AirPort Express and HartzVictims.org

I’m holding down the fort solo for the majority of the weekend. Elise went to work at 6 a.m. this morning then headed to Houston for Christine’s baby shower.

I got up around 8 and roamed about the house for a while. I then drove to the Apple store to scope things out. I picked up an AirPort Express because I’ve wanted to stream music from iTunes to the stereo in the living room. I had planned on buying an AirPort Express even before Elise bought the iBook for me. The last apartment we lived in before moving to Temple (and then back to Austin again) had quite a stereo rig. I ran approximately 75′ of RCA wire from the computer in the office to the stereo in the living room. Back then I used Winamp. The AirPort Express is awesome compared to the setup I used to have. Though it took a while to setup…

Seeing how “It just works” is one of Apple’s mantras, I assumed I could just plug the AE in and start streaming music. Uh uh. I have a WPA encrypted network. After a little research I learned that the AE can’t be used under WPA. I also have wireless access control enabled so the router picks up only the iBook’s MAC address. I had to disable WPA and add the AE’s MAC address in order for it to work (I can’t seem to figure out WEP on my router). So I can now stream music to the stereo from my Windows PC in the office and the iBook, wherever it may roam within the house).

The bad: I have to login to the router and disable WPA in order to stream music from iTunes to the living room. I’d leave it disabled all of the time but there are three other wireless networks in the immediate vicinity that the iBook picks up on.

After that 30 minute ordeal, I decided to pay a little mind to HartzVictims.org. I added a new module to aid victims and submitted a photo of Riley to the Hartz Victims Memorial Quilt.

Now I’m going to go flop down on the couch and watch season 5 of the Sopranos.