?

And I feel it near, razor sharp, the onslaught of new fears
To lay me to waste and keep me away from the next morning's sun
Should I obey, I am likely to survive, sentiment by fake smile
But only the weak will say that's being truly alive.

the saga of my stolen keys.

I just want to make a record of today and the weekend, to have it, and let people know what kind of stupid things can happen. I will try my best not to blame people's lack of parenting skills, but that will be hard.

I live in an apartment complex in Dover, NH. Though the residents have been warned to watch their kids, because they have been causing trouble, they don't.
Also, a selection of the the non-kid residents are less than reputable.

On Friday night, I came home late and dropped my keys in the hallway while getting my boots. Saturday around noon, I realized the keys were missing, and began a frantic search for them. I put up a note asking for anyone who saw them in the hallway to call me.

By Sunday morning, the sign was mysteriously missing.
I put up another sign. By Sunday night, it was stashed in a corner in the hallway.

Monday morning, my flatmate left, locking the door behind him.
3 hours later, I was in my room with the door locked, and I received a text message, making my cell phone go off.
All of a sudden, there was a loud sound in my living room, and then someone saying "Hello? Hello?" out there.
My neighbor was there telling me he heard running footsteps and the door banging against the frame.

Whoever is in possession of my keys had the guts to use them to come into my apartment while they thought no one was here. It seemed they were exploring more than stealing, as nothing was missing.
A policeman came and questioned people, but didn't look too hopeful.

Currently, the locks have been changed, but my really important keys are still in the hands of whoever that was that came here.
Glad to know I live somewhere where someone finds your keys outside your door and decides to use them for crime.

Come on, people! Stop being so terrible to one another, and maybe we'll live to see another day. And if you have kids, teach them not to steal and break in to apartments!

Chrome OS goes to school

Next week (Tuesday, 1/25) I go back to school for my last full semester. I am going to attempt to replace my Asus eee pc 901, which runs Easy Peasy (Ubuntu) with my Google cr-48 for Tuesday through Friday, relying completely on Google Docs for note taking.

Will I miss the eee pc 901? or Tomboy Notes? or Ubuntu? Time will tell.

I'm thinking the added screen real estate and awesome keyboard (a tiny notch above the Apple keyboard I use at work) may assist me.

Full compatibility and veritable "snappy-ness" with the University of New Hampshire student portal is also a big plus.

Here are things I can think of that will make me switch back to a "real netbook":
* Development
* VPN
* Remote desktop
* Full linux shell
* certificate WPA protection (primarily for secure wifi tethering to a Droid Incredible).
* Thunderbird

Stay Tuned. In a few months a sequel will be posted: "Chrome OS lives with my parents."

I have a Google CR-48 running Chrome OS, and some things to say about it.

So I wished and wished, and Google decided to grace me with a CR-48. Awesome!
How is it, you ask? My answer is "interesting."

------
UPDATE: apparently I am the only one to receive one in this town, according to this interesting tracker:
http://addicted-gamer.com/cr48-tracker/

I had it sent to my parents' house, as I am residing there for a few days.
None have/will be shipping to the town I currently live in, and only one was sent to the town where I go to school.
Supposedly the total to be sent is around 60,000. So far, at least 2 of those are in NH.
------

Some questions I've gotten about it:

* Did they tell you it was coming?
- Not at all. The box shows up at the door and you go "hooray" and log in. They HAVE the contact information, but make it a surprise.

* So, it was free?
- Yeah, I mean, Google know's my credit card info for Android downloads, but there was no money exchange, and no billing involved.

* Well, you have to give it back, right?
- Nobody's put a time limit on it, nobody's said a thing.

* Does it work like any other computer?
- Kind of. It works like any other computer that has an internet browser. A computer that only has an internet browser. So, No and a little bit of yes.
--------

Hardware stuff

As there are plenty of hardware posts out I'll leave the in-depth hardware reviews to other people. If you somehow have not seen a hardware post yet, feel free to check out my facebook album of the CR-48:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076501&id=1327140001&l=354a697119

Of the hardware, I have these things to say:
* Awesome keyboard
* Touchy touchpad (think of a stickier version of a mac pro touchpad).
* No Ethernet port? Severely limits my ability to use for testing modems at work.
* Speakers are very small and project oddly
* Screen is wonderful.

