Just realized that today is the 2006 Commencement Ceremony for RPI grads.  You can watch it here if you're so inclined.  No, it doesn't work with MPlayer and the w32codecs, so you'll have to fire up a VM.  Of course, I recall the 2004 Commencement Ceremony being fairly boring (I brought my Zaurus) so I'd assume it would be even worse watching it online.

Apparently Quake 3 is back in fashion, for some reason.  I started up a server at quake.prolixium.com [69.9.186.236] running the OSP mod.  Stats, which may or may not be current, are here.

Apparently there's going to be a new Star Trek film coming to theatres:

According to the BBC, citing New Variety, the new movie will centre on the early days of Spock and Kirk at the Starfleet Academy. It will be co-written, produced, and directed by JJ Abrams of Alias and Mission Impossible III fame.

Starfleet Academy?  Talk about completely running out of ideas... =(

I've redirected most of my progress here.

So, yesterday was new laptop day at work, for some of us.  Here's what I got:

• Make/Model: Lenovo T60 (Model 2008-CTU)
• Processor: Intel Core Duo (Centrino Duo) T2400 @ 1.83GHz, 2048 KiB L2 Cache
• Graphics: ATI X1400 w/128MB Video RAM
• Memory: 1024MB
• Storage: Hitachi 60GB 5400RPM SATA Disk Drive
• Optical Drive: CDRW/DVD Drive (HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD DRI)
• Audio: Intel HD Audio Chipset
• Wireless Networking: Intel PRO/Wireless 8945ABG
• Wired Networking: Intel 82573L Gigabit Ethernet
• Peripheral Networking: Bluetooth

So, I got the OK to run Linux on it.  Sweet!  Or so I thought..  I installed Gentoo on this bad boy, and got as far as configuring Xorg, when I started encountering some real problems.

The first big problem I hit was a timer/clock issue.  Networking was just dog slow, and the system was dropping packets to hosts on the local LAN, along with some reall weird latency.  According to the kernel printk timestamps, only 30 seconds had gone by, when the system had been up for over 4 minutes.  Also, not a good sign when keyboard repeat rate slows down and speeds up when you're just holding down a key.

The fix for this was to disable ACPI, for now.  Unfortunately, doing so prevented the SATA contoller to be detected.  Disabling AHCI in the BIOS fixed this.  However, disabling ACPI prevents the Intel audio module from loading, and hoses the wired networking.

So, I'm giving up for tonight.  I didn't even get to trying out the wireless chip or ATI Linux drivers for the X1400 that were apparently just released on the 12th.

I'd post lspci or dmesg output, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow, when I have more energy to built a 2.6.16 kernel and hope for the best.

*sigh*

I finally got fed up with lossy wireless and picked up an 802.11a/b/g access point.  I've been dealing with 2.4GHz interference from:

• Neighbors' baby monitors a unit away
• Wireless speakers
• About 50 other 802.11b/g access points in the area

The 11a radio is decent, and works nicely with the Atheros chip in my T42.  Performance hovers around 25.36mbit/sec, which is just fine for me, since the connection doesn't drop every ten minutes.  I left the old AP/router (a WRT54GS running OpenWRT) in line with the new one, but separated b/g service between the two units so my Zaurus will still stay online.

I've read that there's a version of OpenWRT for the WAP55AG, but I'll mess with that another time.

Friends don't let friends^W^W^W^W^WHumans don't let humans use Internet Explorer.  It's bad for you, mmkay?

I forgot to mention that comments have been tempoarily disabled, due to spammers.  The Internet is really starting to annoy me.