centro followed, and served me until the summer of 2011.

“What does this have to do with weight loss?” you may ask. Nothing and everything. Please bear with my ramblings a bit longer. In late 2007 I found myself once again in the market for a new phone. When I surveyed the smartphone landscape at that time, I was faced with the choice of shelling out the big bucks for the recently released iPhone, or getting the latest incarnation of Palm yet again. I knew that the Apple option was a phenomenon, and had been heralded as a game-changer, but it was very expensive, and I saw it as somewhat of a yuppie, Mac-user toy.

I decided to stick with tried-and-true. The Palm Centro was only $99. I was familiar with its capabilities and limitations. I knew what I was getting, and was satisfied that it was a good bargain. So, for the next four years, I contented myself with the “trusty but limited” Centro phone while I watched various incarnations of iPhone and the new rival AndroidOS-based phones flood the market. Finally, in 2011, I felt that it was time to test the waters again. In early summer of 2011, I started talking to Marlene about getting us both a new smartphone. I remember those conversations very clearly. She had also been rather underwhelmed by our previous smartphones, and was currently using the decidedly not-so-smart LG Rumor LX260. She was satisfied with the simple interface that did everything that she wanted from a phone, and she was wary of the huge price tag that came with, from her perspective, a pointless array of bells and whistles.

Phones_noom

Smartphones will make us healthier!

I set to work doing some research, and I came back to her with a proposal for two Droid X2 Android phones, and a list of their benefits. Included on that list was “health management”. I argued that there were applications out there to plan a diet, count calories, keep track of exercise, etc. She responded with something like, “If you want to do that, it’s fine with me, but I have no interest.”

The “get healthy by buying a new phone” idea was shot down, but we did end up buying the phones. They very soon worked their way into almost every facet of our lives. Timers, reminders, photographs, Facebook, games, research, shopping, surfing, texting, reading… No “health management”, though. Not yet, at least.

What do I have to lose?

As mentioned in Part 2 of this series, sometime around February 2013 I reached a turning point in my struggle with weight loss. I was the heaviest that I had ever been in my life, and I remembered my earlier conversation with Marlene (almost 2 years prior) about health management applications for our phones. I thought to myself, “what do I have to lose?” (Pun intended.)

In my search for an app, I only remember two criteria: professional looking and free. There are certainly other professional, free apps available. I haven’t tried any of them. I don’t know how they compare. I decided to download the Noom application on Saturday, March 16, 2013, and I almost immediately started seeing results. I had intended to use it briefly and then try something else, but after the first week, I was enjoying Noom so much that I wasn’t really interested in shifting my focus.

It’s a game!

Noom is structured like a game. When you first start the application, it asks for some information: age, height, weight, etc. It also asks about exercising habits. After this brief questionnaire, it gets right into the program. Each day, Noom provides several tasks to complete:

  • Eat three meals, and record what you ate
  • Record your weight
  • Read a concise article or two, usually focused on diet or exercise
  • Occasionally accept or reject a challenge
  • Walk a certain number of steps each day
  • Do your scheduled exercise, and record it

For each task that you complete, Noom awards “points”. After a certain number of points, you “level up”. The app presents a progress bar showing what level you are on, how many points you have, and how many points you need to get to the next level. As with all video games, the first couple of levels are pretty easy to achieve. You will likely be on level 2 within the first week. The higher the level, though, the more points needed to level up again. As of this writing, I have 37,361 points and am on level 20.

Noom awards points for everything you do. Record your weight? Doesn’t matter if your weight went up or down. You get points either way. Record your meal? Whether you ate well or not, you get points. So then what’s the point? (Pun intended.) Noom apparently assumes that if you are paying attention to your health – recording weight, recording meals, reading articles, etc. – then you will ultimately make wiser decisions. In my case, it worked.

– danBhentschel