journal for 2003-01-31
knave
About three months ago, I swapped the hdd from knaveofhearts into a newer model Latitude that had become available. It had a nipplemouse, a Pentium III, a Rage Mobility, and a few other enhancements. It had been Trevor’s, and he said it was really unstable. He’d stopped using it when he got a new Evo N800, and the Latitude’s mobo had been replaced just before he stopped; in other words, its stability might’ve been fixed.
I determined that it was, after a while of use.
Today, though, the keyboard was acting weird again, and doing things that didn’t make sense. Letters would duplicate when it seemed very unlikely that I could’ve hit the keys, and shift just didn’t want to engage. Finally, I got pissed and hammered on shift for a half second or so. All hell broke loose! The audio went into Obnoxious Noise mode, and I ripped off my headphone. My office has been a den of static discharge lately, and I was afraid it was going to ground into my brain. The screen went black, the noise got worse, and I was sure it was going to spontaneously combust, when it just hard reset.
A BIOS error came up: Amount of system memory had changed. When I looked into it, I was now told that there were 8 MB available. Right…
In the end, I switched back to the previous system. It’s missing a keycap, but I rearranged the keyboard so that the Windows key is missing. That’s fine with me. It’s only little slower, and a P2/400 is plenty fast for running Vim and ssh. The keyboard’s feel is much better, too. I did nearly all of my work, today, on the notebook, wirelessly. I ordered a draft-802.11g access point, too.
Actually, I ordered two. First I ordered the D-Link DWL-2000AP. Only after ordering was I told that it was on backorder for several weeks. To cancel my order, I had to phone the vendor. The stupid thing is that I ordered it through D-Link. I expected better from them, for some reason. Since that didn’t work out, I ordered the Linksys WAP54G, which has gotten mixed reviews. I figure that it should be sufficient for now, and good once there are more firmware patches.