A Happy New Year

Just a brief message, wishing all a Happy New Year.  May it good new year for all!

Peace and Happiness to all!

Off My Rambling (again)

So, it's the night before the Night Before Christmas in my neck of the woods.  A good time to spend time with family and friends, and all the usual traditions the season brings here.  Which is, of course, why I'm playing on my computer.

Not just any computer, though.  Oh, I was using that fancy Thinkpad Carbon earlier on this evening.  I got pestered from work, apparently another crew hadn't figured out that this is time off, and they shouldn't be pestering, but they did.  And I had to put together a quick report to send them.  (Pulling files off USB thumb drives, putting them together with a quick write-up.)

After that, I decided to play around with some of the older cyber-critters on the ranch.  Most of my older systems have been unplugged and packed away.  However, to my surprise, I found that I'd left the little Thinkpad T30 powered up.  So, here I am, all booted up into Puppy Slacko, enjoying the evening at a much more relaxed pace.  Guess a Pentium 4 will do that for you...

Beyond all computer amusements, this is a time for a little quiet reflection.  The year is winding to a close, and I hope it ends on a good note.  It hasn't been the best of years, but it most certainly hasn't been the worst.  I hope next year brings good things. 

I hope it's a peaceful season for all, whomever and wherever.  My best wishes and thanks to all who've stopped by.  Hopefully you'll stop back again.  I'll try to be a bit more reliable in my writing in the coming year.  And maybe even a bit more informational as well.

And now, back to an evening with Slacko...

Traitorous Leanings

It's been a while since I've posted, and I apologize.  Been a busy couple months, and it's not really letting up as we head into the holidays.  But, work is work, and I'm glad I have it.

I've made some heavy changes in my computing arsenal.  Some have been necessary, some not so much.  Some have resulted from tripping over exceptional deals on eBay and elsewhere.  Some may eventually send me to the poor house.

I previously mentioned my purchase of a Surface Pro, and how much I actually liked it.  Well, due to some of the demands of my current job (RE:, some truly horrific websites that I'm required to access), I found myself somewhat having to use a Win8 system.  I wasn't particularly happy about that, but ya does what ya does...

The Surface, while a great little system to tote around and use on the go, is not a system for everyday office work.  A 10" screen just doesn't cut it, especially when your eyes are as bad as mine.  So, a check of the local Best Buy netted me an el-cheapo Asus computer for just a bit over $200.  (It was an open-box/demo/closeout deal.)  It had an i3, a decent 15" screen, and a serviceable keyboard.  And it worked.

Till today.  I started having trouble with the USB 3.0 port.  Inserting a thumb drive would crash the computer.  (I have my suspicions of what's going on, but I'm not sure.)  This didn't make me happy, but luckily, I was testing a new system I just got it, thanks to one of those serendipitous eBay finds: a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

Yeah, I know.  But the price I got this one for was literally too good to pass up.  It's a nice system, 1.8 Ghz Core i5, 4 GB RAM, and a 256 GB SSD.  Running Windows 8.1  I've loaded Office 2013 onto it, as I wanted OneNote, which I've (re)fallen in love with.

And the whole system is beautifully compact, yet completely usable.  I've avoided the "ultrabooks" for a long time, just considering them overly expensive toys.  The Carbon changed that opinion.  Yeah, it's damned expensive, but it's definitely no toy.  I have to put a big check mark into Lenovo's corner on this one.  (I'm starting to sound like an advertisment, aren't I?)

Today was the first day i used the Carbon in the office full time, and it was like night and day from the Asus.  Yes, the 14" screen is smaller, but the keyboard more than makes up for that.  I've heard people gripe about the new "island-style" keyboards.  And I have to admit, I love the older style Thinkpad keyboards, but this one holds its own.  It's damned good.  And it makes typing on this system a pleasure. 

So, here I am, becoming a Windows user again...

Well, not really.  But that's a story for another entry...  ;-)

Prepping

Been a little busy this weekend.

Not sure if I mentioned before, but one of the reasons I made my whirlwind trip home was to switch out computers.

Long story short, with no real explanations, I'd settled on using my little white Macbook as my primary work computer, and it was giving yeoman service.  OK, explanations:  The new business center printer my employer installed…well, there are no good drivers available for Linux.  I mean, there are drivers, and I installed them, but they won't work with this particular printer.  (I honestly think the damned printer is just a bargain-basement, give-us-the-cheapest-thing-you-got, don't-worry-about-compatibility number…)  The Mac sees it fine, so…

However, I have to now make an admission:  I'm getting old.  That little 13" screen that used to be so clear and crisp…  Well, it still is, but it's small.  I've been spending my days leaning in on the desk, and my back has decided to tell me about it.  Constantly.  So…

I have now cleaned up, updated, and software-loaded my 2nd gen Macbook Pro (2.4 Ghz, Core2Duo), which is running Mountain Lion.  The gentleman I acquired it from had jacked the memory up to 3 GB, and had stuck in a 1 TB hard drive.  (Yes, I will one day get a 2 GB stick and make it 4 GB of RAM.  But it's working fine for now.)  It, and the Surface Pro, are going to my my only accompaniment on the road.

I joked to a friend of mine that having Mountain Lion and Windows 8 side by side might result in the birth of some sort of terrifying dimensional anomaly.  (Cue Twilight Zone theme here.)

Already copied over several hundred megs of files I've generated since I've been onsite.  Now, just waiting to be able to sit down with a little screen real estate to work with.

Did have to laugh here, but not for reasons of screen size.  I needed some back up storage, so I went digging on my nightstand, and found a couple 16 GB thumb drives.  One of them I remember has the perennially failed install of FatDog64.  The other some oddball version of Puppy that I can't remember.  I just mounted them both on the MBP, and re-partitioned both of them as storage devices.

The reason I laughed about this:  It amazes me how cavalier we are today with these things.   32 gigabytes, containing two complete operating systems, yet I just nuke and reformat without giving a single thought.

Times have most definitely changed...

Yep....... (RE: Of Styli and Men...)

All of you knew this was coming, didn't you?

Less than a week, and I manage to lose the stylus on the Surface Pro.

Hell, I knew it was coming.  I told myself over and over again,"You're going to lose it!"

Bu it survived around 5 days of being toted between my hotel room and the office...  No problems.  I was super careful.  I babied it...

Yeah.  I lost it.

Somewhere, between my hotel room, carrying stuff to the car, the 6 hours of drive time, and walking through my yard to my house, I lost it.

I'm pissed.

It's the one truly abysmal bit of design on this system.  Why, in God's name, did you not put some sort of clip on the damned thing?  A not very strong magnet holding this thing that just begs to be snagged and pulled free from the system...  Oh, GENIUS!

Anyway, I honestly have no one else but myself to blame.  (Believe me, I've tried to find someone else...)

I went on a crazy spree this evening.  I've ordered an original replacement, but only after ordering the first straight capacitive stylus I came across.  Then, while looking at some other examples on eBay, I got to thinking...Hmmm...

An excavative trip down through the laptop layers, and out comes my old HP TC1100...  Pop out the stylus (this is the damned RIGHT way to stow a stylus), and...

It works.  Perfectly.  And it's actually a sight more comfortable to use than the original Microsoft-supplied model, owing to its larger girth.  Alas, I swore in my past OCD-ness, I'd ordered a spare for the HP.  But...No...  Can't find it.  Replacement tips, yes.  Spare, no...  (A trip back to eBay netted me a couple old clunker TC1100 styli for sale.  Not worried about worn tips, as I do have spares for those.  Ha ha...)

So, I guess I'll use the TC1100 stylus while I'm home, and then drop by Best Buy back out where I'm working to grab a generic.  It's going to be while before I get back home and get the ones I ordered.

I am going to have to stop by the Computer-Shop-Across-the-River to see about the T23 and the XPS M2010 tomorrow.  Wonder if they might happen to have an odd capacitive stylus loose about..?

Selling my sell-out

OK, I'm being a little facetious there.  My using Windows 8 on a tablet device does seem a little bit...well, you know...  Especially after all the snide little asides I've made.

But it works.  Granted, there's no way in heaven nor hell that I would want it on a desktop.  But here, on the Surface Pro, it's in its native environment.  And it does work.  After a fashion.

I used the Surface all last night, putting it through its paces.  Used via the battery, and got around 4.5 hours out of it, with a LOT of YouTube videos thrown in.  I know people have griped about the older generation Surface batteries, but this is fine for me.  I used the system both in what I consider its "ultrabook" mode, and as a tablet.  (The latter being where I really cranked the videos.)  I had nary a problem.

Well, OK, one.  The touch cover.  It works.  It's functional.  But...  Problems.  Including what I discovered was a rather infamous random "muting" bug that hits during video and audio playback.  And, no matter how hard I tried, typing was just a chore.  It just ran agains the grain of the "muscle memory" old timer typists develop.  (Should I admit that I learned to type partially on an old 1940s manual typewriter?  Probably not...)

So, this morning, I did go back and trade up to the typing cover.  World of difference.  Night and day.  For me, the touch cover is functional.  The type cover is usable.  And pure usability is what matters to me.

I note that a lot of people have griped about the size of the type cover, and problems using the keyboard because of that.  It doesn't bother me, as I'm a heavy laptop user, and this is is in line with a laptop keyboard.  An "island-type" keyboard it ain't.  But it works well.  I can touch type on it with a good amount of speed and accuracy.

