Tonight was almost certainly the last time Jeff will go trick-or-treating in this neighborhood for a long time (but eventually, he may be like the kid who used to live across the street, who was out with his children tonight!). He decided to go as an IRS agent and tell people that they owed the government $20,000 when they answered the door.
I don’t think he got any money, but he did fill a briefcase with candy.
I brought home my old Thinkpad T41p from work for a few days; I had wiped out its disk in preparation for giving it to someone else, and so I had to install a new OS. My first plan was just to install Windows XP, but I didn’t have an OEM disk nearby, so I couldn’t use the license key which came with the machine.
So I decided to go the Ubuntu route. I had a 7.04 CD on hand, which installed with no problems, and then I upgraded to 7.10. That was all in the office, connected to a wired Ethernet.
But I wanted to be able to use the machine on my wireless LAN at home (and elsewhere). Using Network Manager and typing in my preshared WPA key didn’t work. And I tried it many, many times.
Eventually, I found wieman01’s OWTO: Wireless Security – WPA1, WPA2, LEAP, etc., which worked wonderfully well — I am up and running on my wireless right now.
I don’t know how easy it’ll be to set things up to connect to an old WEP network, which was my real goal in bringing this beast home for a few days, but I’m sure it can be done.
I do wish I knew why Network Manager didn’t do the job, though. Suggestions welcome.
