Almost a year ago I wrote about WICD for the first time. Mostly out of frustration for how badly Network Manager SUCKED. Well, nine months later I'm writing about WICD again, and again its due to Network Manager FAIL. My office uses an WPA+TKIP access point... this is pretty standard stuff... but Network Manager COULD NOT ASSOCIATE ME TO THE AP!!!! O-M-F-G!? So long as that hunk of shit is the default network manager in Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, etc., Linux will not gain widespread acceptance. WICD FTW!!!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
A trip to the library...
Posted on 10:04 PM by Unknown
Amanda (The Queen) shared with me an interesting statistic she had read: that homeschoolers are responsible for approximately 40% of the books checked-out from libraries. HOLY CRAP! 40% I didn't believe her...until today, when we went to the library.
The boys are studying medieval times in school along with the military lessons I've been working with them on (to my shame, I've been doing a poor job of that!) SO, Amanda located the correct section at the library and, as near as I can tell, checked-out every book on the subject.
I kid you not, we must've checked out just shy of 50 books today. Its staggering. Those kids will know about the medieval times! If not through simple osmoses...
The boys are studying medieval times in school along with the military lessons I've been working with them on (to my shame, I've been doing a poor job of that!) SO, Amanda located the correct section at the library and, as near as I can tell, checked-out every book on the subject.
I kid you not, we must've checked out just shy of 50 books today. Its staggering. Those kids will know about the medieval times! If not through simple osmoses...
Saturday, February 7, 2009
So long Vista, and thanks for all the...fish?
Posted on 8:14 AM by Unknown
I installed Vista Enterprise about four months ago in an attempt to familiarize myself with it for work... though no one intentionally sends me out to do Windows support anymore, it does happen on occasion. As such, I felt I needed to be familiar enough with Vista to actually support it. That said, the last four months have been a living hell. Between the `explorer.exe` hangs, hideous performance, and learning-curve, I've come to loath Vista even more than most. SO, last night I installed Linux Mint 6. Oh the joy.
This install was on my HP Compaq nx9420, which I've had for a couple of years. Its a great box and has served me very well. Unfortunately, the nx9420 still isn't an install and go platform. There are issues you have to address that I've documented in the Ubuntu Wiki page for the nx9420. The most glaring issue is, of course, that suspend to ram doesn't work out of the box. From a support perspective, everything else seems to be dandy, you just can't suspend.
Unfortunately, Stephan Graber has changed his website and as a result there is a broken link in my wiki entry for his hp-s2ram.patch. SO, I had to do a fair bit of digging to find it. :-\ I have found it, and it can be downloaded here, as well as a mirror I've put up on my site, here.
Other than having to fix suspend, everything seems to work dandy. Any other nx9420 owners out there that would like to contribute their tips are free to contact me at coreyjsteele_a.t_gmail.com.
This install was on my HP Compaq nx9420, which I've had for a couple of years. Its a great box and has served me very well. Unfortunately, the nx9420 still isn't an install and go platform. There are issues you have to address that I've documented in the Ubuntu Wiki page for the nx9420. The most glaring issue is, of course, that suspend to ram doesn't work out of the box. From a support perspective, everything else seems to be dandy, you just can't suspend.
Unfortunately, Stephan Graber has changed his website and as a result there is a broken link in my wiki entry for his hp-s2ram.patch. SO, I had to do a fair bit of digging to find it. :-\ I have found it, and it can be downloaded here, as well as a mirror I've put up on my site, here.
Other than having to fix suspend, everything seems to work dandy. Any other nx9420 owners out there that would like to contribute their tips are free to contact me at coreyjsteele_a.t_gmail.com.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
PG2 on Vista
Posted on 1:17 PM by Unknown
I had a bugger of a time getting PeerGuardian2 to work under Vista. SO, I figured I'd document my solution for others so they don't have to experience what I experienced. The biggest problem is that there are like twenty-thousand people out there that THINK they can show you how to use PG2, but most of the time they're completely wrong. That said, here's how I did it:
...the batch file is how you will launch PG2, not by any other means. That's it. It works like a champ.
