Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Link: http://www.ohiolinux.org/

This year I'm taking an more active roll in the organizing of it, then I did last year. And, it is shaping up to be pretty interesting. Though budget wise, its not looking like I'll be able to make....but now I'm thinking I might scale back my travel plans so that I can still make it.

I'm, again, primarily helping review speaker submissions for who will get to present. And, some of the people already lined up as keynotes and such seem quite interesting.

For instance, Peter H. Salus will be a keynote at OLF this year.

Also Shawn Powers had been invited to be a keynote. Wonder if this means that I'll finally get to meet him in person. He was at Penguicon earlier this year, but I only saw him twice...once as I was rushing to catch one of the elusive slow moving elevators. And, the other time while I was in the beef line.

Among the other chatter about possible speakers...is Dan Kaminsky, which stands out as a name I recognize because of the DNS exploit and all the extra work that got dropped on my lap last summer. Though later it was fun building new bind for my home DNS servers (the RedHat 7.3 and SuSE 9.3 boxes).

Elsewhere...Maco commented that if I pick her submission, there'll be at least one system administration talk at OLF. And, my response was that I don't know if I want to hear system administration talk when I'm on vacation. Though the whole idea of OLF for vacation is kind of odd. Especially since stress management says I need to go on vacations where I completely stop thinking about work.... Guess we'll see when I start reviewing submissions.

The last time I was ever on such a vacation...was in 2000. There was enough activity to keep me occupied and there was no Internet access or cellular service out there. Both of which are now available (which impacted the trip I took in 2005...in fact the page of services down just as I was departing really messed things up...and the it wasn't fun trying to do remote access on the spotty wifi/satellite Internet service.

There are also other features at OLF that I'm interesting in seeing/hearing. Like the DIOS panel on Sunday. (Diversity In Open Source). Or hearing Elizabeth Garbee speak again, which turned out to be rather interesting to hear when I heard her speak last year.

Just as I was starting to get frustrated and finally whipped off a question to AA asking when can I find out about American Eagle flights in/out of MHK to plan upcoming trips....

The site starts giving me the details for such flights....

Looks like there are only two sets of flights available to choose from. Still, it opens the doors for lots of options.

I did a quick look at what a flight to the Ohio Linux Fest would run me, and what kind of schedules were available. And, it looked like it might be a workable plan. I'll wait until closer to the event to book. Even though I sent the time off request for my next 3 con trips back on May 1st, I haven't heard yet. Even though there should be plenty of notice of a trip in September, November and April. Still don't know when the December trip will be...assuming it is in December. January might be better....(especially if I can get my doc to write me a script for a travel CPAP, and I allocate FSA next year to pay for it).

The tentative plan is to fly MHK<->CMH (one stop in DFW) in October using American, and to fly MHK<->ORD (one stop in MCI) in November using United. I will likely use American again for the flight to Calgary (assuming that's where I'm going)....since there are non-stop flights from DFW to YYC, but not from MCI. Not sure what I'm going to do in April...I think that's too far off in the future to plan.

Yeah...I've done it....

using firestarter and dhcp3-server.

Last trip I went on, I found myself wondering if there was some way to re-share my hotel internet connection to my various devices (namely my Eee PC [w/eeebuntu] and my iPhone 3G). The problem was the hotel Internet was pay $9.99 per 24 hours, and it was per MAC. For that trip, I confined my usage to the EeePC...and used 3G service to satisfy my iPhone needs. Which would probably be fine in most cases....

Though I'm sure someday I'll run into a situation where I'm in a non-3G area and want more speed, or in an area with no service.

I remember hunting around for how to do it then, but eventually forgot about it. But, recently a friend brought the question up, and I got to thinking about the problem again. Since then, I had acquired a 'real' laptop...and had ubuntu 9.04 on it....

So, I started researching for an easy way to accomplish this. After much turmoil and some miserable attempts...I concluded that the WiFi <-> WiFi was definitely a no go. Though it would've been the most desirable.

Leaving my laptop to connect by WiFi...and the resharing on another WiFi to my other personal devices.

