Not Necessarily Interesting News

Ok, it’s been while(ok, two months) and I figured I should post the about our trip to Arkansas. I wrote this when we got back but never posted it. I’m going to back date it to when it should have been published. I’ll explain reasons for the lateness later.

We decided to take an early fall houseboat trip on Lake Ouachita, AR this October. Rental rates are lower, lake traffic is lower, temps are mild. Fishing is supposed to be great on the lake too. We were renting a houseboat but decided to bring along our 22′ jetboat to use as a run-about on the lake for fishing trips and such.

We pulled out Saturday afternoon after my son finished his Young Marine drills and drove to Texarkana. We stopped at the Czech Stop in West, TX. I think there’s some sort of law that says you need to stop there if you’re ever traveling up IH-35. We stocked up on some smoking jalapeno kolaches that made us literally cry. Next time we’ll get the ‘plain’ spicy. 🙂 I was beat after driving 6 hours towing a boat and collapsed into bed. People just love to crowd your trailer when you’re towing and it makes for a stressful drive.

After a night in Texarkana we headed across the border into Arkansas after breakfast at Waffle House. Yum. One of my favorites. My wife had never been to one and she wasn’t impressed. Heathen. We drove straight to the marina where we were to pick up our houseboat the next day and dropped the trailer so we could manouever in Hot Springs. We got into Hot Springs around noon and found our hotel. It was right in the middle of ‘Old’ Hot Springs, right near bathhouse row. After getting settled in we went to see the town. Right at the main intersection is a spring that flows down a cliff. The water in the pool at the bottom is almost too hot to stand. I soaked my hands and wrists in the hot water and it really helped with my carpal tunnel symptoms. We visited a large rock shop and my son bought some nice quartz crystals. We toured an old bathhouse from the 1920’s and got to see how they were run back then. After dinner we went to bed early because we had a long day the next day.

Monday morning we woke early and had a few hours to waste. My wife suggested going to one of the bathhouses. I’d never been to one and after the way the hot spring water made my wrists feel the night before I figured that it would feel even better over my whole body. So my father and I decided to go to Buchstaff Bath House, the only still operating of the original bath houses in Hot Springs. It has been in continual operation since 1912. A 20minute soak in the hot water felt amazing. Showers, hot wraps, a massage, and a parrafin dip later I was feeling pretty damn mellow. I could get used to this.

We picked up the boat around 3pm and hit the lake. The lake was beautiful. I’ve never seen clearer water in a lake. You could easily see the bottom in 20′ of water. We found a nice protected cove and setup camp for the night. We dropped our lines in the water and got to fishing/drinking. 🙂 We got ttally skunked on our first night as far as fish. Not a one. This would be the theme for our entire trip. We seem to have arrived right as the lake turned and the fish wouldn’t bite.

The rest of our trip consisted of lots of fishing, lots of games, some very brief swimming as the lake was around 70degrees, and a bit of rum for me. I did get a bit of work done while we were there. The accompanying pic is of my office for the week. Amazing and sad is the fact that you can go miles from nowhere and still get a 115K Internet connection. The lake is empty at this time of year and we seemed to have the whole place to ourselves.

By the last morning we’d caught a grand total of 4 fish between 4 people fishing. Not the best time of year to fish in the lake apparently. The sad part was the fish finder was always packed with fish returns but we couldn’t get the to eat a thing. Very frustrating. Also, as we were getting ready to pull anchor to head back to civilization I managed to fall in the lake. Fully clothed and ready for a 7 hour drive home. I had saved my most comfortable jeans and shirt for the trip home and I soaked them. I felt like such a moron.

It was a fun trip and I’d love to go back again soon. Assuming the fish are actually biting, of course.

After much trials and tribulations I got my laptop with a bluetooth dongle talking to my cell phone which connects to Cingular and gives mobile Net access. I knew it was possible and Cingular’s site even makes it sound easy. It took me 3 days and 2 hours on the phone with Cingular’s 2nd level support to get it working.
I’m heading on vacation soon and while I’m gone I’ll still need to log in and do some work from the boat. Instead of heading in to a marina and trying to find a phone jack I thought I’d try to get my bluetooth phone to do what it’s supposed to be capable of. I attached my D-Link DBT-120 dongle and got it to tether to the phone, a Motorola v551, without problem. After playing with init strings I even got Dialup Networking to dial the phone. It kept hanging at ‘Registering you computer with the network’ and then throwing ‘Error 31’ whatever that means. I played with it for a while and finally called Cingular.
After wading through the front line support I got to someone who seemed to know what he was doing. He found that the data access part of my plan was provisioned wrong. It took him an hour with the provisioning folks to get things set and *bam* I was online.
Details:
The modem init string their site and support guys told me to use

at+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”isp.cingular”

did not work. I used

&f&d2&c1+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”isp.cingular”

as suggested on other sites and it worked.
The number their page says to use is also not what their phone guys said. The page say

*99#

and phone support said

*99***1#

. The phone guy was right.
There’s conflicting info on the net about the login name. I used

ISP@CINGULARGPRS.COM

with password

CINGULAR1

I did some tests this morning on the way to work. It’s not blazing speed but for email and light websurfing it’s fine. I hit a couple speed test sites and was averaging around 130kbps/down and 32kbps/up. Not bad while moving down the freeway at 60mph.