Daily Archives: November 9, 2007

Bluetooth modem weirdness…

So, decided to get my wife to drive on the college visit trip (see previous post), so I could work some on a strategic planning document I need to get some traction on…

While I was riding, I thought I’d check my email, since I’ve got my blackberry 8830 configured as a tethered modem with my MacBook. However, it would not connect. I was reduced to paying $9.95 for connectivity at the hotel 🙁

However, with my “fine” ethernet connectivity (packet loss, jitter, etc.), I decided to see if I could figure out the problem with my bluetooth modem. It would connect and immediately drop. I’d just last weekend upgraded to Leopard, and figured that must be the problem. Did some web searches and didn’t find anything relevant. So, I changed the modem settings to something that shouldn’t have worked, and it didn’t. Then, changed back to the original settings. Damn thing works perfectly now. Go figure.

College visits…

Off today on some college visits. My youngest son, Jeff, is considering Guilford College and UNC-Asheville. Visited Guilford this morning. I was very impressed. A small school, but beautiful, spacious campus (over 300 acres). Things got off to a good start when we drove up in front of the admissions building and they had a parking space reserved with a sign with Jeff’s name on it. Nice touch! I was very impressed with the programs and the facilities. They have about 1400 traditional students and 1000 “non-traditional” older part-time students. Spent about two hours there. Jan and Jeff did an open house at Guilford in June, but I’d never been there, though I work not 5 miles away at UNCG.

I’m writing this from Asheville, NC, where we’re staying for the night. The UNCA open house starts first thing in the morning. We decided to splurge and stay in downtown Asheville in the Mariott Renaissance hotel. It’s just across the street from the Thomas Wolfe memorial, and just a block from the Asheville downtown area. Asheville seems to have a very vibrant downtown, lots of restaurants, theaters, bars, etc. Had some great pizza at Mellow Mushroom. They must have had 50 or 60 beers on tap, including about 20 from local microbreweries. I had a couple (or 3) from the Highland Brewing company, their Oatmeal Porter and the Gaelic Ale. Two of the Gaelic Ales, in fact ;-). Looking forward to visiting the UNCA campus in the morning. That’s all for now!