I decided to bite the bullet and get up to date with OpenSUSE 11.2, which, after the issues with 11.0, should show that I still have an occasional ‘redline’ tendency.

I followed the 11.1-11.2 update procedure outlined here, and here’s what I ran into:

• Kernel was updated, but GRUB menu was not. Yay for tab autocomplete.
• Still a few strange module and startup/runtime issues, and incomplete packages by this method.
• It took almost 5 hours, with 10mbit. The network overhead from others installing 11.2 made it annoying, but COME ON.

So far, my impressions:

• The default installation of Firefox 3.5.5 does not work; the default file open dialog returns a nil after the file is chosen, but the 3.6b2 beta on the Build Service works just fine.
• OpenOffice is finally unbroken again with tables created in Word.
• I miss KDE 3.5, but have been able to make 4.3 do most of what I wanted, even if in a roundabout way. I hate the ‘display desktop icons in a folder’ view with 4.3, so I drag an icon from it to my desktop, then moved the rest to other subfolders. I keep my desktop clean, but I like having my files right where I put them. I have yet to integrate my ssh agent, but looks simple enough – just need to stuff in env, and slightly mod my shell scripts. I can probably live with this. (Edit: I can now view the desktop as a ‘folder view’ after repairing KDE’s installation.)
• Intel video is not accelerated by default, and transparencies don’t work even forcing konsole to support them.
• Pulse still sucks, and I don’t like Dolphin as much as Konqueror, but I’ll learn to deal with it.

Overall, 11.2 seems like a pretty solid release.

Update: It’s solid as heck on my Latitude 6500, but on my aging Inspiron 1525, it’s a no-go. The old 3945 works fine, as does the laggy video, but it will NOT work right. I’ve tried a plain 11.2 install – no keyboard with GUI despite various BIOS and X11 settings. Tried falling back to my old 11.1 and upgrading (after the first attempt left me with no zypper). Still, nada. It’s back at 11.1 and will probably sit there until I feel like wrestling with it to get it to work.

When I was young, I had a fascination for raccoons. Thus, my family would always buy me raccoon items. I had several plush raccoons, several wood and resin items, and even pictures.

As a younger child, I obtained my first Intellivision gaming unit from a garage sale. I saved up all of the cans I could find for months, and eventually managed to buy a rather complete unit for about $32. This was maybe 1986.

As I evolved into a computer geek, I saved up over a hundred dollars to obtain a Gravis Ultrasound – not only did it offer 16 bit audio, but hardware mixing. This means you could actually play games and compose music on the-then-standard 20Mhz machine.

In my early 20s, I accumulated G-Body cars; all Oldsmobiles – but I figured I’d eventually get a GN. I never did.

Now, I seem to be collecting SAABs.

SAAB the first, my first (and currently only) new car:

I fell in love with this car. It is such a quirky little thing, but so much fun. I drove it up to Montana in August . Within less than two days, I made it there without so much as a hint of pain; nor a ticket – despite my best efforts.

Well, a year and some months later, I found this beast on Craigslist:

When I first spotted it, the turbo was blown, and it was unusable. It was entirely undrivable. It was just.. trashed, mechanically. Eventually, the price for this carcass went down, and my interest went up.

Despite being 10 years old and having 160,000 now 172,000 miles on it, it’s in brilliant shape inside, and out. I couldn’t say no, and now I have a second car – or as I like to call it, “my soon to be daily driver.” The rebuild is nearly complete, and should hopefully be entirely roadworthy and smoggable in the upcoming weeks. I’ve just ordered more parts, and rebuilt the foglamp assembly on the right side.

Those Oldsmobiles are long lost to the annals of time- each of them were sold for hundreds after thousands invested. I currently have 4 functional Intellivsion units in the garage with several games. Years ago I sent my GUS collection to Trixter, who still hasn’t cataloged and inventoried it for historical purposes. My relatives still sometimes send me raccoons. If I ever have company, I’ll have to disclose this – I don’t think it’s normal for a place to be filled with polyresin and wooden striped critters and pictures.

Woohoo.

Being a merchant who processes online, there are many security implications you need to be aware of. Just passed Type 5 SAQ-D, which is required for anyone who actually stores data for ANY period of time, which differentiates it from a Type 4.

