I’ve been somewhat less productive than normal lately, but at least I have a reason. My wife and I just celebrated 3 months of marriage and we’re still working out the details of married life. This isn’t a bad thing, a good marriage requires a lot of give and take on the part of both partners, and the early days of the marriage is when a lot of it takes place. It’s interesting to me that the hardest thing for both of us seems to be getting used to having someone serve us. We both tend to be servants and it makes either of us a bit jittery to have the other one serving them. I’m sure we’ll get used to it in the long term, but frankly, I don’t want to get too used to it. I don’t want to take the things that Kara does for me for granted, nor do I want her taking me for granted. God has blessed me with a truly wonderful wife and I never want my gratitude for that to wane.

Well, apparently it’s that time of year again. I’m looking out the window and there looks to be about an inch of snow on the ground and it’s still falling. Wonderful, and here I was hoping to have another month before I break out the snow shovel.

I’ve had my laptop for a few months now, so I thought I’d post another update on it. In general it’s been pretty reliable, however, the one thing that did fail was the DVD burner. After doing a bit of research, it would appear that the QSI drives used by Averatec are somewhat lacking in the reliability department. So, rather than waste time getting it serviced under warranty with another poor quality drive, I went ahead and ordered a slot loading Pioneer DVD burner to replace it. It fits in the same spot as the original drive but has a black bezel and is slot loading instead of a tray. I actually prefer the slot load drive as it takes up less space when loading or unloading a CD/DVD.

I’ve also finally managed to get 3D accelerated video working on Linux as well. This has the added advantage that I can finally get the backlight on the LCD to shut off, which saves power whilst on batteries. I also found a replacement DSDT file that allows controlling the fan speed and backlight brightness through software. And, in the vein of saving power, I discovered a little program called Athcool which allows the system to save more power when lightly loaded. Plus, it makes everything run cooler, which reduces the need for the fan, further reducing the load on the battery.

There’s now an online community supporting the Averatec laptops unofficially. There’s lots of good info and a number of knowledgeable people there, I highly recommend checking it out.