What Comes To Mind
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Linux and APM and ACPI and my Thinkpad and ...
My primary computer is my IBM T20 thinkpad, running Debian unstable. It's hooked up to the rest of my home network through a wireless connection. Last week, every thing went south.
First, because my wife has been having a lot of trouble getting a good connection to the wireless network from her computer, I upgraded the access port (after futzing around with antennas for a day or so). I put in a new Linksys WAP. One of the cool ones, with Linux inside.
And, I took the opportunity to get a 802.11g PCMCIA card for my laptop.
First mistake.
No Drivers.
I ended up building ndiswrapper against 2.6.8.1, and using the Windows driver. I'm not thrilled about that, but I do like the increased bandwidth to the real computers upstairs.
Then, I did a apt-get dist-upgrade. And got upgraded to kernel 2.6.8.1-3.
Which won't suspend properly.
The magick keys don't even register, much less do anything. Turns out I'm not the first person to have this problem, so, I have some hope it will get fixed.
I took a stab at upgrading my BIOS to the most recent cut, hoping ACPI would work. It did a little bit, as long as I disabled X DPMS, and was willing to suspend only once before rebooting.
I usually leave the laptop running for weeks.
So I down graded back to 2.6.7.
And realized that I don't have support for the new network card there.
Windows 2000, on an identical laptop, had been up for 253 days, before I rebooted it to pull the floppy drive to do the BIOS upgrade on this machine.
I suppose that's what I get for running unstable.
What's worse? It's been _fun_.
¶ 1:15 AM 0 Comments
Links to this post
First, because my wife has been having a lot of trouble getting a good connection to the wireless network from her computer, I upgraded the access port (after futzing around with antennas for a day or so). I put in a new Linksys WAP. One of the cool ones, with Linux inside.
And, I took the opportunity to get a 802.11g PCMCIA card for my laptop.
First mistake.
No Drivers.
I ended up building ndiswrapper against 2.6.8.1, and using the Windows driver. I'm not thrilled about that, but I do like the increased bandwidth to the real computers upstairs.
Then, I did a apt-get dist-upgrade. And got upgraded to kernel 2.6.8.1-3.
Which won't suspend properly.
The magick keys don't even register, much less do anything. Turns out I'm not the first person to have this problem, so, I have some hope it will get fixed.
I took a stab at upgrading my BIOS to the most recent cut, hoping ACPI would work. It did a little bit, as long as I disabled X DPMS, and was willing to suspend only once before rebooting.
I usually leave the laptop running for weeks.
So I down graded back to 2.6.7.
And realized that I don't have support for the new network card there.
Windows 2000, on an identical laptop, had been up for 253 days, before I rebooted it to pull the floppy drive to do the BIOS upgrade on this machine.
I suppose that's what I get for running unstable.
What's worse? It's been _fun_.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Black Forest Brewhaus
Last Monday of the month is usually Beer Club night at the Black Forest, but due to scheduling conflicts, the Brewmaster asked to reschedule.
We ignored him.
Particularly since a good friend is in town for the week before going to Kuwait, on the way to Iraq.
In any case, this year's Octoberfest is outstanding. Malty and rich, without being cloyingly sweet. A little heavy at 6.7% ABV. The Hefeweizen is a better session beer.
I drank the Octoberfest.
¶ 10:51 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
We ignored him.
Particularly since a good friend is in town for the week before going to Kuwait, on the way to Iraq.
In any case, this year's Octoberfest is outstanding. Malty and rich, without being cloyingly sweet. A little heavy at 6.7% ABV. The Hefeweizen is a better session beer.
I drank the Octoberfest.
¶ 10:51 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
TBR: To Be Read
I've started posting my To Be Read books on "... In Books", and I hope to post reviews of those books as I finish them. Plus others I've finished lately. We'll see how this works out.
¶ 10:46 PM 0 Comments
Links to this post
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
