Linux Voyager: Leaving A Landmark

I have the day off, so I'm sitting in the Caffeine Cafe typing away... Actually, I'm now at Anne's house, got my car inspected in Bethlehem and just picked it up.

One of the reasons I got the laptop was so I could have a computer of my own when I was over here, instead of always using hers. Then I got this, with Ubuntu installed like a good little ideologue, and I found I couldn't connect to her wireless network, and in fact couldn't connect to any encrypted network. D'oh!

Luckily, there were plenty of open wireless access points, and I spent time researching the problem -- it turns out that "WEP Passphrase" is not supported by the Network Manager applet, because passphrases are not supported by the underlying program (iwconfig).

For various coffeehouses the password is their phone number, so instead of putting that into the default "WEP Passphrase" dialogue box -- and why does Network Manager even have such a dialog box, if the option is unsupported? -- I put that into the hex key option dialog box and it worked fine. Tried it at Anne's and it worked there too. Voila!

I ran into a lot of information about wireless driver issues etc, which seemed to be problems from a few months/years ago, and which didn't really help me. I thought I'd write this in case someone has a similar problem (really, just a misunderstanding on my part how this stuff works), this might come up in a google search and save them some time.

Anyway: I hit the gym last night, then then went to Porter's to meet Anne and Judy; I also saw Lou and some other people from the McSorley's trip, and also Mike (the Lafayette network guy from Which Brew), who earned his first mug last night. Tonight is a towpath ride, followed by a "reggae party" at Kirk's house. Tomorrow is the yoga/coffee/gym-and-maybe-bike thing.