Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

That's my Satellite 5105-S701, which has the host name 'sidrat'.

The machine is like 6 years old...there was a plan to upgrade in 3, and then 4...and then 5....and perhaps someday I will upgrade. Though what I've been thinking of getting...I'm not sure it would be called an upgrade. Been looking at Netbooks (don't know if I'll get one with XP or not, more interested in the idea of running Linux....but might get the XP so I can dual boot....or because the Windows version is the more powerful unit)

IE: HP MiniNote 2133 is either a 1.0 or 1.2GHz with Linux....but with Vista it comes as 1.2GHz or 1.6GHz. Guess they hate Linux users. Though I'll likely get something Atom based.

Anyways. The old laptop pretty much has been tethered to its powercord for some time. Not sure if I can get batteries for it. Though battery life was pretty poor new, now almost non-existent. But, a while back....while my brother, and his wife, were in Ghana....getting knocked down with Malaria. I had the laptop running 24x7 doing BOINC....malariacontrol.net

Over the last few days...I would come often find the laptop hung. I'd reboot it and forget about it.

Well, it was that way just a moment ago....I rebooted it, and almost immediately it hung again. It is summer now....and I can't remember when I started doing the full-time BOINC'ng...but it would've been late fall last year. So, I suppose it might not be happy about the warmer temps. Though I may have cooked it to death.

But, this wake time...and evening....so it is a cool time in my condo. And, if it is finding that too warm to stay up. There's probably something else wrong. Perhaps the CPU fan has stopped working. Since it was over $100 for a RFE fan for the desktop, I'm sure it would be pretty hefty to get parts for the laptop and probably not an easy self-repair project.

Guess its time to write off the old laptop.... Only problem is...I think its too late to buy a laptop with Windows XP now.

Hmmm...

Link: http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/06/dell-netbook-coming-in-august-sans-function-keys/

Dell is pushing too little and too late.

Since seeing the power of the ASUS Eee Pc, I've been thinking of getting such a device. Though I wasn't sure if I could handle the sacrifice of hardware to get small, light and low cost. Then others started coming into the scene....such as the HP Mini Note. And, things started looking up that something suitable would be offered.

I then heard rumors of Dell coming out with something in June. And, since there are Dell's that can be had with Ubuntu...this seemed like it might be a good thing to wait for.

But, now they are saying August....I don't think I can wait that long. (too late). And, its not going to have function keys. Well, that's a sacrifice in hardware that I don't see myself accepting. (too little).

Guess I'll take a look over what is available now and pick the one that I'll have live with for the next 5-6 years (that's how old my previous laptop is).

Link: http://laptoping.com/hp-2133-mini-note-windows-xp-professional-for-businesses.html

Well, XP is finally an option for the HP 2133 Mini-Note. But, it isn't for everybody

But, it you can customize now....except you can't customize everything, and not all options are available. IE: you can only select Vista or Vista downgrade as your OS options. No customizing for a 1.6GHz with Linux. For some reason Windows users get 1.2 or 1.6 GHz CPUs, while Linux users can only get 1.0 or 1.2 GHz (and only preconfigured choices). Like no bluetooth for them.

I was kind of hoping to be able to get a fully loaded HP 2133 Mini-Note with Linux, not sure I want to get one when I'm being forced to get the unnecessary Vista part. Especially since I don't really want the Linux that comes with it either.

Word is that Dell will have something next month, hopefully they'll have a nice preloaded Ubuntu version....

Of course, I'm talking about my Ubuntu server (well, maybe not obvious....except that I'm not known for doing upgrades).

I had debated waiting for Hardy Heron's release before building this Linux server. Except that I had bought the box back in December, and delaying was preventing was delaying all that BOINC work that I've been doing.

There's other stuff I want to or have thought of doing with this server, but don't know where I actually stand on doing those sorts of things. If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would've gotten this box (it was knee-jerk response to replacing a dead server, which I was later able to resurrect...negating the ordeal of recreating things). OTOH, I probably would've continued on with buying something else....and I'm not sure if I would've been that happy with that purchase. Of course, it has delayed that purchase....and it may become too late to get it. Though perhaps Windows XP will continue to still be available after June 30th, and I'll make that one last upgrade in that department.

