For someone pretty computer-literate, I can be unbelievably stupid sometimes….

Santa brought me a new 19″ widescreen monitor. I connected it and was all set to sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, but Ubuntu picked it right up on boot and all I had to do was change the screen resolution. No problem, too easy. However, Santa also brought me a new wireless router, and a USB wireless adapter for P’s desktop so I don’t have to see the wire anymore, and I wasn’t sure that was going to be so easy. I set the router up no problem, changed the admin password, secured the connection, and since I’d made the mistake of leaving P with the instructions and the driver CD and telling him to set up his USB adapter while I got my laptop on the network, had to set his up, too. Of course, he had no connection because he’s a typical man, and a man who knows he’s computer-literate. That’s a bad combination because guys like that never read the instructions; they always think they know better. He said he’d installed the driver and run the wizard, but when I asked him about the final screen (the one that congratulates you for having got connected to the network..hehe), he didn’t know what I was talking about. I’d be willing to bet that’s because he tried to do it Old Skool and install the hardware manually. That’s what happens when you leave a man alone and tell him “just install it”. Anyway, I ran the wizard and had him connected in no time flat. He was good to go and I left my desktop wired (even though he’d bought me a snazzy USB adapter, too) because it sits right beside the modem and router anyway. We can take the cute little adapter back and spent the $70 (no shit–$70!) on something else; he just bought it in case I wanted to make my desktop wireless as well. Okay…mine’s connected wired, his is wireless, and only one left to go…my laptop, running an OS with which I’m really not very familiar when it comes to configuration. I suspected it would be easy because it’s a Vaio and I know that the Intel PRO wireless chip is well-supported under Linux. Still, all Linux OSes have a bad reputation for wireless, and I did know I’d have to deal with that godforsaken YaST, so I really wasn’t looking too forward to it. I took a deep breath, booted it up and hoped that the computer gods would be kind and it would just find the connection and ask me for the name and type of the network and the passphrase.

No such luck. Okay, so I have to set up the connection manually. I’m Geek Girl, so it’s not like I’m afraid of editing a config file or two. Problem: openSUSE has a file setup different enough from Ubuntu’s that nothing I tried as far as manual configuration seemed to work. Goddamn. Okay, slow-ass YaST it is, then; it’s Christmas morning, so it’s not like I’m in a rush to go anywhere. I fired up YaST and attempted to find the Network Manager, and finally, I did. To make a long (long) story short, I could see that there was a wireless adapter detected, but it had no name, and could not be configured because the module was unavailable. For two hours I cursed and swore, hating openSUSE, SUSE in general, Novell, and eventually, the entire continent of Europe (SUSE originated in Germany), but nothing I did would allow me to even see that there was a wireless network available, much less actually get to connect. I tried two Ubuntu Live CDs (6.10 and 7.10) because wireless in Ubuntu is pretty damned good, but no joy. FINALLY, it occurred to me to check the loooong list of boot messages. Bored, I scrolled through the list, but then a word caught my eye…”killswitch”. Oh, goddamn it–the killswitch is what turns off the OS’s ability to see wireless networks. If the killswitch is set to “off”, even a connection that once worked will work no longer. As Adam Savage is fond of saying, “Well, there’s your problem!”

What constitutes a killswitch depends upon the laptop. For some, it’s a dedicated key, for others, it’s a key combination. I tried Fn+F2, having some dim recollection that it was the combination for most Vaios, but no. Finally–and this is almost two and a half hours after I sat down in front of the goddamned laptop–I remembered the cute little grey switch on the side, down next to the USB ports. Yeah, the little one labelled “wireless” with the positions “on” and “off”. It was, of course, off. I switched that on and didn’t even have to reboot; a little icon popped up on the panel and asked me for the name of the connection, type of encryption, and the passphrase. I entered those, then watched the icon spin for a few seconds….while it connected to the network. Two and a half hours of my Christmas morning spent cursing in frustration because I forgot to turn the stupid switch to “on”. Geek Girl? I dunno! 😉