But I know this is reference hardware, so it's not meant to be consumer-centric. Just pointing out things that could make people shy away from this particular unit.

Also, I have yet to find the piece of tape with the magic button (should probably just see it in another person's post), but I did find that odd memory card slot under the battery.

No CAPS LOCK button? Good. I can't remember the last time I needed or wanted to use that button. This little search button is much more useful!

-------------

Okay, so the software...

It's Chrome, and that's about it. the majority of things a user can do with the Chrome Browser can be done on Chrome OS, and vice versa.

Chrome OS and Chrome Browser are brothers (Sisters?) by design. When I logged in, Chrome OS already knew what pages I liked, what my bookmark toolbar should look like, and how I liked to browse the internet. Grabbed it all from my synced data from Chrome Browser.

Then again, some of the known issues in Chrome OS are not problems in Chrome Browser. The one that comes to mind is using the TAB key to navigate fields. I feel strange when I use the mouse to select fields on the sites on which I am used to using TAB.

My father found a few things when he jumped on today, such as the ultra-helpful task manager (it can be found via settings but Shift+ESC is easiest). Another thing we toyed with was the minimal Terminal (CTRL+ALT+T). As it has an SSH client, I can login to a terminal and get SOME work done.

As for the power management, it is pretty impressive. I have yet to see it "die" and I have used it for hours on end. The secret is in the unit's tendency to sleep when I am not doing anything. This sleeping is acceptable, because it instantly recovers from sleep, with a very minimal WIFI reconnect delay (provided the AP responds quickly).
-----------

What am I still looking/hoping for?

Easy access to the file explorer. So far I have only seen it when uploading photos with Facebook, and the file system seemed quite vacant, which shouldn't be a surprise.
Maybe there is a shortcut for opening the file explorer, but I haven't found it yet.
Some sort of "my files" on the Home page or whatever that at least acts as a shortcut to the Downloads directory would be nice.

Simple USB drive support. I plugged in my Droid Incredible, in USB drive mode, and didn't see anything in /media or /mnt that resembled a mounted volume. Maybe I can mount it myself, but I was not given the idea that the mount command was supported, nor did I find anything in /dev that looked like it was my connected drive.

Netflix. This is also on the FAQ. It's not really Google's fault though, in my eyes. (Ahem. I am not a fan of Silverlight. We don't need another Flash, especially not a Microsoft closed-source one.)

IMAP mail client. Sure, Gmail can access other mail via POP3, and can send my mail through work SMTP servers, but when I want to do work e-mail on this notebook, I have actually attempted to "close" Chrome and find Thunderbird.
This is one of the odd things about transitioning from Chrome Browser to Chrome OS. You have to keep yourself from clicking the nonexistent "minimize" and "close" buttons. My father was looking for these as much as I was, and repeatedly pressed the "file bug" button as it is where "minimize" would normally be.
--------


Other things?

I know I left stuff out. If you are reading this and you have any questions or suggestions of further research, I am all ears... err.. eyes.

Reality is far from 1.

Every morning I wake up and feel like I'm about to explode into a million pieces.
There comes a time when that stops being different and it becomes your life.

I wish that a long time ago I had figured out what I know now: I am every one of those pieces, and they pull me in countless directions. That's why it feels like nothing works; that nothing makes sense. Everything does make sense, in its own way. There are a million conflicting "rights" and our world was not designed to hold that logic.

I become wrong with each passing thought. I become more estranged from the norm with every fleeting moment.
My only hope is that I find ways to compress and bend these fragments until they are workable in the real world. My fear is that I will never accomplish that task.

---------------------------------------------------
NOTE: I write something like this every November. I blame it on my birthday. Every year I think they show progress, but not necessarily toward fitting in and getting life working. With any luck, my November 2011 post will be more hopeful in the wake of actually graduating and ending this chapter in my life.