Anyways...other than taking much longer than expected to upgrade....either the upgrade servers are still badly hammered, or Cox is throttling me. Cox seems to be sluggish in general today. The download speed was dismal. And, then hidden in the terminal you don't see my default, it was asking if I wanted to proceed with the upgrade after everything had been downloaded.

Annoying enough when doing 'sudo apt-get upgrade', even more so here....because I wasn't expecting that I had to wait and interact (with a hidden screen) in the upgrade. Later there were dialogs that popped up on stuff that wanted input, mainly to decide if stuff I had configured in Gutsy could be unconfigured in the resulting upgrade to Hardy. Umm, I configured those services so that I could use them....

Finally it was done....it took forever to boot while it did fs checks on /home and /MMCVideo, but then everything looked fine.

Well, not totally. lm-sensors was changed, so I had to reconfigure that, and I'm not sure but the core temperatures seem to be higher now. The default is FireFox 3.0 beta....and all my extensions and themes got disabled. I've been avoiding upgrading to FireFox 3.0 on my other machines for this reason. Though people say that the new version is faster, and the memory leak is fixed, and some of the hanging/crashing problems on Mac OS X seem to be gone. But, I want it to work the way I've customized it....

So, I changed my shortcut to launch firefox-2 instead and reverted things.

Now other than network lag, which I hope will clear up on its own....the only main thing that doesn't seem to work in the update is vmware. Which probably just means I need to rebuild the kernel stuff again (or see if there's some hardy specific details to making that work). Not really a big deal though, since I never got around to running anything in vmware. It was on my list of things to try, but now I need more disk on this box.

I heard 8.04 was going to have support for PM SATA, wonder if that's true and if the PCIe PM SATA card that is in the box will now work, etc.

While looking over my credit card spending, I noticed that the current balance out of line....some where significantly higher than expected, others were significantly lower.

I then noticed that some claimed to have had an opening balance of (~88k)....I never ran any of my cards that high (not did I have that kind of credit limit on any individual card).

Conclusion...archiving part of my MSMoney file was a mistake. Since MSMoney Plus pegs the CPU and is unresponsive for 30 minutes when first starting was resolved by using remove all bills repair. I decided that the only choice was to restore to a backup before I did the archive and repair and reenter data.

Fortunately, it has only been a few days since I upgraded. So I closed MSMoney, copied the pre-upgrade MSMoney file back...and reran the upgrade on it. I then waited the 30 minutes of unresponsive MSMoney Plus, and performed the repair.

I then reentered all the new transactions, downloaded statements (had to figure out how to redo that for some of the accounts), and then reentered all my bills....or most of them.

Time to go to sleep....

I checked the TiVo HD, and it was only recording a suggestion (that I wasn't interested in). So I canceled it.

I then setup the external drive. Found a spot on the UPS to plug in the odd shaped wart that prevented me to plugging it into my power strip. And found a spot where the tall drive would fit on my stand (couldn't find any answer on whether it would work in a horizontal orientation)....silly drive...its not a book. The 500GB My Book cheaper (and the local computer store had some).

I then pulled the plug on the TiVo HD. Hooked up the eSATA cable. And, powered up the TiVo again.

It came up...but didn't seem to see the storage. After surfing the menus a bit, I remembered that there was a selection in the settings menu for external devices. So, I went there and set up the drive. It rebooted again and did the setup....

Now I can have up to 86 hours of HD.

This time coming out, I got a message saying that it finally detected storage and asked if I wanted to set it up (again). I deleted the message, and headed into work.

I fiddled with it a bit more...even with both the master and terminal in the livingroom....I couldn't get the terminal to work from either of the jacks by the computer....and further away...the speed test was poor.

Come to think of it, I use powerline speakers for my rear surrounds...at least they work...though that might be why I can't get powerline networking to function. There might be other powerline network technologies that will co-exist, but the speakers are more important and wireless is acceptable.