Figuring that I might arm myself at some future date with a travel WiFi router to solve the WiFi <-> WiFi scenario...I tried the Wired <-> WiFi situation.

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I went to another Penguicon, at Penguicon 6 I had earned whuffies which I used to get a shirt for that con and registration to the next one. At Penguicon 7.0, I earned just enough whuffies to get registration to Penguicon 2010 (I had purchased a shirt). At first I hadn't decided if I would go for Penguicon again...but once I started earning whuffies, I needed to find some reason that I was earning them...and eventually settled on getting registration to come again next year.

Anyways....Penguicon 7.0 was also my first trip anywhere since I started CPAP. I survived, in fact I miss it. Since I slept better in the hotel room than I do at home. I always thought I did in previous travels, now even more so with CPAP. I would wake feeling refreshed (and not needing coffee), and I could make it most of the day before getting tired. Now that I'm back...the not totally awake and needing coffee in the morning is back.

I decided to leave the 'do not disturb' sign out all the time, and not have housekeeping poking around. It also took the pressure off in using my hotel room for more than just sleeping at night and during the con. So, no more going out for breakfast and then coming back to use the bathroom, and worrying that housekeeping is going to come barging in or skip me...or be in my room and prevent me from using the bathroom.

I was worried about running out of shampoo, but turned out to have ample for the 4 nights.

For some reason I swear my machine was quieter in the hotel room, perhaps its because the night stand was open in the bottom from just the front, and I put the machine in there. So the machine's noise was shielded much better. The IKEA night stand I have at home is open front and back....and not as low. Don't know if this is something I'll look at addressing should I ever get around to rearranging my bedroom.

There were other improvements....like I didn't fall asleep on the 3+ hour shuttle ride to the airport....though I found it really boring, and I was kind of all annoyed about the fact that I reserved the trip on April 4th...but RoadRunner lost my reservation and then the driver seemed annoyed that I was holding up his departure. But, the shuttle arrived ahead of schedule at the airport.

Then the RoadRunner trip coming home came in slow....because before the scheduled pickup, it dumped a couple quarts of oil and was continuing to leak. Before we left Kansas City it had to stop and have 3 quarts added to it. There was no stop in Lawrence, so then stopped in Topeka at the RoadRunner office there, so that the engine could be shut off some some more poking around under the hood.... Then one of the passengers (a backup driver for RoadRunner), as we were coming up to the Manhattan, KS turn off from I70, had the nerve to suggest that since I was the only passenger going there...that the driver should skip going to Manhattan so that he could make sure that he gets to Junction City.

Things also got really noisy, took on a guy in Topeka who was blasting tunes on his PSP (the passenger/backup driver pretended to poke at the PSP from behind, I just had to put up with it)....and then there were 3 small children in the back, who now awake (having slept through everything else) were adding to the noise level in the shuttle.

Wonder when I'll be able to plan American Eagle flights out of Manhattan?

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I've been thinking of doing this ever since I bought the condo that I had been leasing. Worried about what keys are out there.

Plus there have been two occasions where I've come home to find my front door unlocked.

First time I was still leasing, I had gone away to Calgary on Xmas holidays for a week and came home to find the door unlocked.

Second time was after I owned it, I yelled at the building owner about it and since then whenever they say they'll be around doing maintenance inside all the units...I take time off from work to make sure that my unit stays secure.

Evidently the reason is because the landlord doesn't believe in deadbolts, and won't lock them after someone has been in (even though I'm pretty sure the insurance company's discount for having deadbolts, assumes you use them.) And, like my door...units don't have doors that close properly (year round). Though my neighbor has it worse...if they don't close their door completely, it'll swing wide open on its own. And, there have been too many occasions where I've come home to see their door wide open and there's nobody home. Probably doesn't do much for the heating costs....

So, I had been looking at finding details on line about doing the rekey myself. Though not in any major hurry....plus nothing, except maybe buying completely new locksets, via Amazon.com.

Well, the new yellow pages came out a couple weeks ago...and I happened to flip it open to look at locksmiths. And, that got the gears turning again.