An open Letter to Netflix

dear Netflix,

I pay you to send me DVDs to watch, yet I receive scratched up pieces of plastic that are roughly circular and have a hole in the center. Maybe you got confused, and thought that the scratches on DVDs weren't an issue. In reality, they are signs that some of your customers treat the DVDs like crap. Like all crap, this type rolls downhill, onto those of us who actually care for the disks you send us. I've gotten 3 disks in the past 2 weeks and only been able to watch 1. And it was a replacement for the first one!

Maybe you should evaluate the incoming disks vs. the outgoing disks. If a disk goes out in pristine condition and comes back covered in peanut butter, you should quarantine them to a set of customers who wipe dvds with brillo pads, and send people like me fresh copies.
Hell, I'm starting to think nobody actually looks at the disk surface at all. I'm going to clue you in on something: DVDs are optical disks. Would you have a good time seeing something if I gave your glasses a sandpapering treatment? Probably not. Most likely you'd have as good of a time as I do constantly clicking through to report a DVD as "unplayable" and getting reminded to try windex. If I followed your advice, I'd be fixing the paint in people's cars with windex and a little elbow grease.
Fortunately for you, Netflix, I do enjoy using your services more than I would enjoy not using them, so I guess you can just keep doing whatever, and I'll keep watching.


sincerely,
Jhoule and the rest of us who get gross DVDs

updating(fixing) rt2860(sta) wireless in Easy Peasy 1.6 / Ubuntu: eee 901 and similar models.

This is a quick guide to updating the driver for your rt2860-based wlan card in your eee 901 and similar netbook, in linux.

The native driver in Easy Peasy 1.6 (and maybe Ubuntu 10.04, but don't hold me to that) does not work for any wireless access point with WPA/WPA2 with TKIP enabled (even if it is TKIP+AES mixed).
Also, when your system updates the kernel, this fix could become required (but it should be a simple file copy).

The latest drivers from ralink (the manufacturer of the card chipset) fix the issue.

IN ORDER FOR THE UPDATE TO WORK, YOUR COMPUTER MUST HAVE THE LATEST BIOS INSTALLED. VIEW THE SUPPORT SITE FOR THE MANUFACTURER OF YOUR NETBOOK FOR DETAILS.
Failure to update the bios may result in an unresponsive wifi card until it is updated to the proper version.

This guide is sourced by
* my reading this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1045703d (keep in mind that the driver version, file name(s) and ubuntu versions are wrong since it is an older post)

* some helpful comments from other Easy Peasy users on the facebook page (thanks to Cory Stephenson for catching some errors on my part): http://www.facebook.com/easypeasy

* files and readmes from the ralink linux support site: http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2
--------------

Optionally, before updating the driver, you can update the firmware. Go to the ralink linux support site and download the "Firmware RT28XX/..." file. Unzip and get the rt2860.bin file and put it in your /lib/firmware directory.

To update the driver to the one that works:

Step 1:
download the driver at the ralink site and compile it using the instructions in the ubuntuforums post (you MUST edit the lines in the makefile for WPA suppilcant)
OR
just download the one I compiled on my eee 901: http://www.filedropper.com/rt2860sta (link has expired)

Step 2:
put the "rt2860sta.ko" file in /lib/modules//kernel/drivers/staging/rt2860. (overwrite the current one; the directory after modules may differ depending on your kernel version.)

Step 3:

modprobe rt2860sta

to register the driver with the kernel

Step 4:
add a line "rt2860sta" to /etc/modules

code:

sudo echo rt2860sta >> /etc/modules

(or use a text editor and put it in, but you have to do it as a superuser).

which makes sure that this new driver is activated every time your OS loads.

Step 5:
reboot the system
code:

sudo reboot

(or however you like to do it)

when the system comes back up, your rt2860 card should be able to do B/G/N with any of the standard wireless security options!

do an

iwconfig

and check for an "ra0" entry to verify that it is up and working.

I know I wasn't as descriptive if possible.
If you find any errors or have anything to add, let me know.

good luck!