I went to the AT&T store tonight and snagged an Option GT Ultra Express mobile broadband card.  Thad had used one of these recent while traveling and since I'm not always near free WiFi access and will be doing a bit of traveling this summer I decided to go ahead and get one.

So far the installation process has not gone smoothly at all.  First off, the package from AT&T doesn't come with any software.  I actually had to go to the AT&T website in order to download the software for OSX Leopard.

After downloading the "Globetrotter Connect" software I had a number of issues getting the device actually configured.  Apparently I actually needed to enter my 3G/GPRS details in order to get the card to connect.  It would have been nice if AT&T provided this information for you or if the software actually prompted you for it instead of hiding it away in a preferences menu item.

I used the following credentials:

APN Name:   ISP.CINGULAR

Username:  [blank]

Password:  [blank]

Even with those credentials (which I found on a message board) it took several times uninstalling and reinstalling the software in order to get a successful Internet connection with AT&T.  I really don't know if I was doing something wrong and it's all okay now or if this whole setup is just so finicky and won't even work next time I try to use it.

After getting the actual net connection working (which is a bit laggy upon initial web page requests, but seems quite useable--even on GPRS) I decided to test out my VPN connection.

The Cisco VPN connection failed miserably at first.  Upon opening the VPN client it says:  "Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem.  Please make sure an IP address is available" or something along those lines.  After a bit more Googling I came across the following tip online:

Run the following from terminal:

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

I had to do that a few times in order to get the VPN client to finally work.  I also tried variations of stop and start, so I am not entirely sure what did the trick.  But finally the Cisco client began to work.

All in all this experience has been quite annoying.  I don't know what the average person would do except to spend hours on the phone with AT&T tech support.  I have no idea if everything will even work again the first time after I reboot.  All the message boards online give conflicting information (some even say not to use the Option.com AT&T software) and AT&T's own Knowledge Base system was down for me.

I really love the sound system in my car.  In fact, because of it I've bought more DVD Audio discs in the past few months than I've bought CDs in the past few years.

However, I was at Starbucks a few weeks ago and a DVD version of Nirvana Unplugged in NY caught my eye.  I'm a huge fan of the album and thought it would be great to hear it in surround sound.  So I bought the DVD and popped it into the sound system and it wouldn't recognize the disc!  I at least had expected it to start playing the audio and let me fumble around with the controls until I found the audio track I wanted.

Anyway, I haven't ripped a DVD for probably at least 7 years, so I haven't kept up with ripping technology.  I've been searching for a package that can rip the audio from a DVD disc, but it seems as though the only thing that it will do is convert it to stereo MP3.  Let me tell you, it's a pain to search the web for "DVD Audio" since the word audio is of course not not exclusive to high-fidelity format.  Searching for "Super Audio" (a DVD-Audio competitor) yields much better results.

DVD Audio itself seems to be a dying format.  The only software package that actually makes the discs seems to be an unsupported Sonic Systems piece of software.  No wonder no one releases albums in the format.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away--
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.