And Then A Port….

If you're the slightest bit interested in a differing take on the Charlie incident, and you should be, take an open minded read of this over at The Slog.

The rest of this post relates to USB ports so if you have no interest in those, move quickly on.

I have a wireless modem router. So? So I got it, plugged it in, set it up and that was that. Read manuals? Why? It's a modem router, right? And modeming and routing was wot it was doing so reading manuals wasn't really required.

Anyhoo, a few mornings ago, I took up my position at the desk in the dining room and while waiting for the coffee to perk, and Windows 7 on my desktop computer to wake-up, I idly ran my finger along the back of the wireless modem – as you do at times of high boredom.

"Hello!! What's that?" I asked myself as my finger ran over something vaguely familiar. I didn't say it out loud I hasten to add. This question wasn't too tough for me as I was confident I already knew the answer and was able to respond to me straight away.
"It feels like a USB port!" I said. Silently. Then, pulling the modem out for a look confirmed my answer to me was correct. My next question to me was equally easy.
"What it's for?"
"It's to attach USB stuff. But we knew that."
"Right."
At this point my questioning of me got a tad tricky. "Why?"
I had no answer for me and had to go to that Google lookin' thingy to attempt to get an answer that would satisfy both of me.

Google it I did and the result was a big surprise to us. 'Us' being a head-bound me and me - and may tempt those of you out there of an enquiring mind and who aren't aware of this to run a tentative finger along the back of your modem to see if it also has a USB port.

Why? This is what we – sorry, I did. I hooked up a portable hard drive into the port and, after doing that logging into the modem stuff, I now have a network drive I can use to access documents and other stuff, and use as a synchronized backup drive from desktop and laptop computers at any time. How cool is that then?

There's more. If you're a working person you can set the drive to be available via an HTTP address so that, providing you leave the modem on, you can access your network drive via a browser from any where.

As it's behind the modem user name and password it should be no less, or more, safe than your computer. Unless, that is, you still use the modem factory set user name of 'admin' and the virtually unbreakable password of 'password'. Non of us are daft enough not to change those two values are we? Come now, please, don't be shy; I'm not.  Me, being dumber 'un a sack o' spanners, It took me a good year before I woke up and changed 'em and, as per this post, only days ago I discovered the USB port.

So there you go. Was that boring or wot?

Quote;  Mitch Ratcliffe.

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.”