OK, so I have been hacking on the net in various forms since 1986 – for those who can’t do math that’s longer than some of you have been alive, some 17+ years. And, tonight for the first time, I have Internet at home like the billions of Johnnie-come-latelies that the rest of you are. Except for Steve, who’s been on marginally longer than me. I got home to disappointment of not finding a card from the {post,mail}man telling me to pick up a parcel from he local depot – so I got on, had dinner, and did some gardening and log-rearrangement. I sat on the bank at the edge of the garden, viewing my good works, only to spy a red “something” peeking out from behind a ornamental bay tree that graces my front door. I had missed it when I walked in, and now after some cabling and other small effort, I am online. It’s a bit kludged (NAT) at the moment, and I am running:

sudo tcpdump -n not port 80 and not port 53

…in lieu of an IDS. But it works! My venerable USR Courier Dual-Standard sits idle for the first time since what – 1997? Time trials are yet to be done, as are MTU experiments (I’ve set my MTU on en0 to 1442, being the size of most of the packets which I was receiving) – and I’d love to know how to find out what my dropped outbound/inbound frame rate was since I am still suspicious of my wiring. But, it works. Time for a beer.