Since 2007, each year I have picked a new skill to learn.  When ever possible, I tried to get professional guidance in learning it – consider it my own personal Made.  Over the years I have done guitar, singing, salsa/swing dancing and boxing.  Dancing has been by far my favorite of these skills so far, and the one I have used the most.  Boxing was the shortest of my endeavors.  I learned rather quickly that I don’t enjoy getting punched in the face, and that it would take far more training ($$) and time that I wanted to invest to get to the point where getting in the ring wouldn’t just be a self-promoted-pummeling.

This years challenge:  Baking.  (Sub challenge: Maintain my current weight at the same time!)

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When I started this blog back in 2007, my goal was to create a 100% technical blog.  Posts would be on what ever technology I was using at the time, and continue to evolve as my programming skills grew and adapted over time.  The blog eventually faded away with small posts every few months.  When I resurrected  the blog back in November, my goal was one post a week.  It didn’t matter what the theme was – the goal was just to write.  While I’d love for more of these posts to be on programming, the challenge is finding new things to talk about in that area!  Right now I’m learning iOS development by working through The Big Nerd Ranch Guide to iPhone Programming, and while its incredibly interesting and a great learning tool, its difficult for me to pull out topics to write on that wouldn’t just be duplicating information from the book.  So, for the time being, expect more random posts on whats going on in life.

I’m writing to you from a small log cabin off peak 8 beautiful Breckinridge Colorado.  I’m actually on vacation, but thought I’d post this quick while it was still fresh in my memory.  If you have had problems not being able to connect to protected WiFi networks on your iPad because of an incorrect password you are certain is right, this may help.

The cabin comes equipped with DSL internet access from a combo modem and wifi router.  There is no other computer set up here, so you are at the mercy of the gods to figure out how the router was configured.  My brothers MacBook Pro had no problem getting online with the provided password, but my friends iPad and mine refused to connect.  Despite typing in the password absolutely correct a number of times, it continued to give us “Password Incorrect.”  I tried a number of ways to get our iPads online – including hooking up our own Airport Express to the router to try to create our own WiFi hotspot, but nothing worked.

Luckily my brother had his Macbook Pro which had no problem connecting to the WiFi.  I opened up System Preferences, Network, clicked on AirPort and the Advanced button.  This gave a list of all the wireless networks he has connected to in the past.  I found the one I was having trouble connecting to, and clicked on the little edit pencil icon.  This will give a small window with the network name, the type of security and the password starrred out.  By clicking Show Password, it gave me the numeric value of the password.  Typing this value as the password on my iPad finally allowed me to connect to the network.

I’m guessing this has something to do with a 64 or 128 bit WEP Key, but as I’m on vacation, I’m not going to do all that research right now!  If you happen to know the exact correlation, or perhaps how one may be able to figure out that number without needing another laptop, please leave a comment below.