[buug] Solano Stroll Booth

[Pewter Bot]

Jack DeSlippe posted:

{{ Come check out our linux booth 1174 Solano ave all day today. }}

Glad the weather cooled off, else I wouldn't have even dreamt of
showing up (I'm a cold weather kinda kind, and don't care if I never
see the sun again). As it turned out, I had an excellent day. Thanks,
Michael, for recommending that bicycle path from North Berkeley BART,
it was fantastic, and I learned, has a name: "Ohlone Green Way". Would
love to live in one of those cottages or apartments with back yard
facing the path, how idyllic! I will make a point of frequenting that
bicycle path, and ride it further than I did today.

I was flummoxed at how *huge* this Solano Stroll Fair was...it was
*huge*! The BerkeleyLUG booth has many interested visitor...Jack's
idea was a hit! Got to me some very nice folks there, both the
volunteers and the stoppers-by.

Then--as if the day weren't already nice enough--a light rain fell
towards the end of the fair, and I love the rain, riding my bike
through the cool wetness was a blissful experience. I decided to stop
by Au Coquelot, to use their convenient restroom...and (lo an behold)
what sign did I see stuck to their back door?

"Free wifi".

Yay, that's the cherry on the cupcake of my day. So I lingered over a
tall glass of iced tea, and enjoyed the public wifi. Only there's a
hitch: apparantly, they using one of those routers that doesn't work
so well with my Asus netbook's atheros chipset. Further exploration
has pointed the culprit to be the lower cost routers, such as NetGear.
Until recently, I was able to get around this, by disabling the
internal wifi, and using instead an external USB wifi that is not an
Atheros. But this doesn't work now, since I upgraded Eeebuntu from 2.0
to 3.0.

Ironically, my newer and smaller 7" screen netbook, works great in
those places wjre my 10" one doesn't. Basically, I can't to streaming
video or downloading. So I have to adjust my priorities, and bring my
701 to the BUUG meetings, instead of my larger 1000H. In general,
though, this problem only occurs in about one out of seven public
wifi's I use.

Well, now we have wifi at the BUUG, and I suppose I'll be the only one
actually using it. I like to download Youtube videos on various
topics, and watch them when I'm home...where I still have my humble
dialup connection.

Congratulations, Joe, on a most successful Linux promotion. And as I
said to you before departing: you may have to rent a hall for the next
meeting, so many interested people showed up at your booth!

-- 
Zeke K.