I went down to my computer this evening to discover that clicking the mouse no longer did anything, rebooted...and found myself saddled with an infuriating bug a few SuSE (and possibly other distro) users have been encountering. In it, the wireless adapter can see other routers, but attempting to actually connect to them basically stalls out and fails. Same happened no matter whether I told it to use Network Manager or the traditional ifup approach.
I remembered that much of the problem is that SuSE forgets that it's supposed to access the network through a router. I looked up the "route" commands in the must-own Linux Phrasebook, and managed to at least connect to the router this way:
ifdown eth1 && ifup eth1
route add -net default gw my-router's-IP-here dev eth1
That let me access things that use an IP, like most Internet radio stations, but it didn't let me access anything that required a site name. Well, at least now I didn't have to drain the batteries on my iRiver H10 to have something to listen to...
I returned to the proverbial drawing board and opened the YaST Network Settings, which I experimented with for a painfully long time. Arrgh. Eventually, I discovered that I could get online with these settings -- each boldfaced & underlined area is a tab in Network Settings, italics is the name of something to change:
Global Options: Network Setup Method is Traditional
Overview: click on Edit for your adapter, go to the Address tab:
Choose "Statically assigned IP Address"
IP Address: 192.168.1.9, Subnet Mask: /24, Hostname: your pick
Click Next to get to Wireless Device Settings, click "Expert". Set Access Point to your router's name, Power Management: off, AP ScanMode 2. Click "OK", then "Next".
Hostname/DNS: Hostname & Domain: your pick, Name Server 1: your router's IP**
Routing: Default IPv4 Gateway: your router's IP, Device: -, Enable IP Forwarding ON
**If you don't know your router's IP, it almost certainly begins with 192.168.1 and after another period, has either a 0 or a 1. If one doesn't work, try the other!
I'm sure that some (possibly most) of the settings I've specified have nothing to do with fixing the problem, but those are the certainly-not-default ones I altered. Hopefully this will help somebody else frantically searching the web for help through another computer/distro, since I didn't find a whole lot that was useful last I looked.
I need therapy. No, really...
Well, in upbeat news, I just finished sending a description of the main blogging/journal sites to someone on a local YahooGroup looking to get into it. I now realize that I completely forgot what abilities the "compose" windows offer, like that Blogger acts like a word processor while some others (LJ?) require the user to manually type the HTML code in... Oops.
The past several days have left me so stressed that I'm amazed I can think at all... We suddenly lost a seemingly-healthy cat without warning over the weekend, then another (that had at least been sick with renal failure for a while) crashed permanently on Monday. We're both now terrified that something in the house is causing this nightmare and will steal another one of our beloved kitties... Especially since another one had a seeming seizure in early July, and another died in March of abnormal renal failure. I dealt with it today by driving to Target and wandering around grabbing things we needed, then throwing myself into computer stuff after I finally got home.
Damn, I intended to write a negative review on Cat Hospital of P--- and forgot... We called over there while IN the car, said our cat needed to be seen immediately and driving to another city wasn't an option as it was an emergency; they refused to see her anyway, and when Mom asked if they could please recommend another place, the receptionist said "nope" in a tone clearly conveying she was too bored by the request to bother looking or asking or anything. It's not the first time we've had that kind of rude experience with them, but I'd read that cat hospitals are the best in an emergency, so I gave it another go.
I also need to write a good review for Central Animal Hospital, which treated us very kindly when we showed up unannounced, and handled every step of the nightmare that way. I hate the outcome, but I don't think anyone else could have done better, either.
But I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what the fuck could be causing this, and that terrifies me beyond measure if I let myself think about it. I normally don't believe in the "deaths come in threes" superstition, but maybe if I'm really lucky, it will turn out to be true so we won't have any more crashes.
It's about time for my medical stuff & bedtime, plus my anxiety is skyrocketing out of control, so I have to get moving... Anyone reading this, please keep my clowder (and my sanity) in your thoughts...
The past several days have left me so stressed that I'm amazed I can think at all... We suddenly lost a seemingly-healthy cat without warning over the weekend, then another (that had at least been sick with renal failure for a while) crashed permanently on Monday. We're both now terrified that something in the house is causing this nightmare and will steal another one of our beloved kitties... Especially since another one had a seeming seizure in early July, and another died in March of abnormal renal failure. I dealt with it today by driving to Target and wandering around grabbing things we needed, then throwing myself into computer stuff after I finally got home.
Damn, I intended to write a negative review on Cat Hospital of P--- and forgot... We called over there while IN the car, said our cat needed to be seen immediately and driving to another city wasn't an option as it was an emergency; they refused to see her anyway, and when Mom asked if they could please recommend another place, the receptionist said "nope" in a tone clearly conveying she was too bored by the request to bother looking or asking or anything. It's not the first time we've had that kind of rude experience with them, but I'd read that cat hospitals are the best in an emergency, so I gave it another go.
