Htam::Diary

This Thursday, I went with my dad to see my dentist, get my eyes checked (it's been 3 years and I still don't need new glasses!), and buy socks, shoes, and sports pants.  Then we had lunch at my favourite restaurant, stopped by my favourite bakery, and then came home.

In the afternoon, I worked on my T410 prime.  Yesterday the first problem I noticed was that the screen brightness controls work not.  Today I compiled mplayer and noticed that there is no Xvideo support.  To test out the problem, I ran my trusty friend glxgears.  Sure enough, it is jumpy.  Now starts the fight with NVIDIA.  Contrary to my past laptops with Intel integrated graphics, this one is equipped with NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M.  The preloaded open-source reverse-engineered Nouveau driver is probably the weak link here.  So I tried to install the NVIDIA propriety driver.  This required tweaking kernel boot options in order to remove certain modprobe kernel modules and to load new ones.  After way too many reboots, I finally managed to set things up right.  Now I have smooth graphics in glxgears.  Time to test mplayer again.  Well, still no Xvideo support, but we got VDPAU now.  I'll take that!  (This allows offloading portions of video decoding and post-processing to the GPU.  Who wouldn't want that?)  The video is also no longer jerky.  But wait... no sound?

Okay, after thinking and investigating for a while, I realised an easy fix: install pulseaudio-libs-devel.  Doh... it's always the devel packages that are missing.  And yeah, I'm starting to like Pulse now.  I used to quite dislike it when it first came out--a big ALSA fan I was.  Even aRts or ESD felt better than giving in to Pulse.  But here is its age now.  (Remember OSS?  Haha.)  I also recompiled my xosd_logd program (back when I wrote C programs) to work with my x86_64 architecture (and this is why I no longer like writing compiled programs--I have to recompile them every time I migrate).

Now back to the fight with NVIDIA.  Still no brightness adjustments.  I tried echoing to /proc/acpi/video to no avail.  Finally, editing xorg.conf saved the day.  Whoa, that's funny... understanding xorg.conf has always been my weak points in configuring X.  Oh well, glad it worked.  And now echoing to /proc/acpi works as well!  I can write scripts to change brightness.  I even got automatic progressive dimmer to work with the idle counter.  This should save some (small amount of) electricity.

One last task of the day: sharing Internet!  Since I will be getting a small mobile computer (probably tomorrow) to bring back to Taiwan, I figured I would finally want wireless capabilities in my apartment.  But do I want to go get a wireless router or access point?  That's not cost effective.  Why not use my primary laptop as a bridge?  So I tried to get the T410 to share its wired Ethernet connection over its wireless card as a secured ad-hoc network.  And after some heartaches with knetworkmanager, I decided to go with nm-applet instead and got it to work.  At the moment I am typing on my T400 unit that is wirelessly connected to T410 prime that is connected to my router via cable (and a switch in the middle).  Success!

This Wednesday, I followed through with my plan to install Fedora 13 on my new laptop, Lenovo Thinkpad T410.  For now, I am calling it prime.  I customised it as usual, and did a few post-installation tasks.  It is still in its testing stage, and I am doing liberal things to it--intending to possibly reinstall the whole thing in a few days.  I did clone over my entire home directory, though, to make it more homey feel without needing to reconfigure (e.g., I have hotkeys automagically remapped out).

Besides this I also took care of some CCLI stuff for ACF, sent my dad to work and picked him up later, did a manipulative therapy session, did some math, and read lots of Bible.  Oh, and I watched a bunch of TV today.  Yesterday I pushed to stay awake until 20:15.  Today the goal is 20:25.  It's not getting any easier--though I am waking up after 5 now, so that's improvement.

This Tuesday, I read Bible and sang hymns in the morning.  I also installed Windows 7 on a spare hard drive inserted into the T400.  Actually, to be more specific, I restored the T410 image onto this spare hard drive in T400.  I figured if this works out well, I can then erase the T410 hard drive and load Fedora 13 on it.  Then I'll have T410 new hard drive (320G) running Fedora 13 as my new primary laptop.  It also has 8GB of RAM, so I downloaded a 64bit version of F13 to install.  I'll probably do this tomorrow.

After posting but before going to sleep last night, I came up with this ingenious programme.  I will be pushing back my sleep time from 8 by extending it by 10 or 5 minutes in an alternating fashion.  So last night I went to sleep at 8:10, tonight the goal is 8:15.  I actually woke up later today, so it is possible I can go a lot more (which would be great).

Dad came home tonight.  I haven't seen him on this trip yet since he was on a business trip.  As expected, he brought back bread for me to eat.  By the way, he is quite high up in the administration, so I think the police guards recognise his car.  When I drive into the university, they salute me at times.  I am pretty sure they don't do this for every car, and I don't look that old, so it must be the car they are using to identify targets for salutes.  It's kind of fun.