- Uninstall any instances of PG and/or PG2 that you presently have installed.
- Make sure the "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2" directory is COMPLETELY empty.
- Download and install PG2-RC1 from PhoenixLabs.
- Go through the on-screen dialog
- Create a batch-file that includes the following:
del /Q "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\cache.p2b"
del /Q "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\history.db"
del /Q "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\lists\*"
start "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\pg2.exe"...the batch file is how you will launch PG2, not by any other means. That's it. It works like a champ.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Python in a hosted environment
Posted on 2:23 PM by Unknown
I have a server that I can't exactly install whatever I want on. I need to be able to talk to a MySQL database from a Python script. I didn't have any of the database interfaces installed, and couldn't install them system-wide. What is a geek to do?
Fortunately, Python's package installer is pretty smart. SO, I created ~/python, and then used ` python setup.py install --root ~/python` to install each module I wanted to install. Next, in my actual code, I used the following to ensure python could find the modules...
One note: ADOdb requires MySQLdb, but the errors you get from it are completely non-sensical and do not give you even the slightest indication about the inter-dependancy. You could have figured this out by reading the README ,but who does that?
Fortunately, Python's package installer is pretty smart. SO, I created ~/python, and then used ` python setup.py install --root ~/python` to install each module I wanted to install. Next, in my actual code, I used the following to ensure python could find the modules...
import sys
sys.path.append( '/home/hostedby/python/usr/lib64/python2.3/site-packages/' )
sys.path.append( '/home/hostedby/python/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/' )
One note: ADOdb requires MySQLdb, but the errors you get from it are completely non-sensical and do not give you even the slightest indication about the inter-dependancy. You could have figured this out by reading the README ,but who does that?
My New Bumper Sticker
Posted on 12:39 AM by Unknown
I found my new bumper sticker tonight... I'm bitter.
Mostly, I'm bitter that Initiated Measure 11 was defeated. I had really hoped that South Dakota would be the state to re-kindle the Supreme Court decision about abortion. I guess that plaque I have that says, "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans," is as accurate now as ever.
Mostly, I'm bitter that Initiated Measure 11 was defeated. I had really hoped that South Dakota would be the state to re-kindle the Supreme Court decision about abortion. I guess that plaque I have that says, "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans," is as accurate now as ever.
Monday, October 20, 2008
My "new" laptop
Posted on 10:32 AM by Unknown
I'm posting from my "new" laptop. This is what I suspect will ultimately supercede my ASUS Eee PC, which seemed like a good idea at the time. That said, this little box isn't over-sized (yet), but I'm working on it. Here's what its go, at this moment:
My immediate needs for this thing are: 1) a new battery (its a laptop, afterall), 2) a wireless card (a PCMCIA card that works with OpenBSD), and 3) more RAM. If by some miracle I got all three of those things taken-care of, I suspect this would be a fairly respectable little laptop! I think I could get it all taken-care of for under $200, so I'm going to see what kind of price I can get for my Eee PC...if I can get $200+ for it, I'm in like Flynn!
$ dmesg | grep -i vga
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY" rev 0x00
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
$ dmesg | grep -i cpu
cpu0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2.40 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,SBF,CNXT-ID
cpu0 at mainbus0
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
$ dmesg | grep -i mem
real mem = 267411456 (255MB)
avail mem = 250511360 (238MB)
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x51: 256MB DDR SDRAM non-parity PC2100CL2.5
My immediate needs for this thing are: 1) a new battery (its a laptop, afterall), 2) a wireless card (a PCMCIA card that works with OpenBSD), and 3) more RAM. If by some miracle I got all three of those things taken-care of, I suspect this would be a fairly respectable little laptop! I think I could get it all taken-care of for under $200, so I'm going to see what kind of price I can get for my Eee PC...if I can get $200+ for it, I'm in like Flynn!
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