So yesterday I installed my Astaro Security Gateway. If you’d like to read my more in depth entry about it, head over to my tech blog. I ran into one speed bump, which was the result of me not reading the setup guide. Sometimes I think I can do it myself so I don’t read the documentation. If I’d read it, I would have saved myself at least an hour of troubleshooting. We live and learn, right?

I started with a disk I’d made about a week ago. When I booted it up though I got an error “Could not find kernel image: linux” So I went back to Astaro.com and downloaded the newest version dated 31-Oct-2008. That time it worked just fine. The trouble I ran into after that was connecting to the WebAdmin. I didn’t read the instructions so I wasn’t aware that it needed to connect on port 4444. So I tried to figure out why I could ping the server but not connect via the web browser. Once I read the setup guide, I connected with no problem. I have one other minor issue to resolve, but I won’t go into that here. For all intents and purposes, I’m connected and our home network is useable and very secure. I value security.

Enough with that. My tenant had moved in at the duplex. I’m pretty much done over there now. I planted some new shrubs in the front. Hopefully she keeps them watered over the next couple days so they don’t die. I’ve asked her to help me with that, but you never know. Luckily it rained a little yesterday and it’s supposed to rain a little bit today.

I also bought a battery charger and maintainer yesterday for the scooter. It stays plugged in to the battery and maintains a good charge when the scooter isn’t in use. So by now, it should have a really good charge. Unfortunately, the ignition switch broke again though.

You can see here just under the seat the broken switch. It’s a plastic switch and this is the second time it has broken, so I’m not buying another plastic one. I went by Lowes last night just to see if they have one but they didn’t have any “momentary” switches. I’ll try to find one Monday. This switch was installed by a prior owner when the main ignition button went bad. Apparently it’s a couple hundred bucks to replace the main one, so he installed this. But this plastic one, purchased at Advanced Discount Auto Parts isn’t quite sturdy enough. After all the trouble I had getting it running this past week, I think the battery maintainer will help. I also bought some more starting fluid, which will hopefully help it get going a little quicker on cold mornings.

Today we’re skipping church. I’m actually very sad, for the first time in a long time, that I’m not going to church. Jessica hasn’t been feeling well at all this weekend. We’re supposed to go to see her brother this afternoon. I know she really wants to see him so I do hope she’s feeling better and up to it in a couple hours. So for now, we’re taking the morning slow and just being lazy.