Richard & Stephanie Sipe

My employer needed someone to fly down to Phoenix, AZ for some work. I volunteered so I could combine it into a chance to head over to the Grand Canyon to see Carmen. I flew down from Portland to Phoenix in the early morning on Friday. It was a warm 101 in Phoenix and I really was not impressed with the city. Just way to brown, hot, and busy for a small town Northwest guy.

After finishing up my work I drove up to the Grand Canyon and Carmen’s house. It was really great to hang out and spend some time with her. She had just picked up her new puppy Artemis and it was fun to see a cute puppy again since mine is now 75lbs.

Saturday Carmen and I headed down into the Canyon for a hike to Horseshoe Mesa. It was quite the trip. Hot. Steep. and Rocky. Just what you think hiking in the Grand Canyon would be. We walked to the Horseshoe Mesa old mining area and then all the way to the end of the Mesa. We had a nice lunch and cooled down a bit … a bit it was still hot hot after all. There was thunder clouds all day and we were afraid, and kind of hopeful really, that we were going to get soaked with a Arizona thunderstorm. It started to drizzle during our lunch so we decided to head up the canyon. Well, we got NO rain but we did have a “nice” walk back.

Turns out, though, my 10 year old boots couldn’t handle the canyon. My boot sole started coming off and by a bit up the mountain was completely about to come off. Not wanting to go barefoot up the canyon wall Carmen and I managed to fashion a fix out of an eyeglasses string. We made it up in really good time even though my legs were dying by the top. Once we made it to the tourists with flip flops and white pants we knew we were right at the top!

The next day I had sore calves and some HUGE blisters but a good set of achievement. Carmen and I took a drive out to the end of the Park and the tower out there. Then we took a little walk to a semi-secret point that is one of Carmen’s favorites. Check out our picture gallery for my pictures from the trip. You can also check out my flickr page for all the pictures I took and if you want to download a full size picture for a print.

I left the Grand Canyon around 1:30PM and survived the drive back to Phoenix and flight back to PDX airport. It was SO GOOD to be back home among the green grass, trees, and livable temperatures.

              

I was recently looking for an armband for my iPhone 3G. I found a few on Amazon.com that looked OK. With shipping they were priced from $15 to $30+. Since I wasn’t sure I really wanted one that was a bit more than I wanted to spend.

I then found eforcity.com through a google search and their iPhone 3G armband for the excellent price of FREE! Simply add the BLACK iPhone 3G Armband to your cart, then during checkout enter the code FREEIPHARM for a $9.99 discount. You only pay shipping and handling which for me was $5.99. Your price will vary on this depending on your location and the shipping calculator.

You, as I was, may be wary of this free price but I got my iPhone 3G Black Armband in the mail four days later and it was just as advertised. I haven’t noticed any weird charges on my credit card yet but I will let you know. Enjoy your armband and happy exercising.

              

Since upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.4 and then buying my iPhone 3G I have been having tons of issues with my work wireless internet connection. Immediately after upgrading to Leopard I could no longer access my work wireless connection. With 10.4 I had no issues with my WIFI connection but with Leopard I had TONS and Ditto with my iPhone 3G.

First off my Laptop & OS X Leopard WIFI Trials:

After upgrading to Leopard I tried to connect to my WEP protected work wireless connection and Airport asked me for a Login and Password. HUH? Login and Password are WPA requirements. WEP is a simple password. I tried all kinds of combinations of passwords with a preceeding # etc etc to no success. I then tried creating my own connection to the router and specified WEP security and still no success. I tried deleting the Airport Network Adapter (FYI: TERRIBLE IDEA) which only caused me hours of pain trying to get it to added back with still no success.

My final solution: Now each time I connect, I open up the Network Preferences pane, click on Assist Me, Select Diagnostics, Click on Default Location, Select my WIFI router name, and then it magically prompts me for my WEP password. Once entered it connects to our work WEP protected access point with no problems. WHY? I have no idea. This is a huge pain and disappointing that Leopard requires this kind of hack to connect to a simple wireless router.

Notes: I had NO problems with Tiger, we regularly connect tons of different computers (we are a tech company after all) all with no problems, I can NOT change the access since this is a corporate network and I have no control or input into this, and Leopard for some reason will still not save the WEP key in my keychain.

Any ideas? They would be greatly appreciated in the comments! My idea is that for some reason OS X is seeing the router as a WPA router instead of WEP. According to the info I can find WEP is still supported and indeed by using the Diagnostics Hack I can connect (as I am now).

Second, My iPhone 3G WIFI Trials

Same network, same issue, no work around. I have not been able to connect to the network at work with my iPhone. I have tried manually configuring it, setting the password with the preceeding # etc etc and no luck. My boss has an iPhone and the same issue so here if someone can come up with a solution for me I might be able to make the necessary changes happen

Anybody else not able to connect to a WEP enabled WIFI network with their iPhone 3G and know of a solution other than disabling WEP?

Thanks-
Richard