Joe Levi presents Greener Living through Technology

In order to continue getting-by in America, we may need to learn the NEW English dialect! Practice by reading the following conversation until you are able to understand the term "TENJOOBERRYMUDS."

The following is a telephone exchange between you (as a hotel guest) and room-service somewhere in the USA:

Room Service: "Morrin. Roon sirb ees."

Guest: "Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service."

Room Service: " Rye. Roon sirbees…morrin! Joowish to oddor sunteen???"

Guest: "Uh….. Yes, I’d like to order bacon and eggs."

Room Service: "Ow July den?"

Guest: "… What??"

Room Service: "Ow July den?!?… pryed, boyud, poochd?"

Guest: "Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled, please."

Room Service: "Ow July dee baykem? Crease?"

Guest: "Crisp will be fine."

Room Service: "Hokay. An Sahn toes?"

Guest: "What?"

Room Service: "An toes. July Sahn toes?"

Guest: "I… don’t think so."

Room Service: "No? Judo wan sahn toes???"

Guest: "I feel really bad about this, but I don’t know what ‘judo wan sahn toes’ means."

Room Service: "Toes! Toes!…Why Joo don Juan toes? Ow bow Anglish moppin we bodder?"

Guest: "Oh, English muffin!!! I’ve got it! You were saying ‘toast’… Fine… Yes, an English muffin will be fine."

Room Service: "We bodder?"

Guest: "No, just put the bodder on the side."

Room Service: "Wad?!?"

Guest: "I mean butter… just put the butter on the side."

Room Service: "Copy?"

Guest: "Excuse me?"

Room Service: "Copy… tea.. meel?"

Guest: "Yes. Coffee, please… and that’s everything."

Room Service: "Juan Minnie. Scramah egg, crease baykem, Anglish moppin, we bodder on sigh and copy… rye??"

Guest: "Whatever you say."

Room Service: "Tenjooberrymuds."

Guest: "You’re welcome."

Remember I said that after reading that you’d understand "TENJOOBERRYMUDS"… and you do, don’t you.

(Hat tip to Rich for sending this to me)

Once upon a time a guy tried to sync his Zune 30 (with firmware version 2.2 (1040)) though his Linksys WRT54G (with DD-WRT micro flashed on it) to a Media Center PC running Windows Vista Ultimate (SP0)… This is his tale…

For security and performance reasons the WRT54G was set for G-only and set to use WPA2-TKIP. It is broadcasting is SSID, but that’s more for convenience than anything.

The guy connected the Zune to the pc via USB and established a partnership then went to the Wireless Sync Settings and tried to "automagically" find and configure the network sync. No go… no networks found…

That’s okay, this guy is somewhat knowledgeable about how networks work… so he went to the "advanced settings" to manually configure everything.

• SSID: keyed in
• WPA-TKIP: keyed in
• Settings saved: successfully
• Connection: failed

Crap! Maybe it was the WPA2… okay, let’s try setting the router to WPA-TKIP (rather than WPA2-TKIP).

• SSID: keyed in
• WPA-TKIP: keyed in
• Settings saved: successfully
• Connection: failed

Maybe it doesn’t like 802.11g, maybe it needs 802.11b… that’d suck, but let’s try; set the router to "mixed mode."

• SSID: keyed in
• WPA-TKIP: keyed in
• Settings saved: successfully
• Connection: failed

Crap! Maybe it doesn’t like WPA-TKIP… let’s try WPA-AES…

• SSID: keyed in
• WPA-AES: keyed in
• Settings saved: successfully
• Connection: failed

Well what’s going on?! Maybe it doesn’t like WPA at all, let’s try WEP…

• Automatic detection: succeeded!
• WEP Key: keyed in
• Settings saved: successfully
• Connection: succeeded!

So, he’s in mixed mode, broadcast SSID, WEP, but it works.

I talked with my friend here at work, he said he couldn’t get G-only to work either, nor could he get WPA2 to work, nor WPA-AES, but he did get WPA-TKIP working. I’ll recommend that to this other guy and report the results of his testing when I can.

If you’ve had similar experiences please comment!