Journal mcgrew's Journal: -- Turning in my license 8
I'm about ready to turn in my nerd license, because I'm feeling downright incompetent.
I was going to buy a crossover cable to connect the netbook with the laptop, but then thought "WTF? I have spare network cables; it'll be easy enough to hack one into a crossover." So I pulled out my pocket knife and skinned the cable and its wires, and looked the color codes up on wikipedia. It turned out there were three ways to do it: 10/100 base T and two ways for gigabit. I wired it gigabit.
It didn't work. The newer Acer I just bought in April was trying to communicate at 100 mbps, while the ancient Thinkpad was trying to connect at 10 mbps.
Shit. So I go to rewire it and the phone rings. Amy. Wanting alcohol, of course. "Yes, I'll come get you." It meant she was fighting with her boyfriend and I'd get laid.
She'd been accepted at Robert Morris College and was ecstatic and wanting to celebrate. We went to Felber's, where she bought my lunch and beer for a change, then went to my house for more partying. It turned out, of course, that she was indeed fighting with the boyfriend, a real loser who's been on unemployment since before he met Amy and who's not been looking for a job despite the fact that his unemployment is about to run out.
I took her home about eight and went home to bed myself. Quarter after one there was a tapping at my window. "Amy?"
"Yeah, let me in!"
I was up the rest of the night trying to talk her out of killing herself, and pinpointed the reason her depression had hit -- it was an anniversary for her. This time about five years ago the love of her life had hung himself. Oddly, just knowing the reason for her depression lifted it some. "That's why I've been such a bitch for the last few weeks!" she exclaimed.
I took her home about noon or so and got to work trying to get the two computers to talk to each other. It wasn't happeneing; no matter how I wired the cable, one wanted 10 mbps and the other wanted 100 mbps. Wikipedia said modern electronics did the pair switching automatically, so I tried an unmolested network cable, to the same effect. I've started suspecting that 100 mbps is the slowest the netbook will go (under Linux, anyway) and 10 mbps is the only speed the IBM will go. I guess I'll go buy a router when I get paid and see how I can fuck that up.
So I went to hook up the stereo, and at least something was going right. Of course, it's damned hard to miswire a stereo. I managed, though -- I had the speaker wires coming from the front, wrapped around the damned cabinet, so I had to untangle them and reconnect them.
Yesterday wasn't my day. It seems to have started going downhill right after I got laid.
I turned on the netbook and tried to get on the internet; no signal today. Annoyingly, the icon at the bottom right for "bluetooth" kept turning up, even though the netbook doesn't have bluetooth. I tried to remove it, and they all went away!
Luckily, KDE has a comprehensive manual as well as the man pages, unlike Windows, which has nohelp files and nothing else. Unluckily, the manual doesn't always correspond with the build of KDE I have installed. Windows lacks good documentation, kubuntu has the opposite problem; there's a shitload of info in the manual and man files; TMI in fact. I have a lot of reading to do.
I liked Mandriva a lot better. Its tools made things so easy I didn't even have to go into a shell prompt or RTFM, and it's been so long I've forgotten all the commands anyway.
Windows 7 is better than kubuntu in a few respects -- it's harder to fuck up, for one. Like the lost icons, which were way too easy to lose and way to hard to find again. But then, Windows suffers from the reverse, making it way too easy to install stuff that shouldn't be installed and way too hard to remove it.
The two OSes seem to boot at about the same speed, but kubuntu shuts down a LOT faster. In fact, where I'd put Windows in hibernate mode so everything would be just like it was, I just shut kubunto down, because it boots fast, shuts down fast, and when I log in it's just like I left it. And kubuntu shuts down faster than Windows goes into hibernate mode.
And when I installed kubuntu on it I lost the root password, so I can't sudo in and install Firefox, and konqueror really, REALLY sucks. I mean it makes IE look good it's so bad. It's ugly, and a lot of sites, like Yahoo mail, won't work at all with it (and I promised a faithful reader a copy of The Paxil Diaries. Sorry, GameboyRMH, I'll get that to you as soon as I get email (i.e., FireFox) working. Which may be a while, as it seems my nerdfu has deserted me.
I'll be reinstalling kubuntu and this time I'll write the root password down. I'm way too stupid to hang onto that nerd license.
you don't need the root pasword in ubuntu (Score:2)
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I'll try that, thanks. Like I said, it's been a long time, and I've forgotten most of it; I'm a noob all over again!
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Indeed I was thinking something similar, only without the changing the root password. I never use root, I just use sudo from my own account.
Also if you're going to reinstall anyway then I really do recommend giving standard Ubuntu a go.
I think I removed the bluetooth icon by just deleting it using the System->Preferences->Startup Applications panel. Kubuntu is nice if you're really set on KDE (I tried it myself before trying Ubuntu), but I'm pretty sure all the real innovative stuff is done for the Gn
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I don't know, maybe I'll try Gnome again, but when I tried it before I much preferred KDE. Mandriva gave you a choice of everything on install (Gnome, KDE, and IIRC there was another desktop; LILO or Grub; choices of what software to install (Five browsers IIRC); I relly liked that. It's a shame Mandriva's gone now; it was the easiest to use OS I've run across (I never had a mac) and it gave you far more choice than any other distro I tried.
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I've had a Google around and it looks like Kubuntu doesn't even have the Ubuntu Software Center. I'm assuming there's still a graphical package manager of some kind in KDE, and I do often use Synaptic directly in Ubuntu, but the Software Center is still pretty cool - it lets you browse the Ubuntu "multiverse" (ie including many common 3rd party apps not supported by Canonical) repository of apps by category, with descriptions and screenshots, plenty of choices, and makes installing new apps such a breeze :)
Hmm... (Score:2)
If they're gigabit NICs, then they may work with a regular cable since auto MDI-X is "optional" and you only need one side to support it.
You can use mii-tool in a console to have linux explain what the hell the network port is doing. With no options, it'll list the network cards it found and tell you if you've got a connection. If so, then it'll show the speed and duplex it's using and even if it autonegotiated that speed.
If it says that it's connected and that it negotiated that speed, then it's possible
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Thanks, I'll try mii-tool tonight. Both machines are running kubuntu now (one booted from a thumb drive since its HD is shot).
WOOOOOO (Score:2)
Yeah I got a shout-out! :D
Don't feel bad, I wouldn't have had a chance to start reading your book yet. Anyway you're giving me a free book!
Last weekend I was fixing my dad's PC (mobo stopped acting glitchy and finally died so I could replace it and not have to hear complaints about it) and looking at my own dead file server (10+ year old mobo died).
On Monday night I finally got some sleep, then last night I was finding ways to reattach my 4x4's grille (I'm surprised it didn't come loose sooner considering h