This Monday, I woke up at 3 because of mosquitoes.  Well, also once at 11 PM last night, when I killed a mosquito inside my mosquito tent (how did she get in here?) and went back to sleep.  At 3, however, I was unable to fall back asleep.  So I lay in bed, refusing to get up, until 5.  During that time, I did math in my head.  I guess I might as well had gotten up.

As usual, breakfast at 6, brunch at 9, and lunch at 12.  The only difference is, between brunch and lunch, I went to the NDHU bookstore (like I always do each time I am home).  I bought a lot of random stationeries and stuff.

In the afternoon, I burned DVDs of operating systems to prepare for a OS swap tomorrow between my T400 and (new) T410.  Then I went to get manipulative therapy to deal with some of my sports injuries from the past year.  I had to wait there for quite some time, so I read some Bible there.  I also read a bunch in the morning, so overall, I read 12 chapters today.  That is a bit more than my usual random readings.  I am quite happy.  Yesterday and today I read I Corinthians.  Good book.

And now, as usual, after dinner, I am trying to stay awake one more hour.  Notice that this is way past my bed time, both in terms of when I woke up, and also in terms of jet lag.  Oh well--half an hour more to go!  Overall, today went better than the last few days.  Yay!  Praise the Lord.  Thanks for praying.

This Sunday, I spent a lot of time reading the Bible in the morning.  In the afternoon, I turned on my new T410 laptop.  It's been sitting on the table during this whole time I've been back.  Finally today I had the audacity to turn it on.  I also downloaded Fedora 13, which I plan to install on this new laptop, to make it easier to use.  Also, without a reason to stay up late, I've fallen prey to my natural tendencies to sleep earlier and earlier.  I am, however, adamant about not going to sleep until 8.  And despite waking up at 4, I stayed in bed until 5 so as to not encourage getting up too early (which would make this whole staying up "late" thing even harder).  Oh, if I could just keep my PDT sleep schedule and not have to adjust--that would be great.  In this light, I find it phenomenal that I have stayed until 2 AM at Steph's place before--what was I thinking?

This Saturday, I continued my mathematical studies.  I also got a massage.  For several years now, my parents have a blind masseuse come every Saturday to give them massages.  Since my dad is out of the country still, and it is too costly for us to have her come and only give one massage, I also got one.  And yes, I've been sleeping at 8 and waking up at 5.  I figured since I did hold to this schedule for a substantial period of time last year, it is acceptable to have it now, especially in light of my jet lag.

This Friday, I woke up very early, and went out to eat breakfast.  I was going to buy some juice at the supermarket on the way back, but they were still closed.  So I came home and went to the store later in the morning.  It's really weird having so much time in the morning.  I resumed my studies in mathematics.  I still get very tired in the afternoon so I lay down.  But I tried to not fall asleep.

This Thursday, I got up around 6 AM.  I loaded a lot of articles (notably ones linked by John Shen regarding the gap between adolescence and adulthood) onto my computer.  I also bought a ticket to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro presented by LA Opera in October, since it was on sale for 25% off--who can resist?  After breakfast, Pluto and his mother took me to the train station.  And here begins the last leg--a 6-hour journey--involving two trains clocked at a bit over 4 hours.  On the trip I read the articles I loaded.  It was a good read.  After the train ride, I took a taxi home, since my dad is out of the country for a week or so.  Now I am really tired, I unpacked very slightly (computers and sleeping clothes), ate dinner, took a shower, and now I am about to go sleep (hopefully at 8 PM).

This Wednesday, I got back to Taiwan.  Henceforward posts will be in CST (+0800; 15 hours ahead of PDT).  I watched Iron Man 2 and Kick-Ass on the plane.  The flight was from 18:05 to 21:43, flight time 12:37:28.  After the two movies, I watched a bit more on my computer, and then went to sleep.  I slept for about 3~5 hours on and off, got woken up really tired (always like this) to have "breakfast" before landing.  I will stay the night at Pluto's place, and take the train home tomorrow.

This Tuesday, I woke up at 8 something, finished packing, cleaned my apartment, and got ready.  Pluto will come pick me up at 13:20, drive me to the FLYAWAY stop, drop me off with my luggage and his, go back to park his car, and then walk over to the bus stop (without needing to walk his luggage!).  Then we'll take FLYAWAY to LAX, and fly back to Taiwan at 17:40.  If all goes well, I will be in Taiwan after 14 hours or so.  I will only get home around Thursday morning PDT.  I will be back in 3 weeks.  Okay, time to pack my computer.