A Penguin in the Orchard

Preparation

A good trip is partly a matter of good preparation. Anticipating the unanticipated is but only a part of it. I tend to look to those things first, leaving the obvious preparation for these trips a bit lacking. I spent a relaxing chunk of the day today preparing for those things I know I’ll need on this trip to Japan, letting the potentially unexpected stuff shake out in the process. It made for a very calm and sane preparatory period.

The Dell got a new install. Red Hat 9.0 handled the San Disk CF reader so well on the test machine that I decided to install it on the laptop. I’d tried Red Hat 8.0 first a few months ago but had no luck in getting the display to anything more than 60% of the available area. I landed on Mandrake 9.1 at that time, as it set up nearly everything effortlessly on the first shot. I did have to work through the PCMCIA wireless network card issue, but it was nothing if not a learning experience. Red Hat 9.0 set up the display properly and picked up the network card right away, providing some very nice configuration tools, to boot. I also attached the CF card reader during the install, so the drivers were built and configured without a hitch.

The card reader wouldn’t be an issue if Trolltech hadn’t been such boneheads about Qtopia Desktop, the sync program for the Zaurus. The install disk for the Z contains only Windows software. A Linux PDA that has no Linux software. The Linux software is provided on the Trolltech site, but four layers deep and quite nicely hidden. It’s only available in RPM form - not my chosen installation method. And, it doesn’t appear to work with new versions of Red Hat or Mandrake. I tried installing on both only to face dependency issues that I couldn’t resolve. The digital camera I’m taking to Japan uses a CF card and I’d planned on swapping the card into the Zaurus from the camera, then synching the files. Yeah, right. Since the only network card I own for the Z is a wireless card (and the network in Japan will be wired only), I had to add another item to the “must pack” list; the card reader. Fortunately, it’s now working great on the laptop. I tested by loading the card up with The Strokes mp3s and dancing around the house with the Z.

I also set up email on the laptop. It’s the first time I’ve bothered to install or configure any email clients on the machine, as I always just ssh to my main machine at home and read new mail from Pine. I stuck with my favored email method on the Dell - call it FPP: fetchmail, pine and procmail. I scp’ed the .pinerc, .fetchmailrc and .procmailrc files from the main machine (Cerebellum) to the laptop (Callosum), virtually replicating the setup. My .fetchmailrc file uses the keep option for each account, leaving the mail on the server. I won’t have to worry about synching the mail from the laptop to Cerebellum when I return home - it’ll already be there. I’ll only need to plug into the network at the observatory. The fetchmail daemon will start on boot on the laptop.

And, of course, I made sure to install the OpenOffice suite. These trips tend to generate a boatload of paperwork, paperwork that OO will handle quite nicely. All in all, I spent the day putting together my ideal lightweight road warrior laptop.

For the machines at home, I set up port forwarding to the web server for ongoing php development and testing. Using my dynamic IP service, I’ll be able to log into the machine with ssh or work locally and scp the files to the server, then test online. Finally, I allowed other clients to view my AmphetaDesk from the main machine. I’ll be able to use the same dynamic IP service to read those 65+ feeds I’ve become so addicted to.

For all the physical preparation, there’s really no way to prepare for the mental side of being gone for two weeks. It makes no difference that I’ll be in Japan, a country I love. I’ll be away from my family, accessible only via the occasional phone call and daily emails. The fourteen-hour time difference will throw us all a bit out of whack. I’ll miss my daughter’s last day of school for the year, but will be home for her birthday. With the lift newly installed in our van, I won’t have to worry so much about the physical strain getting our daughter around will take on my wife. In that regard, it’s a good thing that the trip was delayed by a few months. The bottom line is that I’ve spent nearly every day of the last 20 and 15 years respectively with my wife and daughter. I’ll miss the spontaneity, the emotional immediacy and the physical contact - probably before I even make it out of the US. Two weeks isn’t a long time to get the work done on the telescope. It’s a very, very long time to spend away from my family in a country in which I don’t speak the language or fully understand the lay of the cultural land. I’ll enjoy the trip, but the best part will be coming home.