Statrix Redux

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I just got a note from one of my sisters, I have four…more or less…and she included a picture taken in Hilo when we were visiting the folks back in April for L’s birthday.

I’m pretty sure she’ll kill me for posting it here, but as far as I know only one person even reads this besides me and they may have stopped. 🙂
Aloha!

I had a BSOD episode with my Asus Eee PC 1000H last weekend that reminded I’d promised myself to look into putting Linux on the box. It was a nasty BSOD that kept the Asus from booting as it kept repeating during the boot sequence.
Fortunately I was able to recover using an XP CD I have around…I couldn’t find the Asus recover CD. But that whole episode reminded me that it was time to put something reliable to work.
In the past I’ve written a little about using an Eee, especially with my Sierra USBConnect 881. Back February it required that I download the module, compile it, install it, and run it with shell scripts. It wasn’t particularly difficult to do, but I wasn’t exactly looking forward to going through the whole process again.
Luckily I didn’t have to this time.
This time around I’m going with Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. It’s kernel has the correct code already configured and, even better, the network manager recogizes the 881 right off the bat.
The problem is that out of the box it doesn’t work. Fortunately the fix is incredibly easy. When I first plugged in the 881 it was recogized and I was prompted add the device to the NetworkManager Applet (0.7.0). I immediately gave it a try and it would look like it was going to work, then disconnect. Darn. I thought I was going to have to use the scripts again. Luckily that isn’t the case. I found an article that suggested that simply removing all the information in the applet would work. Seems counter-intuitive, but it does work. My “wrong” settings looked that this:

The suggested settings, ones that work for me are:

It came right up.
As for the regular wifi, I did have to copy over the driver from the XP partition and use that. All good.
The other good news is that everything works on my Toshiba Satellite L45-7423. Last time I tried a Linux on it I had to use an external wifi dongle instead of the built-in card. Now the card is found without a hitch.
Thanks!
Aloha!

Nope, wasn’t me. But I will say I had a bit sad experience on Sunday. I was cruising down Young St. and came to the light at Piikoi.
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I had to wait so I was over to the far, far right, in the gutter with my foot on the curb. At that point their are two lanes, one is generally used for turning right, the other for going straight ahead. Usually, at a shorter light, I’ll be out there to the left in the lane to go through the intersection, but this light is so long that it’s just easier to stay to the right. Is this wrong?
Now in Hawaii you can generally turn right on at a red light and there was plenty of room for the car just behind me to go forward and turn right. I was in no way blocking that lane. And, strictly speaking, even if I had been it would have been legal as that lane isn’t a right turn only lane. If I’d been driving a car I could have gone straight ahead from that lane.
Well there was a car just behind me who would not go past me to turn right. I don’t know what she was thinking, as I said, there was plenty of room. Behind her cars were beginning to honk their horns, but she wouldn’t move.
When the light turned green I went off across Piikoi and she turned right, the next car, a van, turned, and finally another car turned but yelled at me, “You *&$%#&* inconsiderate &#$%@#&!!!”
Sigh.
The thing is, the probably didn’t see where I was in the lane and just assumed it was my “fault” that they couldn’t get through quickly, but instead of choosing to yell at the driver who wouldn’t move, he decided to take it out on the bicyclist.
Sigh.
Aloha!

Now that we’ve had a month to contemplate the meaning of the Phillies win, it’s time to start thinking about next year. I actually called the Phillies before the playoffs started when I learned they’d get a shot. It seemed such a longshot I had to go with it. Of course I don’t gamble so it didn’t actually get my anything but bragging rights.
So what’s up with 2009?
Well I really can’t say much, but the schedule is ready to go (more or less), this is from the MLB Important Dates page:
Feb. 14, 2009

• First date injured players, pitchers and catchers may report to Spring Training.
• All World Baseball Classic players for the teams from China, Japan, South Korea and Chinese Taipei must report to Spring Training.
• All pitchers and catchers for other World Baseball Classic teams must report to Spring Training.

Feb. 17, 2009

• First date all players may report to Spring Training
• Remaining World Baseball Classic position players must report to Spring Training.

Feb. 22, 2009

• Mandatory Spring Training reporting date for all players.

April 5, 2009

• Opening Night, Atlanta at Philadelphia

April 6, 2009

• Opening Day

As for my real favorites, the Hawaii Rainbow Baseball Team, their season opens February 20, 2009 with a 4 game series against the UC Irvine Anteaters. That name is better, I guess, than the Banana Slugs. The Slugs don’t have a baseball team though, which seems a shame to me.
You can see the whole schedule here.
Aloha!

Happy Thanksgiving!
Im writing this on the bus which is much harder than it seems. But so it is as I’m taking the bus to my sister’s place in Kapokei.
And, to top it off, I’m going multimodal. Yep, my bike is currently on the front of the bus.
Lots of folks do it, but it’s a first for me. If Kapolei were easier to get to I’d just ride, but it’s too far not to arrive all sweaty.
I hope your holiday is as wonderful as mine seems to be!
Aloha!