For all my Apple love, I've never really felt it towards the iPad.  Never really wanted one.  A good friend uses one, even for doing his work, and he loves it.  But I just could never come to terms with it.  I now hate to admit it, but for what I want to do, Microsoft has trumped Apple.   For me (and notice that "for me"), the Surface seems more productivity-oriented.  (I just caught that I'm starting to sound like a company shill.  I'm most definitely not.  See the above comments about Win8 on a desktop to dispel that.)

But, to be honest, I'm not going to be using this thing as a productivity machine on any type of regular basis.  I've been griping about the small size of my 13" Macbook screen.  And my Macbook dwarfs the Surface.  So...

In the end, this is a really expensive toy that I truthfully couldn't afford to buy.  But I did buy it, and now I've got it.  And I'm going to use it.  It's blindingly portable.  And it's a tablet that is running a full-tilt OS with real applications.  I can use this as a full-tilt computer as needed.  (And I've been experimenting with it on my work files.  No problem.)

No, I'm not going to try and justify this.  I'm an idiot for buying it.  But, I like my new toy.  I think it'll fit in with my other toys quite well.

I just won't be getting anything for Christmas this year.

Nor Easter.  Nor my birthday.........

Oddballing it

A quick note from an unusual place.

I'm out on the road right now, working out of a field office.  Brought my 13" Macbook with me, along with my T410s.  For the longest time I was using the Thinkpad with Manjaro, but ran into problems with the printer setup in the office.  (The driver package downloadable from the printer manufacturer isn't quite right...)  So, I've been using the Macbook instead.

My problem is, I've gotten addicted to a slightly larger screen.  I wouldn't really mind if I could get home, as I'd simply load up my Macbook Pro with Mountain Lion and go to town.  Alas, I've got another week before I'm going home.  Soooo...  My tired eyes are not liking me.  (And I'm dreading having to load MS Office for Mac on that system...)

Bigger news, though.  Or, maybe sellout news...  ;-)  For whatever warped reason, I got a truly wild hair, and I bought a new toy.  As prices have come down on the older models, I am now the proud owner of a (gasp!) Surface Pro...

Yes, I picked up a Surface Pro.  Not a 2, but the original.  Managed to grab a 128 GB model, and picked up a 64 GB MicroSD to supplement the storage.  My one mistake was being a true cheapskate, and getting the touch cover rather than the "type" model.  However, I paid far too much for this damn system, and I'll make do.  (It's not terrible, but it sure as hell takes getting used to.)

I have to honestly say, while Windows 8 is a true pain in the ass, I had far less trouble adapting than I thought I would.  I have't had it for long, but so far I'm getting along OK.  Added Chrome to it for browsing (probably not the best choice, but...), and made sure to get AV software up and running.  Used ninite.com for the first time with that, and it worked fine.  (Picked that up from the guys over at Tek Syndicate, and was glad for that.)

Anyway, I need to get back to work.  The Surface is in the office with me, and I think it will be doing some media streaming for me while I work.  We'll see how this goes, and if I really come to regret how much I just shelled out to experiment with Win8...  (ie, we'll see how big an idiot I truly turn out to be...)

I really should've gotten the other keyboard............

Work-a-day

I'm being spotty again, I know.  But this work and travel thing tends to take it out of you.  I've actually been rather sparse in my online usage as of late.

But, a quick update:  the Dell XPS M2010 arrived, in somewhat decent shape, only to die as I was trying to test it with various Linux versions.  Not sure what happened there, but it's now in the shop to be tested, and hopefully fixed.  (Beyond the whole not-working thing, my biggest gripe was the screen.  Or the fact that the screen had apparently taken a goodly sized blow from behind, and is now sitting crooked. {!!!})  Joy.

The T23 is still in the shop, having a new fan installed.  I'd hoped to have it done while I was home, but that didn't happen.  Maybe next time...

While on the road, I've been using my Macbook for my work stuff, and carrying the "James Bond" Vaio (the VGN-SZ120P/B) running MacPup 550 as my backup.  That worked well, though I was kind of worried about the constant on/off cycles I was putting the Vaio through, as I haven't gotten 'round to setting up a sleep function under MacPup.

Well, I decided to change up a bit, and switch out systems.  So, this trip, I switched the Vaio for my Thinkpad T410s, which is running Manjaro.  Bit of a difference.  I'm actually using the Thinkpad as my main work computer today, giving the Macbook the day off.  (Though I'll probably end up "thumb driving" the files I create today over to the MB, just so I'll have everything in one central location.)

So far, I have to say, the T410s is very, very seductive.  The Thinkpads are designed for day to day work, and this keyboard is...well, it's a Thinkpad keyboard.  The keyboard on my Mac is great, but this...  Well...  Yeah...

And, I have to say, Manjaro has, so far, acquitted itself quite well.  I hadn't had this system out in a while, so I had to do some heavy updating before bringing it on the road.  Not a problem.  And, as expected, LibreOffice has handled all the Office documents I've thrown at it with aplomb.

My only "wants" so far has been for a good graphics converter.  (I need something that will take .TIFFs and convert them to .PDFs.)  And I need to find a good deed plotting package for Linux.  (I know Sandy Knoll has their Metes & Bounds program set up for Ubuntu, but...)  I'll do some searching...  (Luckily I found a good, non-CLI screen grab utility, gnome-screenshot, which has filled the bill for me quite nicely.)

So, things are going along at least OK.  I'll be glad to see if the Dell gets up and running, or if I just inherited a big bag of parts for cannibalizing...

And, now, back to work....

Corrections and Admissions

Yeah, I meant to make a correction the other day.  I know it's "conficker", not "conflicker".

OK, that's out of the way, and I feel slightly less dense...

And I hope no one took grand offense at my going off on the mild rant last entry.  I'm not even sure what caused it.  Though maybe I was simply anticipating, as today I did run across some real charmers on YouTube.  Fine examples of "the binary thought matrix" types.  (You know, "Everything SUCKS except what I like...")  In all honestly, I'm a live-and-let-live type.  Use what you feel most comfortable with.  Just don't try to ram your views down my throat as holy writ.  I might get testy...

This evening I'm trying to get myself psyched to get back out on the road for the second week of my new work adventure.  It's kind of...well, hard.  I'm not working with my old crew anymore, and I'm having to adapt to new requirements.  My old group was known for their hardcore, cover-all-the-bases style of doing our line of work.  This new group is...well, it's different.  And I'm having to get used to that.  Among other things...  It ain't easy for an old dog like me...

And now to the admission.  I'm one of those people who, when they get a little down, gets a bit too materialistic for their own good.  (I'm sure no one has noticed that.  They certainly wouldn't if they walked into my house and saw the stacks of old computers...)

Well...

I've always said that there were only two Dell laptop models that I would ever want, and I have one of those.  (The XPS M1530.)

Well...

I now have the other one...

I was moping about on YouTube, got bored, and bounced over to the 'bay.  Did a search, and the little devil sitting on my shoulder started doing the Happy Dance...

There was a functional Dell XPS M2010.  For a decent (by XPS M2010 standards) price.  Granted, it's a bit of a fixer-upper.  But the features were tolerable.  It has everything it needs to make it usable for right now...

Yeah, long story short, I bought it...  I couldn't really afford it.  But...

Oh hell...

I need to go pack...  The Macbook, my "James Bond" Vaio, a stack of Puppy Linux CDs...  I might actually drag out my old Nook which has a ton of books on it...

I think I need to get some sleep...........

Just fiddling about

Yep, it's just another weekend here at the Unnecessarium.  Nothing going on beyond a lazy evening, watching YouTube videos.  (This evening's fare provided by the Aussie50 and LMull3.)

The battery on the "James Bond" laptop (ie, the Sony Vaio) finally gave out after the endless video runs, so I switched over to the T30.  (Which I jokingly [and for the oddest of reasons] also associate with a real spy, though definitely not one in a heroic vein.  We'll just leave it at that...)  I think I was kinda driven towards using a Thinkpad for the rest of the evening by LMull3's video on an IBM PS/Note 425 laptop.  Fun stuff...

I dropped the T23 off at the Computer-Shop-Across-the-River this morning.  Don't know when I'll be able to see it again.  Kind of sad about that.  I hope the fan is easily fixed, or quickly replaced.  (I suspect the latter.)  It's such a cool little computer, I wish I had it to play with.  (Might want the CMOS battery here for that, too.)

I'm going to go off on my usual little side rant about these older computers  I am perennially impressed by how capable these older systems are, once they're cleaned up and blessed with a newer, better operating system.  (Yeah, I did just take a jab at the Great Redmond Beast there...)

UXWBill has a good rant on old computers in the description of one of his videos.  I think he hits the nail on the head with his comment to the "young whippersnappers" that not everyone is interested in the latest game du jour.  Not eveyone needs a bleeding edge processor, nor the latest graphics gismos...  I certainly don't.

This old T30 cost me pennies compared to a newer system.  No, it won't play the latest games.  No it won't run Windows 8, thank God.  (There's another dig, by the way...)  It struggles just a bit to get up to speed with YouTube videos.  But, it's happily running a very up-to-date Linux operating system.  It will surf the web via a wireless card, and it can run some quite productivity powerful software.

And it's just damned cool.

