hp g26t

i purchased the laptop with money from tax return, and it shipped to me.  i picked it up on friday and unboxed it immediately only to find the keyboard wasn’t what i thought it was going to b (first unmet expectation).  i took it home, ran the dvd backup software first, then shoved my fedora 12 (64-bit) dvd into the player for the reboot.  the installation went smoothly.  i ran the upgrade next (since i hadn’t previously downloaded a f12 respin image and didn’t want to wait for it).

when it rebooted, i noticed the resolution was still stuck on 1024×768.  this thing does better, i reasoned.  i copied the xorg.conf file to my home directory and rebooted.  when it restarted, i had no screen.  i rebooted again.  same deal.  i tried to ctrl+alt+f2 to a straight up text login.  nothing.  all the f-keys gave me nothing.

i tried rebooting into vesa mode, nomodeset, noacpi…all the same blank nothingness.  i set my init to 3 and booted to a command line.  checked intel hardware, looked on the google for any hope of someone posting a solution or even a sympathetic blog post of the same problem.  nothing out there about it.  this machine is too new for that.

after asking for more advice in the #fedora channel on freenode (irc), i realized i’d found an intel video driver the linux kernel didn’t support.  i decided it was best to send it back.  which i did.

now, i’m back to where i was just before i found this laptop.  my second interest laptop isn’t a strong enough want to just simply purchase it.  maybe if i wait, i’ll find something i want when they put out some new laptops.

i have to admit that i have a real dislike/never-use-again mentality for at&t. but this has bought them a little bit of respect from me. don’t get me wrong. i’m still never going to use them again, but i will admire them from my reliable internet connections way over here.

my cousins

we had lunch at this little place off highway 520.  we all had something fried.  they had some shrimp.  i had some gator.  pictured are lowell, alice, jill, and me waiting for the fried goodness to arrive.  this was our first time getting together after they delayed the sunday morning launch.

we met up again on monday after they finally got the fuse lit on endeavour.  we were much more tired the second time around after being up for two nights and not getting all the sleep we needed in between.  nevertheless, it was good to hang out with family.  lowell, alice, and i took a drive down florida 1A1 (atlantic avenue) from cocoa beach past patrick air force base and into a bit of satellite beach.  lowell pointed out what was around back in days of nasa when the moon landing was still the goal.  many of the places he showed me i’ve been reading about in the right stuff.  as with all beach locations, it has been built up much more than it was when alan shepherd and john glenn were being jettisoned into space on rockets.

i’ve uploaded a few photos of the launch that morning to my flickr account tagged “sts-130.” the video turned out the best on my attempts to capture the launch, but those are what i have.  of course, nasa has the best pics in the world for these things.  incredible angles of the launch.  nasa’s collection of photos of the launch, which again doesn’t do the actual site justice. i credit nasa with this image of the launch which the closest i could find to how it actually looked if you had been there.  it comes from nasa’s site, but i couldn’t seem to locate it again for a link.

the bigger of the two problems was my battery life. it showed significant drains after half a day of average use. patch now shows accurate power level which means my phone won’t shut down with a half loaded battery.

other people made references to the gps eating up battery cycles, and i’d noticed it appearing to struggle to get a signal whenever i had it active. now, it doesn’t continuously probe for satellite signals anymore and seems to pinpoint my location promptly.

the battery fix is why i upgraded and has made my experience with the moment so much better. and i was hoping this patch added over the air (ota) abilities for future upgrades.  brighthand posts that if i want to get upgraded early, i can take it into the store.  ota upgrades will come a couple of weeks later.  if i can get the upgrade this coming week, i’d spend some time in the sprint store.

this launch was heavily attended as it is the final night launch. and the final shuttle launch in may will also likely have a record nunber of witnesses. (i can’t imagine the traffic for that crowd.) the astronaut hall of fame was filled up early on sunday morning only to have the launch scrubbed. they honored the tickets purchased for the next morning’s launch, but we got “upgraded” to watch the launch at kennedy space center (ksc). that’s a closer spot than the hall of fame!

i surmise many who attended last night wouldn’t make it the monday morning as many have work and school on monday. but being back at ksc was definitely exciting! i had considered visiting on monday before they rescheduled the launch. it was also rare to see ksc after dark. the mirror memorial was lit up like you can only see at night.  the whole complex was up and running as if it were a normal day.

about an hour before t-zero, i set up my tripod near the shuttle simulation building.  many had camped out spaces in that area already.  more probably would have if it weren’t so cold outside.  there were cautionary conditions again monday morning as we had on sunday morning, but things cleared up enough to move things ahead.

nothing beats the spectacular scene of a night launch! it was definitely worth the trip!  i captured the launch on video however i must state that this presentation pales in comparison to seeing the sky as bright as day when it took off.  it was like daylight, like watching the sun rise very quickly.  truly amazing!

my mom has a cousin whose daughter, jill, is the engineering branch chief in the aircraft operations division at johnson space center.  in 1994, she was considered as an astronaut candidate.  but her work with the t-38s is more notable.  she helped upgrade the avionics to these aircrafts in the early 1990s.  you can read more about this and the t-38s in the june 2008 edition of the johnson space center newsletter, “roundup” [pdf].  (the pdf is a better format for reading.)  nasa tv has a clip (on youtube) of the dress rehearsal of the astronauts for sts-130.  the jets in the beginning of this video are t-38s.

with someone from nasa twittering about the shuttle launches and everyone else in the virtual world responding and posting tweets of their own, you can follow an interesting stream of chatter about the sts-130 launch at twitter’s search page.

you can watch a time lapse account of the shuttle endeavour being rolled out from the vab to the pad.  four hours shortened to to less than three minutes.

this happens to be the shuttle mission which i got to witness the launch in person. not only did i get to see the launch with my own eyeballs but with this presentation i get to see the up close and 3-D personal of the entire mission on the really big screen. awesome!

i am planning on seeing avatar tomorrow with some pals.  i caught this clip on the fox movie channel about the making of the movie.  it is actually ironic, i think, that the plot of the movie involves an avatar and the making of the characters as avatars was very similar to the same approach.  watch the video below to see how the cg animation is a direct modeling of the actors’ actual acting.

pros:  the screen is very nice.  there are a bunch of apps that have been already built for android.  plus i can get an sdk to build app myself.  i like having a better browser to hit the net compared to a stripped down version on my rumor.  google maps plus the device’s gps is a great combo.  i found a nice secure shell (ssh) app which drops me right onto any unix/linux box for which i have credentials.  integrating my google calendar with my device’s calendar is a huge time saver.

cons:  the camera is a little delayed to taking pics, as i have read–still adjusting to that.  i have to get used to plugging in my phone to keep it active in the twenty-four.  i am still learning to be more careful with it since the screen is very important.

i am also hopeful that the change in plan to accommodate the new phone will resolve the billing issues i had with sprint last time i made adjustments.  at this point, i’m good with things.  all is finally good.  this makes me happy with sprint again.

some of the other things i find gloat worthy:  i had cut/copy & paste from day one.  i can run multiple apps at once…from day one.  have better coverage than, say, at&t from day one.

i’m happy with this purchase.