How I fixed my Wireless At Home

For months I have had a bizarre problem with wireless access. Every time I described it to networking folks, it baffled them. This was the situation.

My main pc is a 17" MacBook Pro running Lion. When I take it anywhere, wireless works perfectly. There are no issues at all. When I plug it in to a wired connection, it works perfectly. Nothing special….yet. At home I have a few Windows-based machines that are on my home network, but they are all wired connections. All of them also work without any problems. I have 2 iPads (1 and 2) and an iPhone that connect wirelessly, again, no issues.

When I run my MacBook Pro at home on a wired connection, there is no problem. But wireless had a problem. Everything works everywhere, except the MBP has a problem with wireless. Well, actually, thats not true.

The MBP connects without a problem to WiFi. It just cannot get out of my network. So the only problem is when on WiFi, my MBP (and only my MBP) can see my internal network but cannot get out onto the internet. Bizarre, right? It gets a little harder to troubleshoot, though. If I run a command like host www.google.com from the terminal…ready for it…. it works. But Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Entourage, Tweetdeck, etc cannot see anything outside of my network.

Bizarre, right?

So here is what I did to fix it. I went into the DHCP config on the access point and disabled all the DNS settings. Then on my Mac, I created a Home location and hard coded the DNS settings. Thats it. Everything on my network and beyond now works for my MBP. I absolutely do not understand why this is, but now it all works. And now that I have documented it here, I can completely forget about it and live happy!

EDIT: November 14, 2011 - I made a change this morning because I got tired of hard coding a DNS server for each client. I have an old ASUS EEEBox running Linux in a closet. So far it was just a DNS server. Now its also DHCP and everything is perfect. Gradually I'll move more services onto that little Atom-powered box.

Three Finger Double Click is Magic

The three finger double click gesture in Lion is pure magic. It took a while for it to sink in, but when MacSparky mentioned it, the neurons in my brain finally processed it. And today it came in really handy. One of my pet peeves is seeing a word show up in a sentence multiple times when a synonym would be much more interesting. I especially hate it when it's my writing. But sometimes I just have to stare blankly at the wall for a few minutes to think of a good word to use. Either that or get my lazy ass off the chair and walk over to the thesaurus on my bookshelf. Like the three finger double click, the existence of a thesaurus in the Mac had never quite sunk in either.

So today I was writing up a script for a video I am about to record on sending a fax with Outlook Web Access. I bet I know what you're thinking. You are thinking that that video will be FREAKING AWESOME. You are right my brother, you are right. Well, I wrote a sentence that had me staring at the wall for a few minutes and just as I started to glance over to the Roget's on the shelf, I remembered the secret gesture.

Up popped the mini dialog you see in the picture to the right. In the words of Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle….MMMMMAGIC!!! Unfortunately, the results it gave me weren't that helpful, but clicking on the Thesaurus in the dialog opened the full Dictionary app and I found the word I needed. MAGIC SQUARED!

I think this is the pivotal point in my life where I will finally remember that gesture…..whats next??? Triple shot macchiatto double click….mmmmmm….uh oh, Macchiatto isn't in the dictionary?!?!?