I dare anyone to pull a current production laptop in that has a keyboard as nice as this one.  And I think you'd be somewhat hard-pressed to find a modern system that's as well-built as this computer is.  (And I'm including it's current day descendents in that.)

And it's just damned cool.

A couple years ago, I got a wild idea to play with a Powerbook 3400, which I'd upgraded the RAM (to a whole 80 MB), and installed OS 9.1 on.  I dragged it into the office, hooked it up, and started writing up speadsheets and reports on.  (Using MS-Office 2001 for Mac.  And no, that's not a dig...)  Using a thumb drive, I copied all of our then-current office forms over to the Powerbook.  (I  did this via a USB card, having installed the drivers from one of the Operator HeadGap CDs.)  And, you know what?  It worked perfectly.  I did a bunch of file write-ups, saved them all back to the thumb drive, and was able to email them in later from my Powerbook G4.  (If I'd put some real time in, I could've installed a wireless card on the 3400.)  No one who received those files had a clue they'd been completely written on a c.15 year old machine.

I used to routinely work in OS 9 under Classic on my old AlBook, a computer which routinely ran circles around a brand new Toshiba I had with the (then) latest version of Windows 7 installed on it.

And, no, I have no idea what brought this little rant on.  I guess I was feeling a bit defensive about my dear little T30 here.  And all the other old computers, both (former) Wintel and Mac, that festoon my room.

They're all just damned cool...

Back Yet Again

Another happy return.  Or somesuch...

My apologies for the silence here.  I seem to have become employed again, and am back in the traveling mode.  Long distance travel combined with a lot of work on-site do not a good blog environment make.  But, I'm back now for a very quick update before crashing out.

Being on the road has meant taking up the Macintosh mantle again.  I do most of my heavy duty work lifting with the Macs, as most of the "tools of the trade" are on them. This week, I had my white Macbook with me.  It was my first "new" Mac, and introduced me to Snow Leopard. And it works like a little polycarbonate trooper.

However, it wasn't alone on this trip.  I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I had come across another system to join my Linux fleet, a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ120P/B.  It's a nice little system, with a Core Duo processor at about 1.83 Ghz, a gig of RAM, and a 100 GB hard drive.  Came to me with WinXP, but it's now running MacPup 550, and works phenomenally.  I jokingly call it my "James Bond" computer, as it's close to the models used in Casino Royale.  (As an added bonus, the previous owner apparently had some business dealings in Russia.  The keyboard has a set of aftermarket Cyrillic stickers on them.  Sort of a nice touch...)  It went with me on the road, and handled some email and entertainment duties.  Just for the heck of it.  (I just gave it the gift of some new rubber feet, as its originals had long disappeared.)

While I was on the road, I found (yes) another Thinkpad.  This one a T23, almost literally for pennies.  Nice little Pentium 3 system.  I did manage to get a new main battery for it, and upgrade the RAM from 256 MB to 640 MB.  That was all the anticipated stuff...  Would be nice if the CMOS battery were in good shape.  That was something I foolishly didn't think about.  (One is on order now.)  My only complaint...  I seem to have a problem with laptops and PCMCIA slot covers. I pulled the T23 out of the box, unwrapped it, and the slot cover fell out...

Oh well...

When I upgraded the RAM this evening, WinXP threw a fit, informing me that it had to be "reactivated" because of changes in the computer.  Huh?  So, I took great joy in live booting my Puppy Slacko CD, firing up Gparted, and...  Well, you know...  Running great now.  I swear it actually runs better than the T30 does...

Alas, no wireless.  From the looks of it, it (like my old A31) doesn't have the antenna installed.  And I'm not bothering to install one.  I am a bit worried about the system fan, and may drop it off at the Computer-Shop-Across-the-River tomorrow, as I really don't have time to tear the thing apart.  I have two days off before heading back out on the road.  Probably just needs a good cleaning...

And, I also picked up a copy of Mark Bowden's Worm, about the "Conflicker" outbreak of a few years back.  Bowden's not the greatest writer out there, but I'm hoping it'll at least hold my interest, when I'm not watching UXWBill and VWestlife videos on Youtube...

Bit of a surprise

Don't know about you, but I tend to like decent surprises.

But I'll save that for a moment.  On to other, more mundane surprises.

I'd switched the Thinkpad T30 over to Precise Puppy 5.6.1, and had no problem with it.  However, I've recently developed a strange interest in the Slacko side of the Puppyverse, so...

Yeah, I did the whole download/burn/install "thing" on the T30, ending up with an install of Puppy Slacko 5.6.  (Actually, there was a whole "going south" scenario, which involved faffing up the "Save" file creation, leading to me having to do a delete and recreate...  Leave it to me...)

Everything is working fine now, but I find myself just...not happy with it.  I mean, yeah, it runs fine, and looks OK, but...  I notice the fan now cranks much more than usual.  I monkeyed with the processor regulator (no, I can't remember what it's really called), and set it to "Powersave" mode for my running things off battery.  That seemed to help a bit, but...

I don't know.  I think I'm developing a serious case of Everything's-Wrong-OCD...

Anyway, I'm still giving Slacko the big chance.  I toted the system with me down to the local Historical Society session, but never got 'round to using it.  (Damn, that little thing is heavy, especially when compared to my T410s.  But when you compare the build quality of the two...  Well, let's not talk about "heavy", shall we?)

While I was downloading Slacko, I also grabbed a copy of Carolina Linux 1.0.  For those of you who don't know, Carolina is a fork off of Saluki Linux.  I've been considering Carolina ever since noting that Saluki was no longer being developed.  My main concern with Saluki was the seeming lack of an up-to-date web browser.  (I think the latest version that I'd then found of Firefox was 10.0 in the Saluki repos.)  I was really a bit concerned about using Saluki on my Thinkpad X60s.

So, through the download/burn/live boot cycle...  I had problems on the T410s.  It just seemed like Carolina didn't like booting from CD.  So, after some more of my famous faffing, I got it booting, and then decided to do a USB thumb drive install.  I had a 16 GB Kingston drive I'd gotten on the cheap from Amazon, so...  Instead of doing the quick-n-dirty install I normally do, I partitioned the drive with Gparted, then used the Puppy Universal Installer included with Carolina to install to the USB drive.

And then had the boot problems again on T410s.  Not sure what that was.  Teething problems..?

Anyway, I had the USB drive version working, and had dragged the X60s out to recharge, when I decided to check through Saluki again, to see what files I'd left on the computer, etc.  While I had Saluki booted up, I decided to give a run through the Package Manager, just for giggles.  I didn't, however search under .SFS packages, but under the standard Puppy packages.

The fact that I'm now typing this under Firefox 24.0...  Well, I'm just going to leave it at that...

Faffing, indeed...

Needless to say, Saluki is staying on this system now.  I did test boot of Carolina here, and it worked perfectly.  (A slight sound problem that required a couple quick clicks under the ALSA setup to fix was it.)  So Saluki will stay as the main OS, and Carolina will be backup.  A nice surprise for the evening.

I can handle those...

The (minor) Silliness Patrol

So, I had my first full, official session with the T30 running Puppy Precise 5.6.1, and it did great.  I actually managed to run the (new) battery down, as I was cranking through old Youtube videos. 

So, after I'd got the T30 back on the charger, I decided to do some more video browsing, so I grabbed the T410s, and headed to the kitchen table.  Was there for a while before the family starts giving me the evil eye. There's this sleep thing they wanted to partake in, and me sitting in the kitchen with all the lights on seems to be a hindrance to that.  So...

(Insert Trouble Here)

I put the 410s to sleep, got a drink to tote back to my room, then went to pick up the laptop.  Started to lift it by the front corner, and felt something like a small panel sliding off.  I looked, and...

Yeah, a little chunk of plastic right at the front corner of the machine had come off.  A quick inspection showed a very nice little break, like the system had been impacted very precisely on that corner.  I am honestly not sure when/where/how that happened.  Let's just say I wasn't happy.

Repair time.  But I couldn't remember if I had any glue to do the repair.  And I'm looking at a little few-millimeters-by-few-more-millimeters plastic chip, and knowing that it isn't going to survive long in my cluttered up room...

A quick search, and to my great relief, I found a tube of super glue left over from a long-ago repair job.  It even had a nice, precision application tip that would work fine with this particular task.  So, after a dry run (where I nearly lost the broken piece after making sure which way it fit), I applied a tiny bit of glue to the edges, and then replaced the broken bit.

The instructions were to hold the piece in place for 30 seconds.  In my overly fixated way, I exceeded that by about 25 seconds.  (You can never be sure!)  Then I went to check my handiwork.

Which would've been much easier if my finger would've come freely away from the corner of the T410s...

Yeah, I did.

A tiny drop of the glue had squeezed out when I'd pushed in on the piece.  And my finger was firmly attached to the edge with the glue.

The response, of course, was a very short, painful jerk away from the corner of the machine.  I half-expected the piece to come loose, but it didn't.  It was firmly attached.

And I'm now genetically encoded to my laptop via a tiny organic matrix chip on the body of the machine.

How's that for high-tech security?

Morning after

Yeah...

And no, it's not that bad.  The T30 is doing fine.  Except for one little problem.  The infamous "Older Thinkpad + Linux = Suspend Problems".

If you only suspend for a few minutes, then resume, you're fine.  But leave it suspended for around 10 minutes, and the screen won't come back on.  You have to do a hard reboot to get back to the system.

