Laptops and cruft
Got a new laptop. It's very nice. Big screen, high resolution, fast CPU, wireless networking. All those good things.

Installing Linux on it is a pain. I expected it would be, and so far things have gone just about as well as expected, which is very slowly and painfully.

In the process of setting things up, I got out my old WL200 wireless network card, since I actually have a motivation to use it now. Unfortunately, it was one of the pieces of hardware that the floods a few weeks back managed to affect. I thought it was okay, but apparently not. It's taken out a desktop machine. Either a dead powersupply, or dead motherboard. Hopefully a dead powersupply.

I'm not eager to try the card in another machine now. I'm a bad sad that it's dead, since it's possible to convert the card into an access point, and it's got good support under linux. And it cost quite a bit of money. Drat.

I can see at least one other network in my area, apparently if I walk down the street I can see Ian's as well.

I may well end up buying an 802.11 to ethernet access-point/bridge. Probably less stuffing around. Even so, the WL200 would have gone into our loungeroom PC. Hardware sucks, and it sucks more when it dies and takes things with it.