Archive | March, 2014

Happy 36th Birthday To Me! And WE ARE HAVING A BABY!

So last year my gorgeous wife took me to Bali for my birthday, it was hot, and hectic, interesting but not relaxing haha.

Bali - 2013

I should really write about the trip at some point. Anyhow, onto this year! We decided against a trip, as it’s expensive and can be a hassle. So I suggested she get me a nice present and take me for dinner instead – which she did, and did very well too!

She got me the Fitbit Aria smart Wi-fi scale to go with my Fitbit Force (which is unfortunately undergoing a recall).

Fitbit Aria

I might write more about the scale later, if anyone is interested.

And then on Friday, my actual birthday, she took me for a really lovely degustation menu at Soleil in PJ, Section 17.

Soleil PJ Section 17

Good food, good wine and of course the very best company available ๐Ÿ™‚ After that it was off to TDH, our usual birthday joint to see my bro with the same birthday – Terence, and I had to do the judgement pipe..not pleasant.

And after we went to Velvet at Zouk..I don’t even remember the last time I went there – I’m still tired today haha.

TDH Time

We’ve gotten a few other bits and bobs too lately (which is nice!) – like a PS4, PSB Surround sound system, new router, new leather sofa and gotten a few things around the house fixed (broken lights, some leaks in the porch, got some new artificial grass, cat-proofed the porch etc), sold off a bunch of stuff I wasn’t really using any more. And it was all good timing too, as I guess we’ll be spending more time at home, we need a puke proof sofa and a well kept house.

Because…WE ARE HAVING A BABY! Yes, we decided to announce on my birthday, so we let the people know that were there – and if you weren’t you probably might already know, or if not – well now you know! We don’t know the gender yet, but the baby should be due around September 22nd 2014.

Even got a label maker for the baby book haha. So yah, it’s on – so excited!

Baby Book

So it surely is going to be an interesting year, it’s already been quite a journey and there’s so much to learn. Yes I’ll be the confinement lady, if you have any tips..let me know haha.

My mother in law is so concerned that I said I’ll learn to wash the baby from Youtube, like really it can’t be that hard right?

Sometimes I feel like I should start blogging again, but then again it feels like no-one is reading – but honestly that shouldn’t be the motivation right?

Also any well loved, high quality, useful baby gear is welcome over here if any of you out there are all done having babies and still have some stuff lying around.

My birthday posts for previous years:

2013 – Getting Old – Turning 35 Today – Happy Birthday To Me!
2012 – Happy 34th Birthday To Me!
2011 – Happy Birthday To Me!
2010 – Random Blog Post #1 โ€“ What A Week & My Birthday
2009 – No post for some reason?!
2008 – My Surprise 30th Birthday Party / Being 30 โ€“ Happy Birthday to Me!
2007 – Happy Birthday to Me Again
2006 – Happy Birthday To Me.
2005 – The Triple Faggot Birthday Bonanza!
2004 – Hadn’t started blogging yet, and was still in the UK actually.

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ASUS RT-AC68U Keeps Rebooting Or Restarting Itself – 3.0.0.4.374.4561

I just got a new fancy router, I went for the top of the line..because well I like gadgets and shiny things haha – maybe I’ll get a dual band wifi phone next?

Not that it would make any difference really..as my Internet connection is only 10MB – but hey, why not right?

After reading lots of reviews (and from past research) it was between the previous series N66U and the new generation of 802.11ac dual band routers like the 66U or 68U. In the end I just went for the top boss – the Asus RT-AC68U.

ASUS RT-AC68U

It was great, super easy to set up, has the Unifi Hypp.tv VLAN tags dialed in with a click of a button, fast and what? Not so stable. Yah wifi was great, Internet was speedy – but the damn thing kept rebooting itself.

I couldn’t even get it to 24 hours uptime, sometimes every 2-4 hours, sometimes after 8-12 hours everything would just drop, the Hypp.TV would hang, wifi connections would be lost, and the Internet would be gone – just for a few seconds, and then pop it would come back.

It wasn’t hugely disruptive, but it was rather annoying, especially for such a high end router. I’m not sure what firmware version it came with in the box as during installation it prompted me to update and I did, I ended up with the latest firmware (as of writing this post) version 3.0.0.4.374.4561.

After some Googling, I found dozens of people in this thread having the same problems as me – ASUS RT-AC68U Firmware version 3.0.0.4.374.4561 is out

Frequent, inconsistent reboots on their AC68U with the latest firmware.

Many people downgraded to a previous firmware version like 3.0.0.4.374_4422 – and the issue went away, which did make me feel better as it indicates it’s not a hardware issue, but a firmware issue.

As for me, after looking through all the options (stock downgrade vs dd-wrt vs tomato vs asuswrt-merlin) I went for Merlin in the end, built around the stock ROM it seemed like the most sensible option (as with most things, I favour stability and speed over features, and this is what this ROM aims for).

Asuswrt-Merlin – custom firmware for Asus routers

Since installed the latest Merlin build, I haven’t had a reboot at all. Great stuff!

Asuswrt-Merlin Uptime

I’ll keep an eye on the official firmware updates, but honsetly I’m happy with this for now and it does support all the fancy stuff the router has anyway (Media stuff, DNLA, dual band wifi, guest networks, USB3 support etc).

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