Landed
I resisted the title "Sweet Home Chicago", as I'm sure everyone who has ever moved here has said that. :-)

We got through the flight successfully, though we didn't get much sleep. It's harder to sleep when looking after children who aren't sleeping much either. Luc was amazingly well behaved. It was only in the last couple of hours that he started getting hyperactive (maniacal laughter, treating everything as a game, getting into everything, etc). Fortunately there were no tears or tantrums. Nic just slept.

Membership of the Qantas Club was wonderful at LAX. We got internet access (so I could confirm the flight time with JohnN at work), but more importantly, they had a room specifically for children. So we got a little private space, and Luc got to play with Tonka toys while watching Nickelodeon. Compared to sitting on a crowded concourse it was a little slice of heaven.

JohnN picked us up at O'Hare airport, and drove us into town. We had a lot of bags, so I'm glad we didn't have to arrange our own transport. I was also glad to have someone else driving, as it started snowing when we arrived. I've been in snow, but almost never seen it falling, so it was nice to see (though I'm sure the locals didn't enjoy it).

The apartment is minimally set up, which has been enough for the first day, but we need to get out and buy things like shelves if we want to stop living out of suitcases. We also need to buy some good cold-weather clothing for the boys, as they don't have enough. Frustratingly, most places have sold out, as they are bringing in the new season in preparation for Spring.

So yesterday and today are being spent shopping for essentials. I'm just grateful I don't have to deal with work, as I'm still suffering pretty badly from jet lag.

Wireless
The apartment came with cable access for the internet, but the company hadn't got around to brining over a wireless router. Fortunately, I had my AirPort Express with me, plus an extra US power adapter, so I plugged it in expecting it to all work.

While connecting the modem directly to my notebook worked fine, I couldn't make it work with the AirPort. The notebooks could connect to the AirPort just fine, but all routing stopped at that point, and there was no DNS.

I tried changing every setting I could think of, including setting the IP details statically to the details obtained when I plugged the notebook in directly. But the AirPort kept acting as if the ethernet was not there at all. I finally reset everything to what I thought it should have been (the settings I'd originally used, and then disconnected power to both the AirPort and the cable modem. 30 seconds later everything worked.

This isn't the first time I've seen certain devices fail connecting to a network, but not others. I wonder who was at fault in the protocol here... the AirPort or the cable modem?