Month: September 2004

My primary computer is my IBM T20 thinkpad, running Debian unstable. It’s hooked up to the rest of my home network through a wireless connection. Last week, every thing went south.

First, because my wife has been having a lot of trouble getting a good connection to the wireless network from her computer, I upgraded the access port (after futzing around with antennas for a day or so). I put in a new Linksys WAP. One of the cool ones, with Linux inside.

And, I took the opportunity to get a 802.11g PCMCIA card for my laptop.

First mistake.

No Drivers.

I ended up building ndiswrapper against 2.6.8.1, and using the Windows driver. I’m not thrilled about that, but I do like the increased bandwidth to the real computers upstairs.

Then, I did a apt-get dist-upgrade. And got upgraded to kernel 2.6.8.1-3.

Which won’t suspend properly.

The magick keys don’t even register, much less do anything. Turns out I’m not the first person to have this problem, so, I have some hope it will get fixed.

I took a stab at upgrading my BIOS to the most recent cut, hoping ACPI would work. It did a little bit, as long as I disabled X DPMS, and was willing to suspend only once before rebooting.

I usually leave the laptop running for weeks.

So I down graded back to 2.6.7.

And realized that I don’t have support for the new network card there.

Windows 2000, on an identical laptop, had been up for 253 days, before I rebooted it to pull the floppy drive to do the BIOS upgrade on this machine.

I suppose that’s what I get for running unstable.

What’s worse? It’s been _fun_.

I’d blown my budget when this was out in hardcover, so I bought it as soon as it was out in trade. I’m hoping this is as good as Snowcrash.

Sequel to Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio. Waiting for me to be in a softer, less belicose mood, to read.

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Another Hugo award winner (1965) I never got to before.

Zelazny near the height of his power, before Amber took over. OK, I liked the first few, and they were nearly as good as, “This Immortal”, or “Creatures of Light and Darkness”, but not nearly as good as “Lord of Light” or his shorter works, collected, in “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth”

I have high hopes, but we’ll see how soon it gets to the top of the To Be Read stack.

This is a two in one. “Conjure Wife” and “Our Lady of Darkness”.

I know I’ve got Conjure Wife somewhere, in an old edition, but I don’t have any chance of getting Our Lady of Darkness. I’ve liked pretty much everything he’s written, so I picked this one up, also.

This is pretty far away in style from Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, but that’s not a bad thing, as much as I loved those books.

Steven Brust is one my favorite authors that I’ve started reading recently. That’s a mixed blessing for me. It means I’ve got a backlist to read, but I wish I’d had him to read during some dry spells. This one is from his back list. Read the first few pages at the bookstore, but only because I couldn’t resist, I knew I was buying it as soon as I saw it.

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Bought this one at the same time as Inversions. Look to Windward impressed me.

My boss loaned me Look to Windward, and told me I had to read it. He was right, and as soon as I found some other of Ian M. Banks’s books, I bought them. He also reminded me that Iain Banks is the same person, but not the same author. That author writes “real literature”, not genre.

I can read and enjoy “real lit”, but prefer SF. If I need seriosity, I’ll reread Dhalgren.

Sequel to A Cavern of Black Ice. J.V.Jones last few outings have been excellent, and I’m looking to pick up where we left off with this series. Although, I’ll admit, not quite enough to go dig up the last and reread it first. But enough to buy it the first time I spotted it in the bookstore.