I just got a new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite U300.

I'm self-justifying this on the basis of needing a "work" laptop for my consulting sideline. So far it's working for me, although friends and family aren't buying it.

It came preinstalled with Windows Vista and no doubt some other garbage to jack up the selling price. I booted this long enough to know the following:

1) Vista is a suckass eye-candy replacment for XP.

2) All the hardware seemed to work.

3) Vista is a suckass eye-candy replacement for XP.

Needless to say I quickly replaced Vista with a solid Debian install.

I used the netinst CD for AMD64 (which is the debian way of saying x86_64) and installed the default kernel splitting the drive into inner and outer ring swap partitions (better seek times), a system partition and a massive /home partition. I've tried other schemes, but for a single user computer anything more than that is just unnecessarily complex.

The install took a little while, but most of the basics came up working. Nice screen. Hate touchpads. The wireless lan did NOT work, but a quick google turned up the package with the intel proprietary microcode to make it go. ACPI, which has typically been an issue on laptops (for me) worked out of the box.

Sound did not, though. I searched and found the "known issue" with almost all alsa versions prior to 1.0.15-3 but that upgrade alone did not fix it. I should clarify, "that update" involved effectively an entire system update, from the kernel up.

My mistake for installing the "stable" version on my laptop. For most user computers "unstable" is your best bet. "Stable" I generally use for servers. Oh well. Only took an extra HOUR.

Anyway, sound still didn't work. So I double checked everything and finally (using module-assistant, an A++ application in my book) got and compiled the actual alsa module. A quick reboot and sound now works.

I haven't tried the analog modem, and probably won't.

It's a Core 2 Duo on the centrino chipset, which should equate to good battery life, but I haven't tested that yet. This chipset while high speed in many respects is the source of the problems with both sound and wlan I ran into.

Speaking of which, my wlan device shows up as wlan0_rename for reasons unknown. Not a huge deal, but a little aggravating. I'll look into changing or aliasing it.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it!

I just read JK Rowling's latest Harry Potter installment. I have been impressed with the accessibility and depth of most books in the series and this one was no exception.

The nuances of Harry's paternal relationship with Dumbledore are strikingly reminiscent of my own realizations. The final recognition of Dumbledore as a person, flawed, yet benevolent is a fitting close to the series.

Just got a new Palm Centro, and this entry comes direct from the phone.

Its a good little phone, small enough to be phonelike but with plenty of features.

Still, not a good way to enter text in bulk!

I finally got around to trying facebook yesterday.

I had put this off due to my disgust with Myspace. I should have known better. Facebook is far more stable and usable than Myspace. Moreover, it has some security features that are well worth switching.

And others. Wonderful comments there too.

And an old friend (in the way a high school arch enemy becomes an old friend after not seeing him for 20+ years):



And of course the student arrest in FL that everyone is up in arms about. Like no one saw this coming.

The sad thing is, despite the later protests, no one tried to intervene on his behalf at the time at all.

Well, I have to count John Kerry's "No let me answer his question" statements as an attempt, and Kerry deserves a bit of grudging respect for that.