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I am not a political person, but the sheer hypocrisy of the Anti-Defamation League and their denial of the Armenian genocide make me shake with anger.

The short version of this story is this: The town of Watertown, Mass, recently signed on to an ADL program called “No Place for Hate.” The idea is to educate children to be tolerant of others. However, it came to light that the ADL’s official position on the Armenian genocide is that it was not a genocide (despite the fact that Hitler used it as justification for his genocide of the Jews). Since Turkey is a strong ally of Israel, the ADL does not want to oppose them on this matter. Watertown’s large Armenian community made a lot of noise and voted to withdraw from the No Place for Hate program. Yesterday, the director of the New England chapter of the ADL broke ranks with the national office, acknowledged the genocide, and officially supported HR 106, a bill in Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide. Today, he was fired.

I won’t even dignify the ADL’s justification by linking to it. Suffice it to say, their argument boils down to the fact that Turkey is Israel’s only ally in the Middle East, and they need to maintain good relations with them for the safety of Israeli citizens. I will, however, link this Globe op-ed, which says it better than I ever could:

But Turkey’s treatment of its Jewish minority and its foreign policy shouldn’t depend on a historical lie. If the national ADL doesn’t acknowledge the genocide, it is complicit in a coverup.

I finally have our network set up after some serious trouble. It was a pain, but I think this is going to work.

Here’s the background. We have two places where we need wired Internet access: the study (for my desktop computer) and the living room (for my 360). Two problems with that:

1. The study is all the way at the other end of the house from the living room.
2. The walls are made of something that blocks radio signals. The wireless signal here is terrible. With the router in the study, you get no signal on the front porch.

I came up with a few options:

1. Run an Ethernet cable all the way across the condo. Pros: Reliable, fast connection. Cons: Ugly, pain in the ass, will damage baseboards.
2. Buy a wireless adapter for the 360. Pros: Easiest. Cons: Expensive ($100!), signal quality unknown.
3. Buy a second wireless router, install a third-party firmware on it, and use it was a wireless bridge for the 360. Pros: Fairly easy, cheap, can use more than 1 wired connection in the living room if that is ever necessary. Cons: Signal quality unknown, requires some fiddling.

I initially thought I would do #1, but upon evaluating how I would actually run the cable, I decided against it. #2 seemed silly; if I was going to rely on wireless, why not do #3 and end up with a cheaper, more flexible setup? So I decided on #3.

Unbeknownst to most people, there is a set of wireless routers that are based on Linux and can take third-party, open-source firmwares. These third-party firmwares typically add features that only high-end routers have, such as wireless bridging — exactly what I need. Our current router, a Linksys WRT54G v1, is one of these, though the newer WRT54Gs are not (confusing, huh?). I spent a while watching Craigslist for another old WRT54G that would run the firmware. I actually found one being sold by a guy near Tufts, paid $25 for it, and brought it home. I plugged it in, flashed it with the Tomato firmware, and unplugged it so we could eat dinner. Then after dinner I plugged it back in to set it up. I heard a sizzle and smelled smoke; the router was dead. I unplugged it and realized I had plugged Catherine’s laptop charger into the router, not the correct power supply. Great, there goes $25. After watching Craigslist for another week and dealing with someone selling one for $10 but who took 2-4 days to respond to my emails, I said screw it and just ordered a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 from Newegg. With Newegg’s free shipping, it arrived the next day.

I spent this evening setting it up. It turns out that with the Tomato firmware, you can do something called WDS – Wireless Distribution System. Basically, it allows you to create a wireless tunnel from one router to another, extending the signal out to the second router. So with one router in the study and another in the living room, we have a perfect solution. Strong wireless signal throughout the whole apartment, and wired access in both rooms. The performance is decent — on the order of 5-8 Mbps, not bad considering the somewhat poor signal strength because of the walls. If the signal stays reliable, I’ll be pleased with the setup.