New pet peeve. I discovered a new pet peeve over the weekend. I can’t stand it when drivers only switch on their turn signal as they are beginning to turn. WTF? The whole point of a turn signal is to let people know that you are planning to turn, so it’s a complete waste if you only switch it on as you’re turning. This gets particularly annoying when you’re coming up to an intersection and you have a choice of either getting into the right lane (where folks intend to go straight) or getting into the left lane (where folks may turn left or go straight) and you decide to get into the left lane because the person in front of you doesn’t have a turn signal on… and then the bum turns on his left turn signal and you proceed to wait, and wait, and wait. That is definitely detrimental reliance. Folks, use your turn signals.

New wireless router. While I was in Chicago, I setup a wireless network at my parents’ house, mostly because I wanted to use the internet on my laptop (their computer is painfully slow). I went to Best Buy, bought a Dynex DX-WGRTR wireless-G router, and enjoyed lots of high-speed wireless Internet goodness for the rest of my trip. In fact, this router worked out so well that I decided to bring it back with me to Seattle. Yep, I officially replaced my trusty Linksys WRT54GC (which, you may recall, I was pretty darn happy to get)! I decided to replace it because my old Linksys router was a “compact” router, which meant that, although I got the benefit of a small form factor (which I’ll admit was pretty slick), it unfortunately came with a really weak internal antenna, giving it a pretty short range. The Dynex is practically the same size as the Linksys and comes with a much more powerful external antenna; I was amazed at some of the distances I got with it while I was using it in Chicago. And–get this–while you can purchase an external antenna to boost the range of the Linksys router, the external antenna is actually more expensive than the Dynex router. Thanks, but no thanks. And, this finally gave me an excuse to catch up on wireless security and, I’m happy to say, boost the security of my own home wireless network, now coming to you live with WPA2′s AES-CCMP encryption! By the way, if you’re still securing your wireless network with WEP (I think most people are) you should really switch to WPA or WPA2.

First. I was listening to the January 18, 2009 podcast, and during the first segment, the caller was given a trivia question about Ricardo Montablan’s unfortunate recent passing. After the caller answered, Peter Sagal launched into his usual background and banter on Montablan and at one point noted that he played the over-the-top villain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. At that point, the always-entertaining Charlie Pierce chimed in and noted “and in the Original Series episode Space Seed,” and then almost immediately someone from the crowd shouted “YEAH!!!” in an obvious display intended to both congratulate Pierce for knowing that Montablan appeared in a Star Trek episode, and, of course, show some solidarity among Star Trek fans! Simply awesome. If you want to listen, the segment starts around 7 minutes into the show.

Second. This one is from yesterday’s (January 24, 2009) show. At about 3 minutes and 45 seconds into the show, Sagal notes that he still feels like he’s in a science fiction movie when he says “President Obama.” To demonstrate this feeling, he exclaimed “President Obama promised a strong response to the invasion of the Corellian fleet!” Did you catch it? It’s a reference to Star Wars.

In short, these guys are geeks. What a great show.