I’ve not been posting anything lately, which, when you think about it, is a statement that doesn’t need stating…it’s evident.
That doesn’t mean I’ve not been busy though.
I’ve checked out the newest version of WordPress (2.7 beta 3), but haven’t actually deployed it, either here on the other site I manage.
To the left you can see the winning icon set for WordPress 2.7. It was developed by a fellow named Ben Dunkle who has a design house in the wilds of Buffalo, NY.
The whole WordPress interface will be changing with 2.7 and it was certainly worth installing it on a test basis with a blog I’m not going to go public with just to get a taste of how it all functions. I hate having to learn something quickly because something needs doing now…though that’s pretty much how my life seems to go. 🙂
I did make up the Xmas card for my folks, this time I had it printed by VistaPrint…yes those folks. The only thing I’ve ever ordered from them before were their “Free Business Cards.” Apparently their viral marketing worked, at least in my case, as I just spent a bit on the Xmas cards.
And yesterday was a very strange day…rain, rain, rain. I discovered my expensive Brookstone umbrella was a dead in the water…and I had to buy a cheap one to get home without getting soaked. That really annoys me. I’d bought it because I was tired of cheap umbrellas that broke after a couple uses. This one lasted…a couple of uses. They do have a warranty repair/replacement plan I guess I should have picked up too – but it would be nice to be able to buy something that didn’t require it.

That’s about it…I’m hoping today is dry enough to take a bike ride. One day off and I miss it. That really doesn’t sound like the old me at all!
Aloha!

I’m stilling thinking about trying to learn Spanish in hopes that it will be useful in the future. I’d love to go back to Mexico, perhaps the Yucatan this time. Spain is also on my short list. I’m also planning a trip to San Antonio and I expect it wouldn’t hurt me there either.
The biggest obstacle so far is that I’m not quite sure how to proceed. I guess in my perfect dream world I’d fall in love and move in with a beautiful Spanish speaking language tutor. ¿Eso sucederá? Probably not.
I did put Fluenz on my Amazon wish list, but then the plug-in here seemed to stop working meaning YOU probably won’t be buying this for me…
Then there’s taking a class, but I’m not sure I want to learn “academic” Spanish – which is to say I’ve taken language classes at college in the past and have never really learned to speak a language there.
I haven’t seen too many other alternatives locally – there are tutors I know, I just haven’t found one yet.
Aloha!

I haven’t had time to go through all my images and cull the true losers and fix the rest, but I do have a link for all of them. This are “uncorrected” in that I haven’t done anything to them except have them resized for easy web viewing (not to mention uploading).
Mexico City Images
There’s not much else going on. I’m busy this weekend with a convention I’m attending locally. It’s nice to see folks I haven’t seen for a while, but I really prefer going to conventions out of town. Luckily this convention isn’t about me. 🙂

Aloha!

I finally feel like I’m back from Mexico. It’s been a week now and I’ve recovered from my jet lag. Actually this trip worked out well. Mexico City was 5 hours ahead of Hawaii (then 4 once they switched daylight savings off). Since I was on vacation I slept in to avoid the rush hour in the metro (or on the roads) which means, as I get up around 4am here, that I was actually getting up at the same time.
Once I got back I had to go back to work immediately and that was great as well. The guys at work kept up with all my stuff so I had nothing but routine assignments waiting for me. Thanks guys!
It’s always nice to come home and this trip was no exception. I loved Mexico City, but I live in Honolulu and…well…Honolulu is Honolulu.
I’ve had a lot to keep me busy now that I’m home. I had a lot of folks to say hi to after three weeks away. That included a very good friend who’d kept my moped for me while I was away. Thanks! She’s going to DF herself in the future, so it was fun telling her about my trip. The moped, btw, seems to work better than when I’d left it. It needed a vacation too. [Hint: when leaving a moped for an extended period, disconnect the battery, I did and had no trouble starting up three weeks later.]
I also decided to buy the latest version of Parallels for my Macbook. I haven’t used it since the first version and had taken Windows off my systems a while back. However I’ve had some situations recently in managing the other website I’ve mentioned where it’s been very helpful to have access to a Windows machine. It isn’t so much about file formats and the like which, over the years, have become easier to deal, but more about providing support. It’s a lot easier to help someone with a problem in Outlook or Word if you are looking at the same menus they are.
In any case Parallels has come a long way. It took sometime to install XP on it, but that isn’t Parallels fault, it’s all the fixes one has to apply to XP once you do get it going. Sigh.
The only other thing taking up my time was renaming my images. I’d used an unfortunate naming scheme for transferring images from my cameras to the laptop I had with me in Mexico (my Asus Eee PC 1000H – which worked superbly). In any case I had use a shell script repeatedly to rename about 2000 images.
You might not think it worth it if you look at the images, but since I wasn’t trying to make art, they are okay for me. I take travel pictures for the same reason I suspect most people do – simply to remember where I was and what I did.
Here’s a link to the uncorrected images. By that I mean I haven’t “fixed” the photos, simpy resized them for the web. Some will look much better with a little work. Most will look just as bad. 🙂

MEXICO CITY IMAGES BY DAY
I’ve been riding my bike, though I’ll admit that because of several luncheons I had to attend I didn’t ride to work every day. I should be back to that now though – thank goodness, I feel so much better when I do it.
That’s it for now. I’m back and I hope to get back into blogging regularly (that’s a note for Robin, my only faithful reader). 🙂
Aloha!