deandra.homeip.net

"HMS Unseen" by Patrick Robinson, is part of a series of war novels in which Admiral Arnold Morgan cusses and swears and generally causes the US Navy to blow shit up.

The other day I got up close and personal with my kernel configuration, for the first time in many years. I thought to myself, "If I can't use hibernation on my laptop, at least I can eliminate the need for the initrd, so that I can make it boot faster." While I was at it, I reviewed each and every kernel option, building in only what was essential for booting, modularizing anything else I knew I needed, and disabling everything else.

So I was listening to some tunes in my Tracker the other day, and wondering what I could do to get rid of the horrible plastic-on-plastic rattle that plagues everyone who half-asses their own car audio system. In order to silence the rattle, I needed to locate it. And in order to do that, I needed to reproduce it in a controlled environment. Which means I needed to have the stereo blasting in my garage. Trouble is, the mid-frequency sounds generated by the music tended to drown out the rattling, which made it difficult to locate the source.

Well, my success at hibernating my laptop was short-lived. It seems that anything I do causes successful hibernation once or twice, but after that the machine again begins failing in mysterious ways.

I'll say it again: if you want to use Linux, and don't want to have to fight tooth and nail for every inch of functionality, don't buy this laptop. At any price.

Well, yesterday I put on my big boots and ventured out across my back yard, up to my knees in snow in some places, to retrieve my mountain bike from the shed.

It was actually the first time I'd set foot in the shed in at least a couple months, and I was quite pleased to see that the structure and contents have remained untouched by the winter weather.

After I carried the bike through the snow I brought it into the house and gave it a once-over. Again, I was surprised that everything checked out - even the tires had not lost any air over the winter.

I was hunting through the paperback racks at my local public library, looking for something to satiate my voracious apetite for light fiction, when I came across "Man Of War" by Alexander Kent. Set in 1817 Antigua, it is a tale of the glory days of fighting sail.

The hero, Captain Adam Bolitho, returns home, loses his ship, and gets reassigned. He's sent down to the Caribbean to battle slavers.

Today I spent a little more time cleaning out my home directory on my server. It was like an archaeological dig, unearthing stuff from five or six years ago. Ran across a bunch of old photos, including some of Tigger when he was a kitten; you can find those in The Tigger Gallery.

Yeah, so today I decided I'd spend some time troubleshooting the hibernate functionality on my HP tx1000 laptop, to find out why it doesn't consistently work. (it suspends and resumes fine, except that it will occasionally reboot instead of giving me back my desktop.)

I've compiled some rules for people who use the office photocopier. Following these rules will make sure everyone using the copier has a positive experience.

I awoke this morning with a bang. Or rather, to a bang. Somewhere in the walls or ceiling of my house, timbers were shifting like tectonic plates. I guess you could say the bang was a housequake.