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i'm getting more empathetic in my old age; i had trouble falling asleep last night, still thinking about my roommate's tragic loss. i tried everything, from reading to listening to music to watching some television. finally by the time the sun came up i was just exhausted and fell asleep for a few hours.

breaking news greeted me when i woke up this morning, the death of kaddafi. as a kid growing up in the 80's, kaddafi was public enemy number one. i knew very little of his politics, just that he was a bad man. kaddafi, like saddam hussein, was an old world villain, a bad guy with a country you could target. nowadays, with our war on terrorism, the enemy isn't so much a state as it is secret cells moving from place to place wishing to do harm to our country. i sort of regret that he was killed instead of being taken alive. but that seems to be the fate of dictators, that they meet violent ends.

last night i decided i didn't want that asus router after all. the new solution would be to upgrade the existing router to a wireless N router. if that didn't work, i'd try running two routers simultaneously, the 2nd router acting as a wireless access point.

looking to score a good deal, i went onto craig's list searching for wireless routers again. i noticed somebody was selling a netgear WGT624 v3. i thought it was weird that the posting didn't mention a price, until i realized the "seller" was giving it away for free. just my luck that i was the first person to respond. he gave me his address and said he'd leave the router in a bag on his porch.

it finally stopped raining so i took the motorcycle. i briefly considered taking the bicycle, but i could get there and back in the same amount of time it'd take me to just cycle there. even though the sun was starting to shine, the roads were still slick, and i could feel my motorcycle fish tailing slightly so i was extra careful not to do any sliding. the address was in coolidge corner. the last time i was in brookline was for the boston night ride back in august, and prior to that i can't remember when was my last visit. the house was on atherton street and i did get a little lost trying to find it but eventually i found it.

i went to the cafe afterwards. since i had time and access to a laptop, i decided to set up the router and test it right then. earlier my father was still getting wireless speeds of less than 1Mbps, but with the WGT624 installed, suddenly he was seeing speeds upwards of 12 Mbps. later, back at home with the old router, i finally realized why it was so slow. the old router was a netgear MR814v2, a wireless B router, with maximum wireless speed of only 11 Mbps. the WGT624v3 on the other hand is a wireless G router, with theoretical speed of 54 Mbps (although netgear advertises it as fast as 108 Mbps, but maybe only with proprietary netgear wireless cards). all in all, not a bad router, especially since i got it for free. had i known my great uncle's place only had an old wireless B router, i would've upgraded sooner.

i returned home briefly to drop off a few things before heading out again, this time to the everett michael's to pick up some more yarn for my mother: 8 skeins of patons classic wool yarn (half aran, half lemon grass, on sale $3.99 each). i went to the cafe again to deliver the yarn.

out of curiosity, i decided to set my linksys router to wireless G only instead of G & B. what a difference! on a mixed network before i was getting a top wireless speed of 11 Mbps, but now, with the router exclusively broadcasting in G mode, i was getting speeds upwards of 23 Mbps!

in the evening i made more tonkatsu (took about an hour), saturating the house with the smell of deep fry cooking. i clipped the analog cooking thermometer to the edge of the pot. once i started frying the temperature never reached above 300°F despite all the bubbling hot oil. i'm pretty much all tonkatsu'ed out, but i made so much, i could eat japanese fried pork cutlets for an entire week. that's also the amount of time it's going to take for me to aerate out the house.