Annoying, but not a deal killer.

So...  After some agonizing this morning, I decided to make a change.  I grabbed my Precise Puppy 5.6.1 CD, booted, and fired up Gparted.  Set the hard drive up, then let the Puppy Universal Installer do the rest for a frugal install.  Figure I'll just avoid the suspend issue altogether...

And, to be honest, Puppy's probably even lighter on this system than CrunchBang.  So, what the hey?

Right now I'm running it on the first official boot, and haven't even set up my "Save" file yet.  Take care of that in just a few.

I might do some later experiments.  I've been meaning to Give Precise 5.7.1 a try.  Maybe even monkey with Slacko, who knows?  Last night I downloaded several Puppy .ISO's on the T410s.  Haven't done any burning or installing yet, but...  We shall see...

Until I settle on something else, I'll be quite happy with Precise.  I'm comfortable with it, and it performs great.  And, much as I love #!, Puppy is...well, just a little bit brighter...

Though I really do need to reset the screen background..........

Dancing con't

OK, CrunchBang 11 Waldorf installation complete.  Everything working perfectly.

I am impressed.  This is just a reminder of how all that "obsolete" technology out there...  Well, it might not be obsolete.  Here's a c.11 year old computer, running a thoroughly modern OS, able to keep pace with any of my modern machines.  (I was most impressed watching the Pentium 4 processor hardly break a sweat while cranking through a test brace of YouTube videos.  I wouldn't want to do that constantly, but...Well done!)

We're all too quick to jump on the new is better bandwagon.  However...

This little computer is another example of something I'd put on my "back to school" tech list.  (The one where, if I were a starving student heading off to college, what would I try to get to use.)  Loaded up with CrunchBang, I think this would hold it's own as a work computer.  Easily.

Though, yeah, I know it won't play the latest games, etc.  But, then, I'm not a game player, so...

I just plugged the new battery in.  The original one was holding about an hour and a half charge (actually a little more), so I'll be interested to see if this one does better.

But, after about a whole hour of playing with the system through tests and installs, I have to say, I like this T30!

AND AN ADDITIONAL NOTE:

I'm doing a new battery rundown test, and the T30 is doing quite nicely.  Though it's pretty late, and I'm running close to shutdown.

As a final note, I dug out a few Thinkpad Trackpoint caps that i picked up a while ago.  I was going to put one of the newer ones (may the "mushroom" style) on it.  However, it came with the standard "asbestos" style, so that's what I put on.  The old one was in really bad shape, looked like paper had been glued to it.

So far, so good.  I like it.

Do the DANCE!

I am currently writing this via a live boot from CrunchBang on the Thinkpad T30.  With the newly installed wireless card.  YES!!

It's been a bit of frustration on this, as I had to get my head in the game, and get the old IBM patching software working properly.  After I got my brain-case screwed on in the right direction (and remembered that it might be a good idea to read screen prompts), I got the patches applied, and got everything working right.

And, in a bit of an embarrassed revelation, this is my first wireless card transplant.  I've not done one before.  So, I'm kind of happy.

I initially tested Manjaro with Openbox on the system, but it wasn't mapping the keyboard right.  (Something that I probably would take care of during a full installation.)  Right as I was typing this, CrunchBang decided I was typing on a French keyboard, and I had to jump up to the screen bar and change it back.  (The second time I started to edit this, and it decided I was using a British layout.  Back to the screen bar...  Again, I think this will be dealt with at install...)

Though I have yet to do a new install on this system, I'm happy that it now seems to be fully functional.  (I had gotten the USB wireless adapter from the seller, but it won't really work properly.  It'll see the networks, but it won't connect.  I have a feeling it won't recognize WPA...)  But the wireless card out of the R40 works fine.  I'm very happy.

As a side note, I did the test on the 380XD running at 800x600, and it worked fine.  But I haven't proceeded with the installation there, either.  For some reason, a bit wave of sentimentality hit me.  The Win98 installation on it has some odd features.  And it has some odd branding, from the GE IT section, which hits me in my collector's spot.  (I know.  Silly.  But...)  So, I'm holding off for now, and transferring my attention to the T30 here until further notice.

And I'm very happy with the look/feel of this little beast.  It's singing right along, and #! seems very complimentary to it.  I strongly think I might just go ahead with the installation now, and see how it goes.

We shall see!

Two outta three ain't bad...

Yeah...  2 out of 3...

A quick recap:  Number one is, of course, Manjaro on the T410s, which is performing absolutely perfectly.  It has its quirks, but I rather like it.  I've been toting this system around with me everywhere, and not a single problem.

Number two is the Thinkpad 380XD.  The 64 MB RAM expansion arrived yesterday, and I installed it as soon as I could, replacing the 16 MB stick that was in the system.  Worked perfectly.  So, I decided to move on to Phase II, which was a test boot with Wary Puppy 5.3.

The 380XD booted fine off the CD.  The only problems encountered were my first time 'round, when I tried the boot with the Compaq PCMCIA wireless card (which came with the system when I bought it) installed.  The software almost booted, then gagged on PCMCIA drivers.  A second attempt with a later IBM-branded card boggled also.  Booting without the cards installed worked fine.  (I did make a slight mistake when I accepted the "recommended" screen resolution of 640x480.  The 380 series uses 800x600.)  (And, yeah, don't those resolution numbers bring back memories..?)

Number three, however, is the "out"...  The T30 arrived today, and appeared to be in quite good shape.  However, when I went to test it, I quickly discovered...  NO wireless, even though it was advertised with wireless included.  (!?!)  Not the least bit happy, I sent a message to the seller

While waiting for a reply, I remembered the late, lamented R40 was lying about, waiting to donate parts to the cause.  It just happened to have a wireless card...

Well, you know where this is going.  I rapidly did the transplant, closed everything back up, and went to reboot...

And got a major error message.  What I have since found is the 01C9 and 1802 errors.  It appears the chipset in the wireless card reads as "ethernet" to the system, and that just isn't kosher.

Well, I went all wonky, and started fiddling with hardware, thinking I should remove cards or something.  Unplugged one of the cards in the wireless bay, not even sure what the hell it was, and tried a reboot, which didn't make any difference anyway.

Disgusted, I put the T30 away, thinking I'd take it to the Shop-Across-the-River tomorrow.  (I think I made up a few new words, too...)

In the meantime, the seller had contacted me, and very graciously offered to correct the wireless screwup by sending me the appropriate parts.  Not really wanting to get into it, I accepted.  (This did make me feel better about the gentleman.  He was very professional and pleasant about it, something that is far too lacking today.)

And, in the further meantime, I also did what I should've done in the first place concerning the card errors.  I let my fingers do the walking.  I typed my question, not into Google, but into DuckDuckGo (hey, I'm being experimental here!), and got back a good analysis of the problem.  And a possible quick solution, using some Linux tools.

However, I'm just a bit too worn out right now.  However, I feel a bit better about Number Three.  Maybe it's not all too wonky-ed up...

We shall see.

In the meantime, do you think anyone would notice if I hold onto my T410s like it's a teddy bear..?

Distroin'

OK, a real quickie here.

I decided to do a little distro hopping, especially after reading some reviews, etc.  I went out and grabbed the latest version of Manjaro, 0.8.7.1, with the default XFCE interface...  Since I was definitely thinking about the T410s, I grabbed the 64 bit version.  Burned this to a DVD.

A quick live boot to make sure everything worked properly. (It did.)  So, on to the install...  (I sort of hated do away with Lighthouse 64, but...  Well,  I can reinstall it later...)

Manjaro installs quite painlessly.  I probably should've spent a bit more time setting up the partitions, but everything went OK.  I did use the GUI installer.  I may do it later via CLI, just to see how it rolls.

Reboot was clean, and everything came up right as rain.

Except the clock...

The date was fine.  But I had a hell of a time getting the damned clock to show the correct time.  I checked that the system time was correct, and it was.  (Memories of my first run with Manjaro with OpenBox began to drift back.  Though that was on my old Toshiba, the system time was wrong, and I couldn't access the system BIOS to reset.  I had to use a quick boot into a Puppy distro to correct that one...)  So, off to the web.  A quick check found the Manjaro for Beginners information...

My timezone was not set properly (even though I'd set it during installation).  So, after resetting that, and downloading/installing the Network Time Protocol (anything to get this thing working...), I...

...still had wrongly set clock.  So I finally just reset the system clock from the terminal.  After a bit too painful wait, the correct time showed up on the panel, and my blood pressure began to settle just a bit.  (Yeah, I did do the obligatory reboot, just to make sure...)

Otherwise, I like what I see here.  I've always liked the XFCE experience.  (My favorite with it was Saluki.)  It seems fast and smooth.  Everything seems to be working out of the box.

However, it's hitting 1 am here, so I'm not really in the mood to do much "testing"..

Besides, I'm zoning out to old MythBusters' episodes.  In a showdown between playing with Manjaro, and watching Kari Byron...

Well...

Quiet Before...

I've been sort of enjoying the quiet as Fall rolls in.  We've been having some nice, cool temperatures, which has made getting out and about very enjoyable.

However, I am sort of hoping all this quiet will come to an end, and new project will come through soon.    I'm beginning to feel rather 5th wheelish, as I sit and wait.

