Mother nature spoils Pele's show

View from room, Volcano House
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

In order to take advantage of all the Volcanoes National Park we booked one night at the Volcano House and paid extra for a deluxe crater view room.

When we arrived it was raining steadily, creating a mist and fog that pretty much obscured the crater. We headed out to all the open look-out areas (a large portion of the Crater Rim Drive is closed due to activity at the Halemaumau crater.) At times the sky would clear but by the time we got back to our room the sky had misted up again.

After a decent night's sleep I looked out the window at about 5:45 a.m., the sun was rising behind us and the crater view was stunning. Within 10 minutes though the rain started and the view was obscured yet again. Almost missed getting a shot because the XO laptop takes so long to boot. My regular camera doesn't like taking pictures through glass.

If staying at Volcano House, our recommendation is to bring food along for dinner or leave the park. Dinner at the Volcano House restaurant was atrocious and very expensive.

Work vs. vacation

Papayas and bananas for guests
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

My S.O. and I have come to the stunning realization that a vacation is preferable to work, at least in the long run. Still stressful at times, but filled with new experiences and calming vistas.

We are now on the big island of Hawaii. We spent two nights at a real treasure of a hotel, the Dolphin Bay Hotel. In addition to reasonable prices they've thought of a lot of things to help make their guests' stay enjoyable. One amenity is fresh fruit for all to enjoy. They grow their own bananas and have bunches hanging in the lobby for the taking.

We had a full day of activities yesterday, culminated by viewing the glow of the lava vents as they hit the sea.

As it's hard to type on my XO and the Hilo farmers' market awaits us, that's it for now.

Pre-vacation test

Backyard
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Testing the concept of blogging from my XO while on vacation.

I can take snapshots with the XO. I can then upload them to Flickr direct from the XO.

I can compose a post offline in the Write activity and save it to copy and paste later into Blogger.

Here goes, does it work?

Soon to be coming to you from Hawaii

A roller-coaster week for my XO laptop

Shared chat activity on XO
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Wednesday I met with another XO owner for a third try at sharing applications (activities) via the mesh network. Third time seemed to be the charm. We were able to chat, collaborate on a document, and share photos taken with the XOs' cameras.

Thursday I brought my XO to a Cool Tech Brown Bag lunch at my place of work and passed it around for folks to play with.

Thursday evening I noticed that sometimes what I typed would be in capital letters, yet there is no cap locks key. I also noticed that typing the letter A would shift all future letters into capitals. I was able to get the keyboard back to typing lower-case by repeatedly hitting the shift key and typing and erasing and typing and erasing.

By Saturday I was unable to get the keyboard to shift back to lower-case at all. This made logging into my email impossible since passwords are case sensitive and I couldn't type anything in lower-case.

Luckily there is an excellent help forum for XO owners and a wonderful wiki. Keyboard issues are common. Many people experienced the problem while under the 30 day warranty so had their laptops replaced. I've owned my XO for three months now. Others in my position disassembled their XO's and cleaned under the keyboard's rubber membrane and got theirs working again.

Also luckily my S.O. loves to take apart electronics and he's generally pretty good at putting them back together again.

I owe lots of XXX's and OOO's to my S.O. because he did manage to fix my XO, at least for now.

XO wi-fi connection grief

I took my cute little XO laptop to the local public library last weekend. The open wi-fi hotspot showed up, I was able to connect, but was unable to browse the Internet. Took it to work to test out the open wi-fi hotspot, also could connect fine but was unable to browse the Internet. Did some research (forums are a fantastic way to share tips) and found what was probably the issue. The XO browser by default uses IPv6. Most routers are still set to only IPv4. It was a simple fix to change it.

Hauled the XO back to work. Again, connected fine but couldn't connect to the Internet. Online again I found some Linux commands to test the network. The XO was connecting to the wireless router but couldn't get beyond it. I then tested the connection with a Windows laptop which had successfully connected with that hotspot in the past. It too couldn't connect. I asked the staff to call the support folks. The support guy called me to ask some questions and said he'd come out in a few hours to swap out the EV-DO card (the wireless is via the Spring cellular network) Figuring there was nothing to lose, I asked the public desk staff if they would mind if I tried rebooting the wireless router. I lifted it up to see if there was an on/off switch and noticed a little button on the side which said Mount/Dismount wireless card. I pressed it figuring it would pop out the card. Instead a little blue light further down the side came on. It was labeled wireless card. Someone must have accidentally hit the button. I tried to connect and get to the Internet with my XO and this time it worked.

This morning I went back to my local public library confident that I'd be able to connect to their wi-fi hotspot. I connected again but couldn't get beyond the router. I asked the reference library if he knew if anyone was able to successfully use the wi-fi. He pulled out a little gadget that showed their two routers were active but couldn't help me beyond that. I'm still unsure if the problem is at their end or with my XO. There are just too many variables.

I went to my local Border's bookstore to try out the free T-Mobile broadband access. That worked like a charm, though the connection was really slow.

Since T-Mobile hotspots exist in most Border's bookstores and Starbuck's coffee outlets we'll probably be taking the XO with us on vacations to keep in touch. I just wish I had more consistent results with open wi-fi hotspots.

My XO laptop has arrived

XO Laptop start-up screen
Originally uploaded by siegel_jackie.

Without fanfare and ahead of schedule, my XO laptop arrived at my door. It came in a small unassuming box.

I'm hoping I see other people in the mesh network, wondering if they just sort of appear on my screen if their XO is on and in my vicinity.

Too much to do right now to devote much time to play. More later. I'll be taking it to work with me one day soon to test out our new wireless Internet access.