Plus I already see myself getting better units down the road. Wonder where I would put them, and if it would be 'bad' if I had DROBO's on both....other than a serious lack of cash for all the tech stuff I want to get this year.

I was debating whether to buy the My DVR Expander from TiVo or Best Buy.

For some reason I thought there was an advantage to getting it from TiVo....perhaps I had some vague recollection of reading that Best Buy's price was higher. But, I saw that it was the same price. And, there's the iGive factor

As I was looking at my shopping cart for my checkout options, it occurred to me that I should've gotten RewardZone certificates. Apparently you have to check the site regularly to see when they are automatically issued to you, but they had apparently issued $35 worth of certificates to me on February 25th.

So, I went and completed the order using all the certificates.

Because I've been doing too much stuff with my TiVo HD DVR at the moment, I've decided to put off the purchase the Archos 605 WiFi. Instead I'm likely to purchase the MyDVR Expander for the TiVo.

There are rumors of the Archos 606 coming out later this year, while the details of what it'll do and look like are sketchy....the consensus is that Archos is going to have regular releases of new products (which kind of fits with most consumer electronics companies ) And, since it has been a major struggle of choosing between the Archos 605 WiFi or an iPod Touch....one would hope that the next version of the Archos will make the decision easier.

Plus the thinking to push ahead with the 605 at this point was based on wanting to have it before I go on my next trip (Penguicon).

So, quick cut to my netmap for April 2008....

And, now off to figure out where other gadgety goodness falls in my budget. Like moving up my next ThinkGeek order.

Link: http://www.lhaven.net/netmap.html

Wait...it isn't April 2008 yet.

Well, there's one item on the map, that I haven't purchased yet. But, I intend to order it tomorrow...and I do hope it arrives before the end of the month....but decided the put a future date to indicate that it contains future stuff.

It also contains that I'm dropping the WDS bridge for Powerline networking (HD-PLC), that has been ordered...it just hasn't arrived yet. Originally, there was some question of finding an open outlet behind my home theater setup to plug it in. But, then it occurred to me that the adapter could go anywhere on my wired network...since I had made that upgrade....and there's the jack in the storage room that I haven't acquired stuff to put around yet.

There's a plan to do so, but I need to go through the stuff in there to figure out what to get rid of to make space for using it for more than storage. One is to acquire a network laser printer (ideally with color and duplex capabilities, maybe copier)....and locate it here where (rather than next to one of my computers, due to concern on whether I have enough power at those locations ) I'm also wondering if I really need all the features, to maximize the number of other gadgets I also want to acquire....

Meanwhile, I'm already plotting my next addition....Been thinking of getting a TimeCapsule, but now Apple has released the patch to allow Time Machine to storage attached to an Airport Extreme....so I'm thinking that I'll do this, and get a Drobo to attach to it (assuming the pairing will work). Of course, it could be a while before I get around to having all the pieces.

Possibly like the 500GB SATA drive I purchased a while year before I found something to stick it in to.... Sadly that was the mirror drive in my Linux server (Orac) that failed recently. I should maybe see about getting Seagate to replace it.... Even though I don't need it for the Linux server now (though I am considering buying an enclosure for it...to mount 4 more drives outside of it....possibly more, since there's 4 regular eSATA ports and 2 PM-capable eSATA ports on the back. Though waiting for a version of Linux that'll hopefully support PM.)

Also looking at USB over ethernet, since I'm running out of space for USB peripherals at my main desk.... This this spot also cries out for the acquisition of a Drobo....since I pretty much to disk-to-disk backup now (since I had long ago past the point of reasonable tape backup [to DLT7000's] of my system, and it seems less and less likely that I'll be buying a new tape drive [LTO1] now). I'm sure if I think some more (oops I did), I can think of other places around here that cry out for additional Drobo's. Wonder if there's a limit to using the GeekBrief.TV discount code.... Though Drobo isn't the only think on the market that might solve my needs, but it is one of the cool looking things. Though it is only a USB storage device....there's an ethernet option for it, but it isn't a native ethernet option...so that sounds like it would be slower than some other sort of NAS product.

Hmmm.....so many gadgets....so little time, money, space, power, etc...