I do have some odds and ends coming my way, which will probably take up some of my time.  I ran across an old IBM Thinkpad T30 and got it for a very decent price.  It had the maximum RAM installed (1GB), which I was happy about.  (Saved me from having to scrounge any up.)  And I was able to quickly also acquire a new battery for it.  Only has the 40 GB HD option, but that should suffice, as I simply intend to install Crunchbang on it.  Should be here next week sometime.  (Yeah, I know...  I needed another Thinkpad like I needed a pet elephant, but...  You know...)

Also, I bit the bullet and ordered some new RAM for the old Thinkpad 380XD that's been sulking under the desk.  I'm going to max it out (96 megs...yes, megabytes), and do a little experiment...

I've tried several times to get Damn Small Linux running on the 380XD, with minimal success.   I keep running into the screen driver problem.  (It boots up fine, then the screen goes wonky and you can barely see the icons, etc.  Apparently, this is a common problem with DSL on these old Thinkpads.  Changing screen resolution, etc., doesn't seem to help at all.)  However...

Doing some research, I've come across multiple reports of folks being able to get various versions of Puppy Linux up and running on even older Thinkpads.  Models with slower processors and less RAM than the 380s...  So, of course, caution-to-the-wind-thrower that I am, I'm going to give it a shot.  I'm hoping the maxed out RAM gives me a slightly better chance.  (Yeah, I know Puppy usually demands at least 128 MB, but...  Well...)

I can naught but be reduced to swearing and gnashing my teeth, so... 

ETA on the RAM is sometime next week.  So I'd say next week is going to be bit of a ball.

We shall see...

Off the Retro Reserve

Yeah, I haven't exactly been a writing machine as of late.  Been taking some time for myself, lately.  Haven't been exactly up to speed as of late, and I really didn't want the blog to turn into a big whine-fest, so...

But I'm sort of slipping back into my normal mode.  Hopefully get some writing done soon.

Really haven't been doing much tech stuff.  Did get the new battery into the T410s, which has lead to my carrying/using it more.  Still running Lighthouse64 on the hard drive, but I find myself booting Puppy Slacko XL 5.5 off of USB more and more.  I like that system on the on the T410s a lot.  (I tried booting it on the X60s and the Dell XPS, but had problem with the sound on both, and the trackpad speed on the latter.  I've stuck with straight PhatSlacko 5.5 on the Dell, booting off  USB.)

I have actually left Win7 on the Dell, and for a very specific reason,  I just spent several minutes installing Cloanto's Amiga Forever onto it.  I installed the 2012 edition and did the upgrades.  Right now, I'm sticking with that, rather than buying the 2013 edition.  I was never an Amiga user back in the day, but I find the system fascinating.  I discovered the Amiga emulation stuff, I think after watching some of techguruuk's videos.  Well, one thing lead to another, and I ordered the emulator.  Had it installed on my 17" Toshiba Satellite. But, as that system sort of got packed away due to my Mac fetish, I haven't been playing with with the emulator. 

So, when the Dell XPS joined the fleet...  Well, one thing lead to another...  The Dell has more RAM and a bigger hard drive to play with, so,,,

Right now, I'm just running through some of the old demoscenes included with the package.  (At present, "Nexus 7" by Andromeda, c.1994.)  Pretty cool!

And, if you're wondering, no I'm not typing on the Dell.  While I was waiting for the emulation software to install, I dragged out little Sony Vaio and started playing around.  Haven't had it out in ages, so it's kind of fun to fiddle with.  (Really should upgrade from Precise Puppy 5.6.1 to 5.7.1, but...  I've actually been thinking of giving Upup Raring a run on this.  We shall see...)

Well, I just finished downloading, and am "installing" AmigaSYS 4 in the emulator.   Need to do the same with the AmiKit version they include.

My only problem with this setup is that I really am limited to the included software, which is mostly games.  I'd love to find a source of general programs for the Amiga like the Macintosh Garden site for Macs.  (I"m sure there is one, but I've just never really dedicated the time to properly search for it.)

Oh well...  Getting a bit worried.  The AmigaSYS install has been sitting at 50% for ages, and is just playing its musical accompaniment on and on. Better do some checking here...

Off to the Retro world...  Gee, wonder where I hid my copy of Tron...

The Tingler

Well, I obviously haven't been doing much writing as of late.  Kind of took a little time off.  Still dealing with the loss of my canine friend.  It's not easy, dealing with a loss.  And he had been with us right at 17 years.  Not easy.

I had an odd little occurrence this evening.  I dug out my my MacBook Pro, as I hadn't used it since my last road trip.  So, I've been playing in OS X Mountain Lion all day.  Kind of like a homecoming, in a sense.

Anyway, it's late, and I just retreated to my bedroom to do some late night email checks and browsing.  I'd been using it off battery for a while before, so I went ahead and plugged the MagSafe back in.  Plunked down on the bed and started to work.  I went to pull the system towards me...

And damn...  It was like holding onto a joy buzzer.  I got a quite a good shock.  I jerked my hand away from the case.  A quick look showed that I had had my hands on tiny screws on both sides of the case.   I touched the case...Nothing.  So I went to push the release button...  And got the joy buzzer again...

Not good.  Obviously not thinking, I unplugged the MagSafe.

Hmmm...  No shock.

Plug it back up...  Shock...

I'm getting a bit worried at this point.  (And obviously not thinking still.)

Rather than think this through, I do what any good modern soul does, I hit Google...  And there it is, "Electric Shocks on MacBook Pros"...   I remember the odd vibrations I've felt on the metal palm rests...

And then I looked at the postings...  And I suddenly feel the need for a solid faceplant...

It's rather warm here, so I'm sitting barefoot in my room, my foot on the floor...

Yeah...

Sitting cross-legged on the bed now, breaking the circuit...  No shocks, no vibrations...

This does irk me, though.  Guess it's common with metal cased laptops, etc.  I've noticed the "odd vibrations" when I run my fingers across the brushed aluminum palm rests on the Dell XPS.  I'd never given it much thought till tonight.  Which makes me want to kick myself...

So much for basic science.

Cue eery music...  Here comes "The Tingler"!

Distros, Distros Everywhere...

Did some further testing of MacPup 550 the other evening.  Enough to know that it's not overly fond of the Dell XPS.  The trackpad is sluggish, and I had a devil of a time in ALSA getting the sound to work properly.  But, for now, I'll restrict its usage to the Thinkpads.  (Of course, I haven't really played with it on all of them yet, so stay tuned...)

In other news, last night I downloaded yet another Puppy distro, this one entitled Puppy Slacko 5.5 XL.  This one is sort of along the lines of PhatSlack, basically a really tricked out version of (as the name implies) Slacko 5.5.  The distro was put together by a gentleman going by the handle "koulaxizi" over on the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum.  The cool thing about this is that "koulaxizi" is not a professional developer, etc., but just a typical user who decided to play around and see what he could do in the line of making a distro.  That I find quite cool.  (Here's the discussion thread so you can read what he has to say.  The download link is there, as well.) 

I've burned a CD and did a test live boot with great success, so I went ahead and did a frugal install to a 16 GB thumb drive.  He has done an exceptional job, especially for a first shot at a distro.  I'm sure they'll probably be some teething problems along the way, but I certainly have run across any.  He's using Openbox plus Extras for his interface, and has included a very snazzy collection of software.   
It's a slick distro, well worth a look.  I'm running it right now, and am looking forward to tooling around with it for a while.

Also, I did a bit of an impulse download earlier today.  Grabbed a copy of Trisquel 6.0 LTS.  I've been wanting to try some of the FSF-approved systems, just to see how they ran.  Ages back, I downloaded a copy of gNewSense, but I just never got 'round to burning nor installing.  My inherent laziness and desire to follow the herd kept me from doing so.  But Trisquel looks to be a bit...well, a little bit better for work-averse herdlings like me...

Unfortunately, the Trisquel .ISO is in the download folder on my desktop at the moment, and I think I used my last CD-R for the Slacko XL burn.  (I know I've got some DVD-Rs about, but I obviously don't want to use those on an .ISO specifically set to burn to CD.)  I may have to make a store run tomorrow...

All in all, a good Linux week.  I am, of course, still waiting for the new battery for the T410s, which will allow me to go fully mobile with it.  I'm beginning to get impatient.

I'm going to try to spruce the old blog up here soon.  I need to start doing some screen shots and the like, to show what I'm doing.  My entries tend to be a bit spur of the moment (bet no one has noticed that), with me just jumping on and writing.  But, I'm going to actually try to put some real effort into it.

As for now, it's getting a bit late, so I'm off to veg out a bit...

New Pup on the Block

Finally got round to downloading MacPup 550, the latest.  Been wanting to ever since running across SneekyLinux's teaser preview over on YouTube.  (He's since done several videos on the new release.)

Normally, I download new distros on my desktop computer, the Acer running Mint 13.  However, this time I got a wild hair and downloaded via the T410s, just to see how it would handle the job.  (The answer there:  brilliantly.  I did a straight download, as I'm not much of a Torrent'er.  And, to be honest, I didn't see a Torrent option available.)

I also used this opportunity to test the T410s DVD/CD-RW drive, which worked fine.  I used PBurn, which comes with Lighthouse 64, and that worked fine.  (I really don't have any preference in burning software.  I've used Brassero quite a bit, simply because that's what Mint comes with.)  A quick test live boot showed everything working well.  MacPup 550 was up and running, detecting everything on my system with alacrity.

