Last Friday, my ATM card was captured by a BPI ATM through no fault of mine. I inserted the card, entered the PIN, and it was ready to dispense the cash (in fact, my account reflected a debit and a rollback credit) but the card wouldn’t come out. The same thing happened to the person who used the ATM before me (it didn’t occur to me yet that their card got captured) and after me (I did warn them that the ATM seems to be capturing cards). Now it’s already an inconvenience losing your ATM card, even if just temporarily, but it was aggravated today when I retrieved my card. Considering that there was definitely something wrong with the ATM they should have some sort of measure to at least set-up a temporary fast-track counter or something. But no. There were people before and after me retrieving their cards. People who had to go out of their way and schedule just to recover their cards. Waiting longer than should be. There’s not even an attempt at an apology for the inconvenience.
I ordered oatmeal at the Starbucks drive-thru and the order taker clarified over the not-so-high-fidelity speaker they’re using if I want the something oatmeal or the perfect oatmeal. I was a bit confused and asked if they have another oatmeal product and what the difference is. When he explained, I realized he was talking about the oatmeal cookie. Should have been quite clear what I was ordering. One is an oatmeal (the porridge a supposedly perfect one) and the other one is a cookie (one with oat grounds). Maybe it was the not-so-high-fidelity microphone they’re using.
I couldn’t get enough of archery at Fort Ilocandia so when I got back, I read up on archery and I chanced upon information on a range called Kodanda. It’s more accessible than Gandiva so I made reservations and today, Leslie, Joset, and I visited it.
It’s definitely more serious than my recent experience. The range has 7 lanes and is fully air-conditioned. For P550, you get a full set of equipment (bow, arrows, quiver, armguard, and finger tab) and basic instruction/supervision for an hour. In addition, you pay P30 for every target sheet you use (quite expensive). We ended up each shooting 70 or so arrows at one hapless target sheet. 70 arrows in a bit over an hour! That’s one definition of fun!
If you plan to pursue archery a bit more seriously, they also offer archery lessons for P6,000 which is good for 10 hours that you can schedule at your convenience over 3 months.
Address: FB-D3A Upper Basement, Makati Cinema Square
Phone Number: (+63 2) 621-9109
Operating Hours: Monday to Sunday 10:30am – 7:30pm
Jeanne wasn’t eating her breakfast. As usual.
Michelle: Do you know that Lola won’t let us go to school if we don’t eat?
Jeanne: Why?
Me: Because you will be unduly disadvantaged in school activities by your lack of sustenance and thus bring dishonor to the family name.
Jeanne: Drama!
Michelle and me: LOL
I accidentally bricked the Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti High Power while attempting to downgrade the firmware. It keeps looping through boot and the DIAG light just stayed lit. I couldn’t get an IP via wireless or wire. A 30-30-30 reset didn’t work either so I knew I had a bricked router.
I tried to follow the instructions when using a MacBook Pro but I just couldn’t get it to work. Finally, I brought out Selene, my good old Thinkpad X22. I then followed the instructions when using a Windows PC with some variation:
- Unplug the ethernet cable and the power cable from the router
- Connect the Thinkpad directly to one of the router’s LAN port. Again, do not use the WAN port.
- Go to Control Panel\Network and Dial-Up Connections.
Right click on local area connection and choose “Properties”
Choose “TCP/IP Properties”. Click properties then click “Use the following IP address”. Enter these values: IP address 192.168.11.2, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.11.1 - Open a console window. Go to Windows\Command and run “cmd”
- Clear the ARP table. Type “arp -a -d”
- Enter the IP to the router’s bricked-state MAC address in the ARP table. Type “arp -s 192.168.11.1 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-1A”. Note that this is not the router’s real MAC address
- Verify the new ARP entry. Type “arp -a”
- Download (using some other Internet connection obviously) and transfer openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wzr-hp-g300nh2-squashfs-tftp.bin
- Change directory to where you downloaded the file.
- Transfer the file via TFTP to the router. Type “tftp -i 192.168.11.1 openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wzr-hp-g300nh2-squashfs-tftp.bin” but do not press enter yet
- Quickly plug the power cable into the back to turn on the router
- Quickly press enter
- Timing is critical as there’s only about a 4-second window when the router will accept the TFTP connection. You might have to to steps 9 to 11 repeatedly until you get a successful transfer
- After 5-10 minutes, unplug and replug the router
At this point, the router should have been unbricked and has OpenWRT. Move to the MacBook Pro and connect it directly to the router. You should be able to get IP via DHCP. If not, repeat the above.
- Open a Terminal window.
- Telnet to the router. Type “telnet 192.168.1.1”
- Type “passwd” and enter a password. This will disable Telnet and enable SSH.
- On the Mac, download wzr-hp-g300nh2-dd-wrt-webupgrade-MULTI.bin (again, using some other Internet connection). In the instructions, this was done in the router using wget. However, I couldn’t get the WAN connection working.
- On the Terminal window, change directory to where you downloaded the file.
- Type “dd bs=28 skip=1 if=wzr-hp-g300nh2-dd-wrt-webupgrade-MULTI.bin of=firmware.bin”. In the instructions, this was done in the router. However, I was running out of disk space when I tried that, so I did it in the Mac. Thankfully, the output file is valid.
- Copy the file to the router. Type “scp firmware.bin [email protected]:/tmp”. Input your password
- SSH to the router. Type “ssh -l root 192.168.1.1”. Input your password
- Change directory to /tmp. Type “cd /tmp”
- Upgrade the firmware. Type “sysupgrade -n /tmp/firmware.bin”
- Wait 5-10 minutes for the router to reboot
- If you’re lucky, you should already have DD-WRT when you go to http://192.168.1.1 and configure as needed.