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Vespa: My Pink Dell Mini9 w/ Ubuntu

Sunday, Dec 28th, 2008 by pleia2 | 29 Comments

I’ve wanted a pink laptop for ages, this Christmas a few of my friends got together and pitched in to buy me the pink Dell Mini9 I’d been drooling over for months. Wow! Thanks again guys, you rock.

First off, here are the specs. Which makes it twice as powerful with many more features than my current laptop.

As a whole? I love this netbook. It’s fast, it’s light, it’s silent, it’s pink and coming preloaded with Ubuntu 8.04 was quite nice. I named it Vespa (after Princess Vespa from Spaceballs). The screen is 8.9″ viewable and has a default resolution of 1024×600 which makes for a very usable amount of space, and the fact that it’s backlit makes the display itself brilliant and clear. The touchpad is appropriately sensitive and nice to use. When I close the lid it suspends properly. Out of the box everything works, I just tested my camera with skype this afternoon (it also came with a program called “cheese” that the camera works with).

As you can see above, it comes with a little book about Ubuntu published by Dell. It’s copyrighted so I can’t scan and share the contents without permission, but it’s a cute little 20 page booklet that goes over the basics of how to get going with Ubuntu. Dell customizes Gnome a bit, but switching back to regular Gnome is as easy as a menu option to “Switch Desktop Mode” (you choose either “Dell” or “Classic” Desktop).

Now that all that “Yes, it’s awesome!” talk is out of the way, I do have a few gripes, some of which are pretty major.

The keyboard (Ubuntu casebadge is my addition, alas, Dell has no Ubuntu sticker for their Ubuntu Mini9s):

Honestly? As a whole it doesn’t bother me. I’m used to hunting for insert and home keys on a laptop keyboard. Having the tilde and pipe and others, and all f-keys usable via the function key hasn’t annoyed me nearly as much as I feared it might. It’s all quite usable except for one thing – the location of the apostrophe. Rather than being between the enter and ;: key, it’s next to the space bar and the enter key is next to the ;: – this means that I’m happily typing along and keep hitting the enter key to enter an apostrophe, gah. I’ll probably get used to it, but it really was a poor design choice, maybe I’ll try some fancy key remapping to try and solve this.

Wireless worked out of the box, which was great. But while the machine is packed with Intel parts, and then they had to go and do this:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

Broadcom? Why oh why!? I’ve already run into a bug where the wl module hangs upon sshing to other machines, which is a primary function for this netbook (I’m connected to at least 3 servers via ssh 24/7). I was able to find this bug, which they’ve released a fix for, but until I can snag that release, the problem is fixed via issuing this command each time I connect to a wireless network:

sudo iwpriv eth1 set_vlanmode 0

Which leads me to my next gripe… why don’t I have this fix on my Mini9? Because this machine ships with the “dell-mini.archive.canonical.com” sources.list which is not kept up to date with all security patches and fixes for Hardy. This is really quite worrying, and is making me seriously consider wiping the install and installing things myself, perhaps Xubuntu Intrepid – and fighting with it to get all the hardware working again, knowing that since restoration is via the Ubuntu 8.04 DVD + a drivers disk, that I’ll need a USB dvd-rom (or some other trickery) to restore to factory settings.

There are also a couple little things – like FireFox being covered with Yahoo! stuff, the default page is yahoo.com, there is a Yahoo! toolbar by default, the default search engine is Yahoo!. Easily turned off and changed, of course, but being in Linux for so long I’m not used to a fresh install so blatantly advertising like that (reminds me of AOL icons on the desktops of old Windows installs).

With the exception of the apostrophe and broadcom chipset, the issues are pretty much just software related. Tossing a vanilla install on here would be where I’d begin with an eeePC (ships with a version of Xandros I dislike) or an Aspire One (AFAIK only ships with Windows, which I wouldn’t use). Having the Mini9 shipped with a decent Ubuntu install where all the hardware works is great – if I really can’t be bothered to take the time to reinstall and fiddle with hardware, I really could go on with this factory install without too much headache (or heartache). Plus I’m happy to support Dell shipping with Ubuntu releases, I believe having big companies make steps like this is vital to the growth and success of Linux on the desktop. Hooray Mini9!

Filed under: computers, pink, plug, ubuntu planet

Merry Christmas! And Good Things :)

Wednesday, Dec 24th, 2008 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

It’s Christmas Eve! This evening I’m snuggled up on my couch with some hot chocolate, cookies and a couple kitties watching Hogfather. Splendid. Tomorrow Baerana invited me over to her place to spend the Christmas afternoon with her, b2s and a couple of their friends. It’s so nice to have friends to spend Christmas with.

