Kyle, Greg, Katie and I attended the Barack Obama rally in Fort Collins, CO on October 26, 2008. It was AWESOME.
He will play H-back and right linebacker on the C Team. He won't play JV this week - the kid that he was replacing will be able to play after all.
Scrimmage tomorrow against Fort Collins.
I got a new phone, so of course we must modify the Bluetooth settings on the eeepc, right?
First, some recommended posts:
- http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=9166. The post is for Sprint phones, but steps 3, 4, and 5 are the first steps for the Verizon installation. Key points: (1) Get USBModem software. I'm still in the trial period, but I think for $15, it's not a bad deal. Note that you don't have to install the software on the laptop side, just use HotSync to get the piece that goes on the Centro. (2) Address that connection-dropping problem (the first reply to the post). I didn't realize until reading this post that I'd been having trouble with that on my Motorola. I was attributing the problem to poor signals.
- http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=14295. This post reviews the necessary coding for /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf (didn't change from the Motorola install) and /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf (change device address and channel).
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothDialup. Seems like the Centro wanted to adopt a new channel pairing each time I fired up the connection. This page suggests 'rfcomm release 0' at the command line to fix the problem. It wasn't clear to me whether this is a one-time fix or an every-time fix. So to be safe, I put that command in my rfcomm.conf file, right ahead of the 'rfcomm0 {' line.
I saw several posts which suggested that with USBModem, you end up with a dial-up connection that's visible on the Network Connecitons dialog. Well, I never saw it. I'm continuing to use wvdial.
Finally, it wasn't clear whether the password for Verizon is 'verizon' or 'vzw'. I changed to password to 'vzw' in the wvdial.conf file - not sure whether the old one would have worked or not.
In xterm:
sudo XandrosFileManager
Sa-weet!
We road the Metro into the City and rented bikes from an outfit near the IRS building. To get from there to the Mt. Vernon trail, we had to go through all the crowds around the Washington Monument and the Tidal Basin. It was quite a scene (the cherry blossoms are in full bloom), but once we got the trail, it was great!
It was about 32 miles round-trip, with not too many hills. We stopped both ways at the end of the runways at Reagan National Airport to watch the planes take off.
After it was all done, the kids were pretty wiped out and sore. The younger kids decided to stay in their room and order pizzas while Dale, Karen and Kyle went out for dinner with Julie.
Flights went well. Boys shared toys.
Julie got us tickets to hear the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. We sat in the President's Box.
Inside the President's Box, there is a little Presidential Pantry with Presidential M&M's and other good stuff. Also, a Presidential Refrigerator stocked with little bottles of Presidential Champagne.
Karen popped the cork on her bottle and it went up to the ceiling and didn't come back down. So now there is a Presidential Cork caught in the Presidential Chandelier, as you can see:
I created some scripts to both dial and then hang up wvdial, and saved them to the desktop.
From xterm:
cd /home/user/Desktop
sudo kwrite Dialer.sh
Type this script and then save and exit:
#!/bin/sh
sudo wvdial
Now, you have to change permissions and make the file executable:
sudo chmod 0755 Dialer.sh
Now you have an icon on your Desktop that you can double-click to dial out the phone. What about hanging up? Here you go:
cd /home/user/Desktop
sudo kwrite Hangup.sh
Type this script and then save and exit:
#!/bin/sh sudo kill $(pidof wvdial)
Just like before, change permissions:
sudo chmod 0755 Hangup.sh
That's all there is to it! Now I'm going to write a script to execute GCALDaemon from the desktop. I don't want to make it an autostart thing - I want to run it at my convenience.
Yesssss!
First, set up your printer here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:addwindowsprinter
If necessary, resolve a bidirectional printing problem here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=8548.
I had a bunch of junk clogging up the print queue. A couple of the files were real stubborn, so I got out the bazooka:
From the Start menu:
Run
CMD
NET STOP SPOOLER
cd \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\spool\PRINTERS
del *.spl
del *.shd
NET START SPOOLER
exit
Now I will see if I can get the Compaq connected to the printer.
Yay! I can finally get online with my bluetooth dongle and my Motorola W385. (See the previous post for a few details.)
The key was getting a correct wvdial.conf file:
[Dialer Defaults]
Modem =/dev/rfcomm0
Phone = #777
Username = 10digitnumber@vzw3g.com
Password = verizon
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = 1
Idle = 0
To connect to the internet, open a terminal window.
sudo wvdial
Once the connection is made, simply start the browser and it works! You have to leave the terminal window open while you're online. When you're done, close the browser, then type Ctrl+C in the terminal window to disconnect. Works like a charm!
I will probably use this only when a Wi-Fi or hardwire connection is unavailable, and then only to check gmail. So I don't intend to consume a lot of bandwidth or minutes. Just nice to know I have this as a back-up!
I also found a little USB Targus mouse that I had bought a while back. Replaced the battery, plugged it in and it worked, no questions asked.
I now have everything up and running, just in time for vacation later this month.
Long ago, I installed Windows XP onto my old Compaq Presario 12XL510A notebook computer. I shouldn't have - it was way more than the machine could handle. With my exposure to Linux on the Nokia n800, the Asus eee and an application at work, I decided to see if a low-impact Linux installation could bring the old machine back to useful life.
After researching my options, I decided to go for Xubuntu 7.1.
Here's where I downloaded it
Instructions on burning the CD image
How to make sure the image is valid
Software for performing the validation
Hash comparison code
GraphicalInstall instructions
Here are the particulars on the machine:
Compaq Presario
Model 12XL510A
PCMCIA: Texas Instruments PCI-1410 CardBus Controller
Two USBs
CD-ROM
1.44MB Floppy Drive
Intel Pentium III 797MHz
124MB RAM
12GB hard drive
Display: Trident Video Accelerator CyberBlade-i1, 1024x768x60HZ
Modem: generic softK56
Network adapter: RAS Async adapter
The machine was so overtaxed, it could hardly run the installer CD. So I deleted everything in My Documents, uninstalled a bunch of big memory-hogging programs, and then also uninstalled Windows XP. The machine reverted back to Windows ME.
Based on what I've read here, I think I'm just going to dump it completely and have this machine run exclusively on Linux.
Wish me luck.
Update: After repeated attempts, the normal CD installation would not work. So I'm switching to the Alternate CD instead.
Update: The Alternate Install CD is working just great. It even detected my Wireless Card in the PCMCIA slot, then asked for and accepted my wireless home network WEP key. Woo-hoo!
