08:00 – The Roku box lost its mind again yesterday evening. It decided that it couldn’t connect to our WiFi AP. At that point, the only solution is to repeatedly attempt to connect. That may require anything from several attempts to scores of attempts, which means an hour or more of sitting there clicking the button on the remote and watching the same configuration screens over and over again. It’s absolutely hateful. Roku’s firmware is the absolute pits, and their so-called “support” is entirely useless. The product is defective by design. When it works, it works well, but when it doesn’t work it’s an exercise in frustration to get it working again.
And it lies. When it was claiming not to be able to find a wireless AP, I went in and checked the configuration screen on our wireless AP. It indicated that the Roku box was connected via 11.g at 54 Mbps and 100% signal strength. Although it’ll be a pain in the ass, I finally decided to bite the bullet and do a UTP run between my office and the back of the TV in the den. Presumably, even the Roku box will connect if it has a hardwired network connection.
I’m still designing labels for the chemicals and specimens in the forensics kit. There are a lot of them. I still haven’t costed out the kit, but I suspect the full kit may have to sell for $240 or more. Many of the items are needed for only one lab session, and several lab sessions require multiple unique items, so we may end up offering two kits; a full version and a less expensive subset.