I got thinking holiday stuff early this season. On the weekend after Thanksgiving my friend Mike took me to the Wachovia Center (the first time I’d been to a big venue in Philly!) to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And what a spectacular show! I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I was in no way disappointed, it was diverse and fun and engaging. A really great night, made even better by a dinner at Monk’s Cafe just prior to the show.

In spite of the dark beach pictures in my last entry, the majority of my trip to Florida earlier this month was sunny, like when I took these photos in the community where my grandfather lives:

Since I moved here I’ve been pondering whether to sign up for a gym membership or get an indoor trainer for my bike. In the end I went with indoor trainer, which I ordered this past weekend – and it arrived this evening! It took a bit of time to put the bike on it since I wasn’t familiar with the mechanics of the bike, but it all came together nicely after some fiddling. I am going to go to a bike shop soon and see about getting a smooth rear tire for the back when it’s on the trainer, it’s pretty noisy with the mountain bike tire on there.

On the tech side, I did a migration recently taking a slightly older than current version of Drupal that was installed from a tarball and migrated it into a Debian infrastructure. I’m not quite on the Drupal bandwagon in spite of its popularity within the Ubuntu community, but I am a fan of handling security upgrades of webapps through the OS package manager. It was a fun project to tackle, I should convert my notes into a useful form. Maybe this weekend. I’ve also had some time to contribute to webcalendar. A major release came out a couple months ago, and though it won’t get into Lenny (past freeze time), there is some work to do to get it prepped for release in Squeeze. So I’ve triaged some bugs and started testing the new .deb, within which I found bugs WRT the database upgrades. What else… I’m loving gwibber for twitter and facebook feeds. I was using twhirl, but then an Adobe Air upgrade went badly and while it was broken I used the Intrepid version of gwibber, and fell in love. And Google streetmapped the house I grew up in! How cool is that?

Finally, I have some amazing friends. I’ve been going on about getting a pink laptop for over a year now, and when the netbooks started coming out I started drooling. When Dell released their Mini9 and promised colored ones, including pink, would be released with Ubuntu? Had. To. Have. And I said so, often. So earlier this month a few of my friends schemed to order one for me. On Saturday Mike gave me a card which contained a beautifully drafted insert containing specs for my pink Mini9. I almost cried, but opted for grins and squeals of excitement. How amazing of them! Thank you Mike! Thank you Stephen! Thank you :) It has been shipped and I’ll be driving to New Jersey to retrieve it from Mike on Saturday (almost a week ahead of schedule!). Glee!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Filed under: computers, health, travel

The rest of my stay in Florida

Tuesday, Dec 16th, 2008 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

Since I wasn’t flying out until Thursday evening, I had a few days to spend with family, which was nice.

My mother flew back to Maine Wednesday morning, and that same day my some of my relatives took my grandfather out looking at dogs. He had decided that he’d start looking, and stopped at a few places to day before, but didn’t want to commit to anything and wanted his selection to be based on a real connection between him and his new companion. Surprisingly, he found the kind of bond he was looking for at a small local pet shop, a 5 month old Shitzu Maltese mix that he named Honey.

She’s one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met, dare I say so cuddly she’s almost like a kitten :) The night she came home she was joined by three “nephew” dogs in the family, with whom she was remarkably tolerant with.

The last morning I was there, before we drove out to Orlando, my Aunt Elaine took me out to the beach. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy, but I missed the ocean (as usual) and had to see it before I flew home.

The flight home was relatively uneventful, but we did have to wait a bit around Philadelphia before we could land (eastern airports were a bit of a mess that day due to a storm). Stephen was kind enough to pick me up and take me out for some much needed dinner once my flight came in around 9:30 :)

Now that I’m back I’ve settling back into the work routine. I had intended to get a Christmas tree, but by the time I got home it hardly seemed worth it. Next year I better not have an excuse, I love Christmas trees and this is my second year without one.

Filed under: animals, family, travel

Grandma’s Obituary and Service

Wednesday, Dec 10th, 2008 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

In case this goes away at some point, my Grandma’s obituary was published by Florida Today:

Carol Flynn:

CAROL FLYNN – PALM BAY – Carol Ann Flynn, 71, passed away Thursday, December 4, 2008 in Palm Bay. She will be sadly missed by her husband, Donald E. Flynn; loving children, Donald W. (Tayna) Flynn of Palm Bay, Daniel (Sharon) Flynn of Ft. Lee, VA, Pamela (Keith) Schlarf of Arizona, Lori Flynn of Maine, Elaine Flynn of Palm Bay and Mary Ellen (Joseph) Mathe of Orlando; 18 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Cremation Arrangements by Fountainhead Memorial Funeral Home, Palm Bay.

