Shortly after getting my iPad2 I was sitting in a hotel connected to their wireless network with my computer and fired up Wireshark to see what I would see floating through the air. I saw about what I expected, everything that everyone connected to the same access point was doing. I have known this was the case for a long time and have normally used a PPTP VPN to my house to get around this, but that didn’t always work as well as I would like. My roommate tunnels his traffic through a PC at the house over SSH, which I could also do, but it was the iPad that really got me thinking, what could I do that I could easily do on the iPad as well as any computer and not have connectivity issues. PPTP has issues getting through some routers and firewalls and the easiest way around this is to move to SSL so that was what I did. I opted to pick up a Cisco ASA and setup AnyConnect over SSL on it. There is an AnyConnect client for the iPad, it does require that you have the AnyConnect Mobile licenses on the ASA, but after I looked into the price was not too bad for the piece of mind that it would give me. Yes, it was somewhat of a pain to setup, but after a weekend of testing and working on it on and off I did get it to do everything I wanted it to and it has been working well for the last week. I will post some of what I learned along the way in the future.
Month: April 2011
A couple of weeks with an iPad
I was one of the nut cases that decided that I wanted an iPad2 bad enough that I was willing to stand, okay sit, in line for several hours, turns out it was a good thing that I arrived when I did, I was about the fortieth person in line, I would have to guess that by the time I was done buying my iPad2 there had to have been at least three hundred people in line at Southdale.
Well, it has been a few weeks since it was released and I must say that I am enjoying the device. I find that that I am checking out Twitter, Facebook and catching up on the news with it. Flipboard is defiantly one of my favorite applications, I really like that way that it pulls in my Google Reader as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts in a great magazine style format. I also, played with GarageBand which is cool and for me not being a musician by any means, it was fun to play with and heck, someday I might even get something good out of it. There have been a number of other applications that I have played with and I will write about those in the future.
The Clintons Want to Go Big & Play Mini Golf w/ Taylor Swift
Over the last year or so I found the Clintons Band they are an independent band that produces music that I really enjoy. I have all of their CDs, heck some I even own multiple copies of. They are in the process of recording a new Album and are in need of some funding for it. More information can be found on the Kickstarter project page.
Why do stores have different prices in store and online?
Why do some stores feel it necessary to have different prices in their stores and online when I can order online and pickup my purchase in the store. Today I decided I was going to stop by Best Buy and check out the Beats By Dr. Dre Solo HDs as the reviews of the new model were looking promising online. When I got to the store I discovered that they were marked $219.99 as opposed to the $199.99 that there were on the web site for. So, I decided to play with them and see what I thought anyway. I thought about it for a bit and decided that I was going to get them, but I opted to head home and order online to get the better rate, not to mention that I would get more of a cash back bonus if I bought them my Discover card shopping site. I know that if I had pushed the issue in the store I would have gotten the priced matched without it being too big of a deal as they have done that for me before. I guess the lesson to be learned from this is to shop around including the website of the of the brick and mortar store that you are shopping at, it can pay off.