So, I decided to take the plunge and do a USB thumb install while I had MacPup up and running.  I dug out the thumb drive that had my MacPup 529 install on it, and proceeded to fire up GParted.  (I wanted to re-partition the drive, as I'd felt I'd given a bit too much space to the swap file.)  Everything worked fine till I went to set up said swap file.  Then GParted would gag and give an error message.

About 10 minutes of this, and I'd just about had it.  I ejected the thumb drive and shut down MacPup.  Back into Lighthouse 64.  Remount the thumb drive, and fire up that version of Gparted.  After a few moments which felt longer than they should, the repartitioning worked fine.  Rather than relaunch the CD,  I simply mounted it, did a straight copy over to the thumb, and then ran Grub4Dos config from Lighthouse.

Worked like a charm.  Booted fine.  I didn't play with MacPup 550 too long last night, but everything seemed in order.  I'll give it a whirl over the next week.

I do have one problem with the T410s that I have since addressed, and am now awaiting the solution.  The battery.  The system was sold as refurbished, and that it is.  But this is a case of "refurbishing" simply meaning, "we checked to see that it simply holds a charge", which is pretty normal, mind you.  And the battery included does hold a charge.  But only about a 57% one.  Sooo...  I had to put a battery on order.  Hopefully it'll be here next week.

It's too nice an evening here to do anything even vaguely resembling work.  Time for some rest.  the work week is coming on far too quick...........

And the Winner IS...

I really toyed with the idea of doing the "Deep Thought" thing from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  You know, "I have the answer, but I don't think you're going to like it..."  But I didn't think anyone would dislike the answer, and it's not really an answer, it's more of a revelation...  But really doesn't have the impact of a REVELATION...

OK, I'll stop...

I put Lighthouse 64 on the T410s.

Yeah, I did.  Honest.

The touchpad still won't accept taps, and moves the cursor like the touchpad on the CF-29, but it DOES scroll.  The trackpoint works fine, though.  As does the 'Suspend' command.  And the wireless.

So, on a leap-of-faith whim, I just did a frugal install.  I can play with it for a while, get the feel of it.  I like the looks of Lighthouse, and (beyond the touchpad oddness) the system works smoothly.  And it's 64 bit, so it's quite spry on the i5.  (Or at least it feels that way to me.)

And, after all, it's not like this is permanent.

This is Linux.  You can do anything you like...  ;-)

Bleak Week

This hasn't been the best week.

My small canine friend of 17 years left us Tuesday.  Seventeen good years.  The rest of the week has just been trying to figure out what to do with our lives, now that the little boss of the house is no longer here to tell us what to do.  Dog owners everywhere will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Today, a minor distraction from it all.  A little bartering and twisting, and I am now the proud owner of my first Intel Core system.  A Thinkpad T410s with a Core i5 at 2.4 Ghz.  It's a bit of a replacement for some other stuff, but that's sort of a private deal, so...  (This was sort of worked out at the same time as the Dell XPS, but I'm going to hold onto both of these systems...)

I was out for most of the day, and just got it out of the box.  It's still packing Windows 7 Professional, which I just went through the setup options on.   Yeah...

Usually I can handle Win7.  But this time around...well, not happy.  The damned thing took forever to set up, and then it wouldn't show me the wireless.  At all.  It was like there was no wireless card in the system.  I was, shall we say, not happy, as I thought I might have been conned. 

A quick trip to the Grand Packet of OS Drives, and I fired up Upup Raring.  In the few moments to boot up, everything was recognized.  Bang, there's the wireless card.  Bang, online.  I didn't even need to do the normal "play with the ALSA setup" that one normally has to do with a Puppy variant, as the sound worked without a hitch.

Needless to say, I don't have the qualms about removing Windows from this system that I had with the Dell.  I'm thinking Kubuntu, though I'm going to bounce through my options.  Until I make the final decision, this cool devil of a machine will be booting off of a USB drive.

The Dell XPS is a slick system.  (Again, you won't hear me say that about a Dell often.)  The Thinkpads 61 and 400 are pretty damned awesome.  But this is ubercool.  We're into the MacBook level of coolness here.  Lenovo definitely had a hit when they went to the thin form.  And it still packs an optical drive.  That, and the i5, puts it ahead of the X60s

So, we'll see what this baby can do.  I think this might become my work computer for the time being. 

I can definitely use the distraction.  I'm still missing my canine buddy.  He was never overly fond of the computers, as I think he thought they took up too much of my time.  And he was probably right.  But I think he would've liked this one.

At least a little...

More Silly Season

I won't tell you what I was searching for, but I recently ran across this rather odd discussion of the operating system on Tony Stark's office desktop.

OK, I'll admit it.  Stuff like this does occasionally cross my mind.  It's a way to waste the time.  And indulge in a little serious fantasizing.

And note that I am typing on a Dell XPS (though sadly not a M2010), and I do have a USB "dongle" (OK, it's a thumb drive) sticking in the side...

Sadly, I don't have the super-powered exoskeleton in the closet.  Nor the billions of $ in my bank account that might help me move closer to creating said exoskeleton...

No cute personal assistant to send off to hack the office computers...  No super-plane to carry me off to exotic locations around the world...

Sigh.  Back to the fantasizing...

At least I have my laptops to keep me warm....  ;-)

Morning After

OK, bad title...  But it's in the morning, and I really am lacking in creativity right now...

So far, Kubuntu has been doing OK.  I did have a nice fight yesterday evening with the "Wallet" function.  I don't use that feature on any system I have (I know, I'm such a Luddite).  Apparently, instead of dismissing it yesterday, I must've hit a very wrong button, because the system locked me out of the wireless.  I couldn't get on in the office, nor at home.   I finally had to dig through the system control panel till I found the way to disable Wallet, then had to reboot.  But I'm able to access my wireless now without any further happy dancing...

I did have to download another web browser, as Rekonq has issues with Hotmail.  Sort or reminds me of Midori, though Rekonq will fully log into Hotmail (Midori won't), but once you're in, you can't do anything, not even log out.  So, I sort of bit the bullet and downloaded Chromium.  Yeah, Chromium.  I decided to be a little different and see how it handled being my full-time browser for a while.

Otherwise, everything has been uneventful.  Used the T400 here for a good bit last night, then switched over the Dell XPS with PhatSlacko.  The bulk of the evening was spent just grazing on YouTube videos.  Mostly rehashing stuff I've seen a dozen times before, thought occasionally hitting different stuff.  (Why I sat and watched videos on the Lemote Yeelong notebook I'm not sure.  RMS flashbacks?)

Today looks to be a rainy, hazy day.   Might try to get out a bit.  Sort of let the computers cool off.

Let us see where the day takes us...

Happy International Geocaching Day!

Yes, it's International Geocaching Day!

Yeah, I didn't know it either, till I heard the story on National Public Radio...  I guess this is the Third Annual, so, congrats!

And, before anyone asks, no I don't partake.  Though I did know what it was well before I heard of IGC.  I always thought it was a fascinating idea, and I'd love to give it a go someday.  But...  Time and money restraints raise their ugly heads.  (I'd rather be spending my spare dimes on old computers, you know...)

So, to all you 'Cache'rs out there, enjoy!  Search away!!

Funky

So, after boiling and toiling for a while, I finally made a decision.

OK, I reinstalled Fuduntu on the T400 first, then I made a decision. I decided to try out Kubuntu 13.04.

Oh, I did do a quick check of the Fuduntu repositories. Dead as a door knob. So...

Somewhere in my pile of burn-then-forget CDs and DVDs, I found a copy of Kubuntu Raring Ringtail. Off to the races we go!

The installation is, of course, Ubuntu-like. Very slick, very complete. Took a bit longer than I've become used to, but once it's done...

Wow. I've never used Kde, nor Plasma, before. It's...uhm... different. Very different. In fact, it's kind of like relearning the computer again. Took me a second or so to get oriented. Finding out where everything is took some time. But things seem to work OK. It's a wee bit sluggish, but... Everything works. That's a plus. And a blessing, after all the fighting with OS's I've been forced to do as of late.

I'm not overly sure about Rekonq as a web browser. It seems to work OK, but I'm such a FireFox drudge... Haven't played with Dolphin, but it seems quite competent a file manager. LibreOffice is LibreOffice, and I quite like it, so we're good there. I really can't say on anything else.

Right now, I'm considering this installation experimental. My thoughts are to transfer Kubuntu over to the Dell XPS, and install Lubuntu 13.04 on this system. (Yeah, I have a burned copy of it, too.) I still haven't worked myself up (are you ready for this?) to remove Windows 7 from the Dell. (?!!?) Of course, I haven't even tried a live boot on the Dell yet.

I've been running PhatSlacko5.5 off of my old PNY thumbdrive on the Dell, which has worked great. I may try my thumb install of Saluki later on, just to see how it does. If all goes well there, I'll give it a run with MacPup and Upup Raring.

And I'm actually considering doing a 16 GB thumb drive install of Lighthouse 64, just to play with it. I know that'll be a shock to some, given my ranting about it, but it is an interesting system, and I think it needs to be experimented with more. Just not installed on a hard drive. (And I want freedom to modify, which I can't really do on the CD.) I'm also going to set up a thumb drive with FatDog64, as an alternate OS for the 64 bit systems.