The service took place on Monday afternoon at a beautiful little Catholic church in the area, just as my grandma wanted. I’m impressed at how quickly things came together, everything was done very well. After the service, the family (the thirteen of us who attended) all headed down to Meg O’Malley’s in downtown Melbourne, one of my grandma’s favorite pub+eatery places. We ordered a table full of appetizers and drinks all around to celebrate her life. My Aunt Mary Ellen and I had martinis, grandma’s favorite drink.

I’m staying with my Aunt Elaine and cousin Chet. I’ve lived with them a couple times over the years, and it’s been far too long since we’ve spent any time together. My mother stayed here as well, just flew back to Maine early this morning. I’ll be flying out tomorrow evening, which is a bit late – but when I booked my flight I wasn’t positive about timing. No complaints from me though, this is a sad time and I’m making the best of the time I’m spending with a loving family who is generous with their hugs. Given everything else I’ve gone through this year I really needed this, knowing people care and are thinking of you is one thing, but touching and getting spoken words of sympathy and love is something very different, and precisely what I needed.

On top of all this, my employer has been fantastic. I really couldn’t have asked for more support, I’ve checked in pretty regularly but my boss hasn’t needed me very much. I’ll be returning to work as soon as I wake up on Friday morning :)

It’s been a tough week, but we’re all doing alright.

Filed under: events, family, travel

Grandma Flynn

Thursday, Dec 4th, 2008 by pleia2 | 4 Comments

My mother’s mother, my Grandma Flynn, passed away this evening.

It was somewhat unexpected. She’s had emphysema for several years, but recently it began to catch up with her and she deteriorated very quickly. Last night she was brought to the hospital and she passed away this evening. I received a call from my mother this evening telling me what was going on, shortly before I called my grandfather and learned that she had passed.

I’m flying to Florida (into Orlando, will be picked up and head to Melbourne) on Saturday. I’ve already worked out with my boss to work as I can from Florida Mon-Thurs on my laptop as needed.

You will be missed dearly, Grandma.

Filed under: family

Upcoming Ubuntu Classroom Meeting

Friday, Nov 28th, 2008 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

Ubuntu Classroom

#ubuntu-classroom has been pretty quiet since Ubuntu Open Week earlier this month, so we’ve gone ahead and made plans for a team meeting next week, details have been posted to the fridge and I sent out an announcement this evening:

While we’re interested in getting more folks to handle the administrative tasks on the project, we’re primarily focusing this meeting on two points:

The latter has resulted from several conversations I’ve been having over the past few weeks with PrivateVoid who has poured hours of work into the Education Focus Group. Discussions started out primarily being about hosting their IRC sessions in #ubuntu-classroom, but have since developed into a lot of fantastic ideas he’s developing for the EFG that may be adopted or jointly developed with Classroom.

So far it’s shaping up to be a very productive meeting. Hope to see you there!

Filed under: plug, ubuntu planet

Low-key Thanksgiving

Thursday, Nov 27th, 2008 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

I decided to hang in this Thanksgiving. I don’t have any local family, but wasn’t short of invitations from friends to spend the holiday with them and theirs. I can’t thank these friends enough for the invitations, in spite of declining them all, it means a lot to know I have friends who care enough to make that kind of offer.

But spending Thanksgiving at my apartment didn’t mean I wasn’t going to have turkey! Boston Market had an all Thanksgiving menu today, and for $10 I was able to snag a very satisfying dinner, including a slice of pumpkin pie that I haven’t eaten yet. Mmmm pumpkin pie.

Yum! And I got to use the new table and chairs I bought from Ikea earlier this week.

Now just chilling on the couch with my kitties curled up next to me. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to spend this holiday with family, perhaps driving up to Rochester or New Hampshire, but this year I’m thankful for having a couple days off from work and the satisfaction of having everything I need for a warm comfortable holiday. Might start putting up Christmas decorations this weekend.

Filed under: events

Name Change: Bevilacqua to Krumbach

Friday, Nov 21st, 2008 by pleia2 | 24 Comments

Since the final divorce papers were signed on November 4th, I’ve decided to start changing my name back to my maiden name everywhere. It’ll take forever, so I might as well start now.

The legal change will go through as soon as I receive the final paperwork and manage to drag myself to the social security office, then the real fun changes start (banks, creditors, bills…).

So you’ll now be seeing me around the community as Elizabeth Krumbach rather than Elizabeth Bevilacqua.