And, now with the upcoming trip to Penguicon...the combination of anxiety and paranoia (partly induced by my CPAP & sleep issues)....I went and called the first big locksmith add in the yellow pages and had Bandit Locksmith come out and rekey my front door.

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Black Friday started early because of Amazon.com.

I had take Wednesday off from work, because I needed to. And, I had thought that I might need to use it to wait for UPS to show up. But, UPS hadn't showed up when I got home Tuesday night...and somewhere after 7pm they showed up with my delivery.

I took delivery of a Ricardo Beverly Hills Capistrano Lite Free Wheelers 29-inch Two Compartment Vertical Pullman, Iris Purple. Should complement the 21-inch version that I got for my trip to OLF. Plus I had tweeted that my old pullman was starting to look sad....

And, while I was waiting at home on Tuesday, I happened by Amazon.com, and saw that they were starting Black Friday already. They had the Leatherman Micra for $12.99. Don't know what its usual Amazon.com price, but it was lowered for a limited time (right now it shows up as $16.46).

It was very tempting, but at first I was going to resist. Even though I could use some new tool gadget in my pocket since I was missing. But, a quick look at my shopping cart and my wishlist, and my planned purchase list. I saw that I had down to get another Tea Wand as a present, but I hadn't actually ordered a new one yet. So, I added that to my cart and put that order through.

2-day Prime delivery would put that sometime on Friday. I didn't really want to venture out to the mall on Black Friday, so I went ahead and ordered it.

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....after upgrading the other harddrive in my main desktop. I finally got around to doing it. Sure was a pain being without my main computer. All the things I wanted to do online (and offline), but couldn't. Sure, some of the (online) things I could've done from other computers (and some I did)...but there were things that were unique to this one.

This should be it for upgrades this this computer until I finally break down and get a new one....whether it'll be the latest and greatest with Windows 7 or I finally make the switch to a Mac (or perhaps Linux will be mainstream?)....who knows.

Meanwhile, it looks like I'm in the market for a new watch already.

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Link: http://www.netflix.com/Movie/How_to_Lose_Friends_Alienate_People/70098898?trkid=222336&lnkctr=srchrd-sr&strkid=193596298_0_0

I rated this 4 stars.

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While disabling berry_charge.ko (guess I could've blacklisted it) solved the high CPU condition of udevd. It didn't charge my blackberry overnight.

In my search, I saw mention of barry and bcharge. So, today I crammed those packages onto my EeePC 901.

I used it to do a backup of my Blackberry...but that was just to see it work. I'm only looking for the charging aspect, and there wasn't details on what I needed to get that going. Though I guess I installed too much, wonder if I can go back and peel the backup gui part off later.

Took some searching around, but I eventually found that bcharge resides in /usr/sbin, and invoked it by hand to make it go. And, since turning it on and writing this post....the battery guage on my Blackberry has finally gained a segment (unlike overnight where it just stayed put).

Wonder if I'll reboot now or later to see if the udevd scripts work....and maybe when I get home I'll take a look at whether tethering is an option or what else I can do.

I'm at the Ohio Linux Fest, and I'm using my EeePC 901 as a charger for my Blackberry (8703e). But, I was finding that it was getting of toasty and noisy.

Had noticed the CPU graph in gkrellm was pegged. So, I started looking to see what was the cause.

udevd was consuming all the CPU....that didn't seem right, but after doing some reboots and experimentation....I found that it was caused by plugging my Blackberry in. It would continue to consume the CPU after the Blackberry was unplugged. So, a reboot was necessary to get things happy again. I had tried restarting udevd, but that seemed to cause other problems (probably loss of state information for other devices in the Eee?)

So much for using the EeePC as my mobile/travel charger for my Blackberry (and work phone).

But, this morning I did a more extensive google search and eventually found mention that disabling the berry_charge kernel module would "fix" the problem. So, after locating the module at

/lib/modules/2.6.21.4-eeepc/kernel/drivers/usb/misc/berry_charge.ko

and renaming it (to disable it). I rebooted and tried plugging in my Blackberry.

That seems to have fixed it. My Blackberry is charging, and the CPU graph looks good on my EeePC. The work phone, Motorola KRZR, doesn't show this issue with charging from my EeePC.

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