I also need to write a good review for Central Animal Hospital, which treated us very kindly when we showed up unannounced, and handled every step of the nightmare that way. I hate the outcome, but I don't think anyone else could have done better, either.
But I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what the fuck could be causing this, and that terrifies me beyond measure if I let myself think about it. I normally don't believe in the "deaths come in threes" superstition, but maybe if I'm really lucky, it will turn out to be true so we won't have any more crashes.
It's about time for my medical stuff & bedtime, plus my anxiety is skyrocketing out of control, so I have to get moving... Anyone reading this, please keep my clowder (and my sanity) in your thoughts...
Another anti-hospital/medicine nut...
Well, once again, some nitwit's wildly illogical commentary got me going. This time, among other things, the person said that "medical wisdom is an oxymoron" and far more that was harder to make sense of. Here is what I wrote in response:
Well, back in the olden days before 'evil' medicine came along, the mortality rate for mothers AND babies was horrific. It wasn't uncommon for the woman to hemorrhage to death or die of organ ruptures, babies to die of all kinds of things -- cord wrapped around the neck, birth defects, prematurity...
One heartbreaking case I read several years back really showed the truth. A woman did the home-birth, and as labor dragged on abnormally long, she pleaded to not be brought to the hospital. Her husband did get her there, but it was too late; the newborn died shortly after birth of some treatable problem that would've been detected with basic fetal monitors.
Such tragedies happen because some people put their fancies ahead of the well-being of their offspring... They forget that the important thing is to keep mom and infant alive & unharmed, not create her dream "birth experience"... *After* that fundamental basic has been planned, prospective parents should look into the delivery/labor options at nearby hospitals, so they can find one that is as close to their preferences as is possible. Deaths are rare, sure, but even one is too many, isn't it?
The idea that "medical wisdom" is an oxymoron is the most mind-bogglingly absurd thing I've heard in a long time, by the way. Thanks to medical science, I never knew anyone with vaccine-preventable disease as a child, and many things that used to be death sentences are now controllable for decades & often curable. Since the early 90s, they've even been able to fix major formerly-deadly cardiac defects in the womb -- can a midwife detect & fix that?
I'm not saying medicine is infallible; hospitals have caused me to suffer & very nearly die repeatedly over the years. I'm saying that most of the time, things are done correctly, so medicine spares us exponentially more pain & death than it causes. If the cost for that is being held in a room with mauve walls & eye-crossing privacy curtains, it's worth it.
PS. In case some are figuring this: no, people are not better off dead than with virtually any birth defect, disability, or disorder. Look up "Not Dead Yet" for more info if you are curious.
New Template, new distro
I just logged in primarily so I could post a link to some files that I bundled up the other day, mostly so I can find them again in the future (but also to save others the trouble in the future)... I installed OpenSUSE on Mom's computer, having fallen for it myself, and then, since the wifi adapter she was using was bombing out, I added a Netgear WPN111 USB wireless G on for her. As it turns out, the darn thing needs ndiswrapper, which in turn required driver files...which weren't available on the install CD or shared on the web anywhere. Only way to get them was to run the setup in WINE (or Windows) and copy them myself. Meh. So, for future reference, I shared the files here.
So, I logged in, as I said, and discovered that there's this fancy new "template designer" for Blogger. I flipped through the various options, unsure what to go with...until I encountered this brightly-colored tye-dye theme. A few minutes of customizing text colors later, I had a much more individualistic blog -- a huge improvement, if you ask me, over the blah generic green thing I'd been stuck with.
Oh, and now I just need to figure out how the heck to solve ONE small problem in OpenSUSE... For some reason, at random times the first 2 keys I type don't register visibly, and the following one comes out accented. I've tried disabling the control key (or whatever it's called) that normally does that, but no luck so far.
So, I logged in, as I said, and discovered that there's this fancy new "template designer" for Blogger. I flipped through the various options, unsure what to go with...until I encountered this brightly-colored tye-dye theme. A few minutes of customizing text colors later, I had a much more individualistic blog -- a huge improvement, if you ask me, over the blah generic green thing I'd been stuck with.
Oh, and now I just need to figure out how the heck to solve ONE small problem in OpenSUSE... For some reason, at random times the first 2 keys I type don't register visibly, and the following one comes out accented. I've tried disabling the control key (or whatever it's called) that normally does that, but no luck so far.
OpenSUSE, Nautilus' location bar fix
Well, after having a few too many problems with GNOME within the otherwise-awesome SimplyMEPIS, I ended up switching distros yet again... After a lot of research & trials, I ended up settling on OpenSUSE, which runs faster & cooler than any other distro has on this computer by a longshot. Its version of Nautilus also offers both tabs and an extra pane for working with files, which should come in really handy.