Filed under: plug

I haz stuff out now

Sunday, Nov 16th, 2008 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

This week the power supply on my giant, server class, desktop died. It was a 680W supply, the board requires at least 650W, so it wasn’t going to be cheap to replace. Alas, after about 2 hours of testing I confirmed it was the power supply and had to hit MicroCenter Friday morning. Came home with a 950W supply – ok, maybe that’s over doing it, but it was on sale! And the sale made it be just as cheap as any of the decent 650-850W supplies on the shelf.. However, in the course of diagnosing the problem I realized one of my UPSs was reporting “Building Wiring Fault” and skipped out to Lowe’s to pick up an outlet tester. With it I discovered that only about half of the outlets in my apartment are grounded, including one of the ones I had computers plugged into. Sigh. This weekend I had to spend some time shuffling around my machines on healthy power outlets. I also dragged out my 1U to use for testing again, my desk is full of computers, and in the midst of this shuffling my living room looked like a computer warehouse exploded.

I hit Cabela’s on Saturday with a friend for fun and brought home a stuffed animal deer head for my wall. I can’t quite explain the impulse, but when I saw the silly thing it made me laugh a lot. I need to laugh more, so home it came.

So all attempts (ok, I didn’t try that hard) at making it look like an adult lives here failed. The Star Wars toys, Wallace and Gromit Toys, and Disney toys are now out of their storage boxes and decorating the tops of my bookcases in my living room. I linked giant resolution photos of each bookshelf so you can browse my expected, stereotypically nerdy library. Ooh fun.

And a picture of my TV. I pondered getting cable, but the $199 installation fee turned me off to that really quick – even if they offered to add the service itself to my business account for free otherwise. Instead I have a VCR, DVD player (pink!), PS2, and an Inspiron 7500 running Ubuntu w/ fluxbox as a media PC to keep me entertained… and so I get to do things like watch Star Trek TNG. Oh and I signed up for NetFlix.

Maybe I’ll get some ballpen balls.

I still have a bike in my living room though. Should do something about that at some point, I think one of my Christmas presents to myself will be an indoor trainer and set it up in my bedroom. Exercise AND having it not look so horrible sitting in my apartment (it’s got an indoor trainer, it’s supposed to be there!), hooray. Also considering getting a Wii (and Wii Fit, for exercise, I swear!)

I also saw Quantum of Solace on Friday evening, following dinner with my friend Mike at Rock Bottom in King of Prussia. Good dinner, good movie. Not enough gadgets, but I liked it a lot more than Casino Royale, which I thought was a bit slow and sometimes lame for a Bond film (really, the first car he drives in a movie can’t be a Ford).

And now the weekend is coming to an end, I’m sitting here on the couch with the cats snuggled up. Heading to bed soon.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Debian Installation Over SSH (Lenny RC1)

Sunday, Nov 16th, 2008 by pleia2 | 8 Comments

The Debian Installer lenny release candidate 1 was released on November 12th, which inspired me to check it out and give the installation over ssh a try. Installation over ssh has been supported since the Etch installer, but I embarrassingly have to admit that I didn’t know about it until just recently, and it was just last month that I tried it out for the first time. So this post is more of a “Look, this thing exists and is neat and easy!” than a formal how-to for something tricky.

The screenshots and CD I burned were from Lenny (Testing) which I downloaded here this morning, but this is also supported in Debian Etch in a similar way.

Boot from the CD and in the Installer boot menu select “Advanced options >”

Then select “Expert install”

The installer will load up and you will be presented with the Debian installer main menu.

Since the default language and keyboard are fine to get me going (I can reconfigure them later once I get this going over ssh), I skipped these and went straight for “Detect and mount CD-ROM”. When it asked me if I wanted to Start PC card services I selected “No” since I’m not using any PCMCIA cards.

The next option on the menu is “Load installer components from CD”, which you want to select. Browse the list, but for my basic needs the only thing I needed to load up was “network-console: Continue installation remotely using SSH”

Now you’ll need to get networking going. Select “Detect network hardware” and then “Configure the network”.

Next you want to “Continue installation remotely using SSH”

This will generate SSH host keys and have you set a remote installation password. Once it has these set up you will be presented with a screen giving you an installer@ipaddress location for the install and an SSH fingerprint. Use these to ssh into the installer!

Finally – log in from your remote PC and complete the installation.

I went back and configured keyboard to confirm it was correct and languages so I could add a couple of locales, so don’t forget to do this if you need to change something about your configuration.

Filed under: computers, plug, ubuntu planet
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