Road Trippin Mofo

To start off with, we are currently traveling in a ‘95 Ford Bronco. Nothing too special, great all season tires (new) and 220k+ miles. 8-cylinder, 4WD by switch from inside… good for climbing and descending in the mountains. Runs like a beaut, but true to the Ford Curse, it’s rusted through and the wheel wells are gone. But it runs like a champ!

My laptop is an Inspiron 9500, desktop replacement unit… I picked it up used from Craigslist and got an excellent deal on it. It’s a power hog and weighs in at about 10 pounds, but it can run a lot of browser tabs, text editors, SSH windows and other assorted stuff so it’s worth every ounce. The games work well which keeps my son happy, too. I’m using an Ubiquiti 300mW Wireless Card which has an incredible amount of power. This translates to some really long ranges for wireless and the card is simply built for long-range access through the a/b/g bands. It’s a Cardbus card with an external antenna so I can switch between different antenna types for a focused signal from a fixed point, or the multi-directional antenna that picks up WiFi hotspots in any direction over a smaller range.

Typical ‘other stuff’ includes a tent and camping gear, an outdoor extension cord, 400W power inverter, AC to DC adapter, and a dvd player. Don’t ask how the DVD player got stuck in there as ‘required’ equipment, but it was tough to argue about the virtues of ’starry skies’ and the sanctity of a campfire with all of the other electronics making it on this trip.

How do I get my NetFlix when I’m on the road? Their ‘play it now’ section doesn’t have enough of a good selection just yet, but it is growing. One of those details that need to get worked out, but I can live without it for now.

The goal is to stay working for about a week while enjoying the country as we go. I have a handful of active sites that I maintain which require regular customer service. I am also developing a large-scale application for the web that I am contractually obligated not to talk about, however… ‘the project’ will be alright to say and any reference to it will be vague and about my efforts, not the details. If I can maintain this basic workload, this trip will be a success. Oh yeah… I also need to update this blog throughout the trip

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Technology on the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.