Oh, and as a side note, I'm actually typing this entry in LibreWrite on the T400, while sitting in my local library. I wanted to do some testing of the wireless setup in Kubuntu, to make sure it did handle various wireless setups correctly and easily. So far, so good. I'll probably swing by the office later on, test it there. (That's one I really do want it to work on.)

So, now, let me see about copying and pasting into the web browser...

Yep, guess it works...   ;-)

ARGH-ing

My soul is in no better shape than last night.

I decided to try Lighthouse64 out on the Thinkpad T400.  I probably don't need to tell  that I had the same success as with the Dell XPS...

Well, I went a step further.  I decided to try an install to the hard drive.  (After all, I can always quickly restore to Funduntu, so...

The install went fine.  Everything was working OK.  Then I tried the trackpad.

Yeah.  No tapping nor scrolling.  And the thing was so sluggish it began to remind me of the trackpad on the CF-29...  Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe...  Just to get halfway up the screen...  And nothing seems to work in the trackpad control...  I started using the trackpoint, just because it was faster.  (The scroll didn't work with it, either.)

Otherwise, things seemed...OK.  Until I went to test the 'Suspend' feature.

There was no 'Suspend' feature.

Now, Lighthouse is based on FatDog64, which definitely does have 'Suspend' capability built in...

Not happy.  Not happy at all.

I had, by this time, found the Puppy Package Manager, which was in a...well... Not exactly intuitive location.  I'd been searching for any type of restricted driver, etc., that might help with the trackpad.  So, in a fit of desperation, I went looking for acpitool, which I've used on my Precise Puppy install on the Sony Vaio to successfully give me suspend capability.

I was a bit leery of finding it, as Lighthouse apparently is using the Slacko repositories.  (I'd looked for it previously in PhatSlacko, and had found a variation I wasn't familiar with.)  But, low & behold, there it was.  A quick download, and there it be, fully installed.  Cool.  I did a quick -h help check, and then typed in 'acpitool -s". 

And I was informed that I didn't have "write access" to whatever the file was needed for the suspend.

Herewith followed a string of commands, followed by a string of profanities, followed by...

I went to just shut the damned thing down, and noticed an odd icon on the shutdown menu.  Clicking on it took me to a "suspend" menu...

Clicking on the "Suspend" button got me absolutely nothing.  The conky showed the processor spiked slightly.  Clicking on the "Hibernate" button got me a big error message.

Slamming the computer lid shut got me a very great, but entirely transitory, feeling of satisfaction.  Or at least a bit of pseudo-cathartic release...

Yeah, I know...............

Going to the Dogs

So...  Setting up oddball Puppy distros.....

Well, I thought I'd give the new Dell a bit of a tryout with the distros I was thinking about installing.  You know, sort of a auditioning......

With that in mind, I went ahead and burned a copy of Lighthouse64 6.02 Beta 2, which I'd downloaded a couple nights ago.  Then I dug out my copies of FatDog64 621 and Simplicity Linux 13.4.

First up, Simplicity, which fell very quickly because it wouldn't see the wireless network.  Yeah, I know, I have no idea.  I couldn't even find the bloody wireless controls.  Nothing.  Nada.  I took it no further, shutting down the system, and rebooting with Lighthouse.

The folks who set up Lighthouse did a wonderful job in the visually appealing department.  It is a beautifully done system.  Sadly, it won't "read" the touchpad on the XPS properly.  It told me it was set up for tapping, but won't accept taps.  I turned it on, turned it off, tried 1, 2, and 3 finger tapping.  Nothing.  So, I thought I'd look in the package manage to see if there might be some proprietary drivers or some such.  But, and this is damned embarrassing, I COULDN'T FIND THE DAMNED PACKAGE MANAGER!  I know it's there, it's just buried under a submenu I didn't click, but...

Deep breath.  Shut down the system. 

The system tells me to eject the CD before shutting down.  OK, select eject...

It won't eject the disk.  Tells me that some process is using the disk.  OK, select unmount.  Nothing happens.  OK, select eject...

I sense an infinite loop starting...  Desperate maneuvers begin to take shape in the back of my mind...  And then all hell breaks loose...  kee-RASH!

This was all very good for my soul.

Desperately practicing some calm breathing techniques, I booted up FatDog64.  It boots.  But I don't remember it being that annoying to set up an accursed wireless connection before.  And the cursor moves like it's been smoking meth with the local hooligans, but...  The system is working.  I'm using it right now.

I'm thinking happy thoughts.  I'm thinking of gardens and fountains, and the soft, soothing sounds of running water...

I'm thinking, why can't Saluki still be active...  And why doesn't Slacko have a suspend feature...

I really should know better than to start the projects just before going to bed.

Yeah...  Really good for the soul........

A Bit Over the Top

I'm a little bit embarrassed, but I have to tell you...  I'm writing this on yet another laptop...  And this one is a total departure for me...

People are going to start to think that I'm off the deep end, and am able to throw money away like a crazy person...  Not true.  I do get a little crazy at times, but I try to only pick up stuff if the deal is good.  This one was, even if it was a little on the odd side.

I managed to grab a Dell XPS M1530.  Now, I'm normally not the biggest fan of Dells, and I'm well aware of the GPU problems the XPS series has had.  But this is one of the few Dells that I actually like (the other being the XPS M2010, which I do not own, but would love to have), and things seem to be OK on the GPU front.  (And I'm not one to push the graphics system anyway...)  The price was far lower than I thought I could ever get one for, so...

I'm still an idiot, but hey...

So, anyway, this is a nice little system, Core2Duo, running at 2.4 Ghz.  4 GB of RAM, 500 GB HD.  Right now, it has Win7 on it, but I'm not really sure how long that will last.  (At the moment, I'm running PhatSlacko 5.5 off of a thumb drive.)  The previous owner installed a new battery, but it's a 6 cell instead of the 9 cell I prefer.  (I'm just doing battery tests now.)

I had planned, after picking this system up, to install Simplicity Linux on it.  Right after I got the thing set up, I did a live boot into SL 13.4 from CD.  However, all didn't go smooth.  For some reason, there were problems with the wireless.  (It had worked fine in Windows.)  I fought with it for a while, then decided to do a quick experiment.  I jumped over to my older PNY install of Phat, booted up, and was online in a snap.  Everything configured fine...

Sooo...  I'm now thinking strongly about Lighthouse64 for this system.  I have the latest beta .ISO sitting on my desktop, but just haven't burnt to CD yet.  However, I'm also going to run a test on FatDog64 621, as I do have that on CD  We shall see how things go.

Slacko is running fine, though.  I'll probably run through all my thumb drive collection, just to see how each looks.  I haven't really had this long enough to say yay/nay, but I like it so far.

Yet another "we shall see."  I'm hoping for good things...

Now, off to more playing...

NIghtly oddness

Just doing some testing with the "new" Toshiba Sat L305D.  Wanted to see how it handled USB booting, so last night I had Upup Raring up and running, and it worked like a flying charm.  So, tonight, thought I'd fire up MacPup and see how that went.

Everything worked OK.  Had the normal odd little bit getting the sound going, but everything else was great.  But, as I was watching a video on YouTube,  I noticed the fan running.  Hard.  And quite early on.

Now, of course, I've heard the fan run on this system.  But it usually takes a bit before it kicks on.  This was kick on early, and keep running.  And running. 

Hmmm...

My first impulse was Enlightenment.  For whatever reason, I have a slight suspicion of Enlightenment when it comes to overworking processors.  Every system I had Bodhi Linux (which is, of course, built to order with Enlightenment) on tended to run a bit hot.  My feeble, jump-to-conclusions mind immediately made the connection.

So, I shut MacPup down and pulled out PhatSlacko.  Booted up, and everything seemed fine.  I went through the usual Puppy-on-a-new-system sound thing, and had to enable tapping on the touchpad, but other than that...

And then the damned fan kicked on.

A quick check of Htop showed next to no load on the cores.  And, jeez, this is running JMM, so the graphics drag shouldn't be much of anything.  So...

I really should find the compressed air can, and give the vents a good going over.  But I really just don't feel like opening the system up to give it a real dusting. 

I don't know.  I'll just have to keep an eye on it.  I'm not working in a hot environment, and there's plenty of ventilation around the system...

This, on top of the little Sony Vaio suddenly developing heavy fan use syndrome...

Another thing for the obsessive-compulsive to worry about...

I'll just have to keep an eye on it, see what happens next......

Run Rabbit...

And, just to follow up my my earlier silliness, I used Fuduntu on the T400 till I ran the battery down.  I even sort of enjoyed using Chromium, which usually isn't my favorite web browsing choice.  (I'm such a traditionalist, you know...)

But, the race is sort of on to find a replacement for when Fuduntu starts to get a little crusty.  I mentioned Manjaro early on, but that seems to have slipped by the wayside. 

Out of nowhere (actually after browsing through that stack of CDs/DVDs earlier in the day), I got to thinking about FatDog64.  Back when I was having some USB stick problems with FD, I'd downloaded/burned a copy of the 621 release and...well, yeah, forgot about it.  But, there it was in the stack of disks, so I thought, why not...

But...

Yeah, I got to looking through online info to make sure I did have the latest version of FatDog.  Eventually, I made my way to Multi-Core Puppies, and while there immediately hit the listing for Lighthouse64, which may actually look cooler than FatDog... 