This is one of the most difficult to attain due to the requirements for software auditing, smart coding practices, setting up stateful firewalls, and handling of volatile data. Passed with no issues.

I’ve owned Dells since, well, since I’ve owned Macs and Sun equipment. In 2001 I finally decided I was sick of buying, and parting together a machine with no real warranty – when I could buy one much cheaper which would generally do what I wanted.

My last few machines, all laptops, in successive order:
Inspiron 6400, Vostro 1400, the Inspiron 1525, and now, the Latitude E6500.

The Inspiron 6400 was sold when I obtained the Vostro, the Vostro met an untimely death and was replaced hastily (and cheaply) with the 1525; the 1525 consistantly overheated and the 1280×900 screen was way too small for working in. Even with virtual desktops, I kept running out of space.

I spoke with my Dell Gold Team Rep, and opted on the E6500n.

The Good:

• It’s still a paltry 15.4”, but I’m not into huge machines – I want functionality. I did get WUXGA (1920×1200) resolution.
• 4G RAM More RAM = Better Than. Spiffyfast.
• 250G SATA-2 w/ Drop Sensor. 7200rpm makes it pretty speedy.
• No OS! (FreeDOS), hence the E6500n.
• Intel PRO/1000 Ethernet. Industry-standard, even if the stock linux drivers are old.
• A 3 year warranty!
• The dual stick/mouse unit has a third button which is set to paste in KDE. Not bad.
• The encapsulating case is actually metal, not plastic. I haven’t seen that since my beloved 6400!

The Bad:

• The wireless is a crappy Broadcom 43xxx card, and that’s all that offered.
• The trackpad/nib mouse combo – if you do not disable the PS/2 access for it, you will forever be losing it and having your HD churn while kprints take up your dmesg buffer.
• Different keyboard map, again. This one is more true to my circa-2006ish Inspiron 6400, but I am now used to Delete being the upper-right key, not Page Up.
• Speakers are immediately to the left, and right of the keyboard. Rest your hands a bit offset? Prepare for muffled sound.
• Yet another new, and seemingly-pointless AC adaptor. This one mimmics Apple’s 2003 technology with an LED by the plug – but it doesn’t actually do anything. It lights when it’s plugged into AC; it does NOTHING differently when plugged/unplugged from the unit. No, it won’t even recognize a PA-10 or PA-12 unit, so you can toss out your old adapters.
• The SSD is nearly impossible to use. Unless you have two cards, that is. You need to press one card into the butt of the other – a good cm into the recesses of the unit to get it to eject, or lock into place.

The Ugly:

• Audio is HDA Intel G45 based; ALSA is still sketchy with 1.0.18. It pops, it hisses, it is weak and fairly annoying to get working.
• Wireless, again. This is easily exchanged with two screw removals (including the one retaining the mini-pcie card, but it’s quarter-height. I’m working around this by having my 4965AGN in the Cell slot (perfect fit), but I have lost my leds.
• I personally find no use in the backlit keyboard (I opted out of the pointless thumbprint sensor).

It also has an automatic level sensor you can enable in bios to turn up/down the LCD’s backlight with different light levels. I turned this on as a test, but will probably disable it whenever I reboot. Less than a week old and the damn thing’s already whining when I get a mostly-white screen.

The resolution is wonderful, and although I opted for the Intel G45 onboard (only ATI was offered with his model, not NVidia for some reason), I don’t play games, and I do get a rather crappy ~300fps with this screen, where my prior-gen Inspiron 1525 does about 500fps with it’s Intel onboard – however, I do also have nearly double the resolution.

The 7200 RPM HD is pretty speedy, and the unit is not prone to overheating; but it’s also double the cost for roughly the same machine as my Inspiron 1525 with a better HD and better screen resolution with crappier hardware support in Linux. I do not regret my decision, but if I didn’t absolutely need widescreen, I’d stick to a cheaper machine.

Matt may be off galavanting about the planet – but he certainly didn’t call it in – this mix has to be my favorite yet.

Nocturnal 205 really takes the whole thing back to its’ essence. Give it a go if you’re into trance/dance. His show’s quite brilliant, and 205, well, sublime.