I heard earlier this year that the "new look" for Nautilus, mostly available through custom designs, was an overly-minimalistic (aka "let's blindly mimic OS X") approach that disables the text-based location bar without giving any visible way of turning it back on. OpenSUSE seems to come with the latest of everything, and sure enough, the change was there. BLEAH.
Thankfully, a quick web-search has shown me how to fix it... First, you can use control-L to switch quickly from text-based to buttons... If you want it to always start up with text, start the GNOME Configuration Editor, go into the /Apps/Nautilus/Preferences area, scroll down to Always Use Location Entry, then set it to true.
Voila, no more clicking to get everywhere, which is a huge improvement for those of us that can touch-type rapidly & have a variety of folders/drives active. If they're all within a home directory, clicking is easy -- but if you have a large organized folder hierarchy, it won't. (Do the people that prefer the buttons-only approach not know how to type, or just throw everything into a few directories? Enquiring minds want to know...)
I heard earlier this year that the "new look" for Nautilus, mostly available through custom designs, was an overly-minimalistic (aka "let's blindly mimic OS X") approach that disables the text-based location bar without giving any visible way of turning it back on. OpenSUSE seems to come with the latest of everything, and sure enough, the change was there. BLEAH.
Thankfully, a quick web-search has shown me how to fix it... First, you can use control-L to switch quickly from text-based to buttons... If you want it to always start up with text, start the GNOME Configuration Editor, go into the /Apps/Nautilus/Preferences area, scroll down to Always Use Location Entry, then set it to true.
Voila, no more clicking to get everywhere, which is a huge improvement for those of us that can touch-type rapidly & have a variety of folders/drives active. If they're all within a home directory, clicking is easy -- but if you have a large organized folder hierarchy, it won't. (Do the people that prefer the buttons-only approach not know how to type, or just throw everything into a few directories? Enquiring minds want to know...)
Custom Mounts In udev For Non-Techs
One of the only difficult aspects I've found about transitioning to SimplyMEPIS is that while Ubuntu relied on fstab (which sometimes did make me want to f*ing stab things) for mounting drives, SimplyMEPIS uses the evidently-more-popular method called udev.
I keep all of my music, photos, videos, etc. on an external drive partition named Biggus after the Monty Python character. ;) When I'm using the command-line or a program dialog that doesn't show individual drives, it's much easier if I know Biggus is always at /media/biggus than wondering which /media/sd* it's been stuck at this time. Same goes for things like my iRiver H10 media player, external backup partition, and so forth.
So, onwards to udev... I understood the basics quickly enough, but the way to really use it eluded me for a couple of days, in part because I was using a seriously-outdated guide. (Having barely passed C programming long ago, I knew I was in trouble when the howto made reference to one of its "easier" commands.) Thankfully I found Arch's Map Custom Device Entries with udev wiki article...
Since udev is capable of so many things that it seems dauntingly complex at first, I'll explain how I met success. I'll probably need the mini-guide in the future, and maybe it will help some other hapless end-user.
I keep all of my music, photos, videos, etc. on an external drive partition named Biggus after the Monty Python character. ;) When I'm using the command-line or a program dialog that doesn't show individual drives, it's much easier if I know Biggus is always at /media/biggus than wondering which /media/sd* it's been stuck at this time. Same goes for things like my iRiver H10 media player, external backup partition, and so forth.
So, onwards to udev... I understood the basics quickly enough, but the way to really use it eluded me for a couple of days, in part because I was using a seriously-outdated guide. (Having barely passed C programming long ago, I knew I was in trouble when the howto made reference to one of its "easier" commands.) Thankfully I found Arch's Map Custom Device Entries with udev wiki article...
Since udev is capable of so many things that it seems dauntingly complex at first, I'll explain how I met success. I'll probably need the mini-guide in the future, and maybe it will help some other hapless end-user.
Evidently Merced's prisons are empty and free?
Yes, I'm at it again... SFGate has a short article that states, in brief:
"Homeless people in Merced have six months to leave their camps or face arrest. The City Council adopted that deadline Monday night when it voted 4-3 to enforce Merced's no-camping law."I was the second person to comment, and gave this wholly disgusted response:
"Wonder how many have developmental/cognitive disability or major mental illness that has gone untreated for various reasons, and won't fully comprehend the 'warning' or remember it?
If that seems like overdramatizing, try reading this sadly-common account from a country with much more assistance than ours: [Autistics.org: Autobiography Of Anonymous]
If you're curious why some patients become too terrified to seek/accept help: [Autistics.org: Conversation On Institutions]
I've encountered far too many people that have been through the same sort of things. As anyone that has dealt with SSI/Medicaid can attest, handling issues with them is a failure-prone drain at best even if you're well -- let alone for people with mental/cognitive problems.
Merced should get volunteers helping those folk get the help they need, so they have a solid chance at *contributing* to society. Better than wasting $$ to fill our prisons with folk whose 'crime' is needing help society won't give."
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