So...

Here we go again...

I do promise to make a solid decision.  Sometime. 

At least before men set foot on Mars............

Silly Rabbit...

This is one of those "it figures" things...

I was fiddling about on my desktop, doing some Mint updates, when I glanced at the laptop pile next to the desk.  Oh yeah, the T400...

I think I mentioned the problems the Thinkpad T400 had a while back.  I'd been using it on the road, loaded up with Bodhi Linux, and had just finished out the project I was on, when I started having odd problems.  Turned out it was a graphics thing, and needed some tweaking.  When I got it back from the shop, I fiddled with it for a bit (I'd installed Zorin on it to replace Bodhi, which I'd just never really been happy with), then set the thing aside, moving on to whatever else was floating on the agenda.

Well, having nothing better to do with a Sunday, I decided to drag the 400 out and give it a run.  My initial thought was to install Manjaro with OpenBox on it, and see how that worked.  However, while digging through my stack of CDs/DVDs, I ran across a copy of Fuduntu 2013.2, which I'd downloaded/burned, and forgotten about.  (Do you see a sort-of behavior pattern emerging?)

Oh, what the heck?  I remembered reading about Fuduntu, and thought it'd be cool to fiddle with, as I have nothing even remotely close to Fedora on any of my systems.  So...  I did a liveboot to test, and everything worked fine...  Next stop, full installation.

Not bad, I must say.  The installation was fast and painless.  everything worked right out of box.  I was impressed.

Until I pulled up the terminal and entered "sudo yum update".  I get back an odd message about being unable to connect, etc.  For giggles, I enter "sudo yum upgrade".  Same deal.

A quick run to the GUI software update yields a single package, and that's it.

Hmmm...  Something's starting to click here...

Now, of course, the more observant out there are already chuckling at my expense.  A quick trip to Distrowatch showed that, as I'd begun to suspect, Fuduntu has been discontinued.  A little further research confirmed.  Fuduntu is no more.

Big sigh.

I guess I'll have to start looking for something else to put on the ol' T400 here.  Manjaro is still an option, but if I do, I think I'll go for a version other than the OpenBox one...

But, for now, I'm going to leave Fuduntu on here.  I rather like what I'm seeing.  And this is the latest version, so it's still up to date.  I'm not sure if any of the repositories are still on line or not (as they are for Saluki, which I can still get software for).

I seem to have a knack for picking the winners here, don't I?  I find something I like, and find it's been discontinued.

Oh well...

Following Up

Yeah, I am on the Panasonic CF-29, and no I haven't installed Puppy yet.  Though I did just have Precise 5.6.1 livebooted, and it ran fine.  Save, of course, for the trackpad and the touchscreen.  I have yet to figure out how to deal with either.  (Though I seem to have accidentally spruced up the trackpad in XP.  That's mildly embarrassing.  To be honest, I'm not even sure what I did...)

The CF-29 is such a big, clumsy, lumbering beast, you just have to like it.  And it is built like a tank, which would make it a great system for carrying it around in the boonies, where I like to lurk on my time off.  But I would soooo prefer some version of Linux on it. Especially given Microsoft's idiotic (for their consumers) plan to kill off XP.  (Yeah, I know...  I'm not thinking corporately...  But...  Geez...)

In any event, it's getting kinda late, and the CF-29's battery is getting a little low.  Probably switch over to the Toshiba for the rest of the evening.  Maybe do some research...

The bumbling tech noob's work is never done...

Never satisfied

The "new" Toshiba is cruising along merrily, and I couldn't be happier.  I've been wanting to take it "out on the road" today, but it's a Saturday, and I really don't want to be toting a fairly large laptop about.  Not only that, but it's boiling hot and humid out, not the best weather to drag our electronic friends out in.

While cruising around online, I dropped into Carl Draper's Tech Thoughts blog.  He's much more knowledgeable than I'll ever be, and has some truly cool stuff going on, so I like to drop in every now and then and check things out.

One of his entries was on getting Linux up and running on an older Panasonic Toughbook, which of course got me thinking about my Toughbook, which has been sitting, forlornly waiting ever since I installed its new CD/DVD drive ages back. 

I did a quick CD test of Puppy on it (Precise 5.6, I believe) right after installing the new drive, and things worked fairly well.  Puppy at least recognizes the touchscreen, and I seem to remember it also saw/recognized the wireless.  However, the touchscreen calibration is off (I gather this is a common problem when going to Linux on these systems).  And I really need to use the touchscreen, as the touchpad seems to be overly slow.

I was quickly browsing through some old entries on installing Linux on Toughbooks, and noticed a possible cure for the touchpad calibrations.  It also reminded me to go in a check the acceleration settings on the touchpad.  I've still got Windows XP on the CF-29, and was having trouble updating (due to having FireFox as the default browser; you know that story), so I'd be glad to get something more workable (and up to date) installed.

So, there's the next project, when I work up the motivation:  Get Linux up and running on the Toughbook.  All the while playing with the Toshiba.

I think my materialism is getting the better of me.......

Well...

Yeah, I did it again...  I found another clunker laptop to add to the "fleet."  I tripped across this one a while back, and was able to snag it for a really low price.  It's another Toshiba, a Satellite L305D with an AMD Turion X2 processor, 3 GB of RAM, and a 250 GB hard drive.  Not exactly cutting edge, but...  And, unlike the last Satellite I picked up, this one is in great condition.  Only a little wear on the keyboard.

Came to me with Windows 7 on it, which went the way of the dodo very quickly.

I had in mind to put Linux Lite on it, which may come as a surprise to those who remember my last go 'round with that distro.  However, probably to the surprise of many, I actually like that OS.  It has trouble with some of my Thinkpads, but runs fine on my older Toshiba.

However...

Yeah, I did.  When I went looking for my LL disk, I couldn't immediately find it.  So, I grabbed something else.

Netrunner.

I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a try.  Second chances are all the rage these days.

And so, apparently, are repeat performances.  Other people swear by Netrunner, but I can only swear at it.  It runs perfectly (if slowly) from live boot, but when it's fully installed to the hard drive...  aaaAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

Luckily, I found my 64-bit version of Linux Lite just as I was about to approach internal self-combustion...  A quick installation later, and ka-ZAM!  I was up and running.  I was also testing a new battery I got for the system (a 9 cell, replacing the 6 cell the system came with), and all seems well.  It's giving good performance.

I think I'm going to gently begin retiring the older Toshiba Satellite, and move this one into its slot.  And bring Linux Lite up into my front line OS list (alongside OS X, Puppy, and CrunchBang).  I think it'll work quite well.

I'll give it a workout over the weekend, and see how things go...

In the Boonies

Well, I've been a bit lax again.  But it's been work that's intruded.  I'm still on the road, but soon to be home, and hopefully doing some computerized stuff.

I did tote the my X60s along with me as a bit of amusement in the evenings.  (The heavy lifting was the "new" MacBook Pro, which provided service above & beyond.  And totally Microsoft Office-free, I might add.)  I also brought along a selection of thumb drives with various Puppy Linux distros loaded up.

I think I mentioned in the last few entries that I'd botched up a frugal install of PhatSlacko.  Well, I just decided to do a complete reinstall on the thumb drive, as I wanted to alter the size of the swap file I'd set up.  Of course, there's no CD/DVD drive on the X60s, and I wasn't carrying my external, so I did the somewhat clever thing and downloaded a fresh copy of the .ISO.  Everything went fine till I used the Grub4Dos configuration tool (I follow the IcyOS installation model) under Saluki...  Well, when I went to boot up, I got a nice Saluki splash screen with Grub, even though it was listing Puppy Slacko 5.5 (which, of course, is what PhatSlacko is) in the menu.  However, it wouldn't boot...  Just sat on a blank screen after I selected Puppy Slacko from the menu...

Sigh.

Back to the drawing board.  And remembering that I still had the PNY micro thumb with my first copy of Phat on it with me.  Which made me want to beat my head into the desk, as I could've just installed from it using the "Universal Installer", rather than waiting for the .ISO to download...

Deep sigh.

But I now have a fully functional new install of PhatSlacko on a newer thumb drive.  Which, of course, is why I'm running MacPup 529 right now...

Bigger sigh.

I have also been running UPUP Raring, which I dearly love.  Smooth as glass.  Yeah, it does have the older-style, cartoon-y, almost BeOS-ish (well, to me anyway) looking icons and all, but...  Smooth as glass.  If I were handing a version of Puppy to someone who'd never used it before, I honestly thing this would be the version I'd set up and give them.

Smooth.  As.  Glass.

While cruising through the Puppy Linux forums, I ran across an older listing for a version of Puppy designed to run on the OLPC, the "One Laptop Per Child", XO system.  And I felt like an idiot, because that had never crossed my mind.  Of all the Linux distros out there, Puppy would be perfect for OLPC.  Absolutely tiny, even with huge amounts of bundled software.  Able to run entirely in RAM.  Screaming fast on lower-power processors.   Egads!  Perfect!

And then I remember, with abject horror, Nicholas Negroponte announcing that we really should have a version of Windows running on the OLPC system...

Uh....  No.

I have my sneaking suspicions about where that blindingly dull-headed idea came from.  But, then again, I doubt my opinions really matter, me being one of the "little people who don't understand the 'bigger picture' ", and all.

I think I'm going back to playing with MacPup...