Update: Volume Control Widget - FIXED

My volume control widget up and disappeared.  This post made the suggestion that instead of clicking the ‘Add’ button from the widget list (accessed by right clicking on the taskbar and choosing ‘Add New Item’), you can drag the volume control widget from the list window onto the taskbar and it works.

Update: Upgraded to 8.04

I upgraded via package updates to 8.04 (Hardy Heron) without any problems.

Can’t lock screen - FIXED

I added the screen locking widget to my top panel, but clicking it didn’t do anything. I fixed this by installing the xlockmore-gl package.

Can’t suspend/hibernate - FIXED

When I try to use the buttons to suspend/hibernate (I think these are from some gnome program), the screen goes blank, but I’m not able to resume.

Link to launchpad bug report about this issue.

Apparently, others with this laptop were able to have success by using the uswsusp package. However, they were running Feisty, not Gutsy.

Link to userspace software suspend home page.

Debian has a newer version of the uswsusp package, so I tried installing that because I found what appeared to be thorough docs on using the 0.7 version. Things still didn’t work.

I found another post on the ubuntu forums that aggregated a bunch of information about this issue. link.

I removed the fglrx video driver (a non-free driver) as this was mentioned as causing problems. After removing this driver, suspend to ram didn’t work, but hibernate did using the default login,shutdown,etc. menu. Using the s2ram program from the command line also worked!

Update: If I want to lock the screen on resuming from suspension, I use

s2ram; xlock&

Trackpad is slow

The trackpad seems to move extremely slowly. I can configure the eraserhead using the Mouse Settings panel, but this doesn’t effect the trackpad.

EVDO Card - FIXED

This was the most straightfoward thing so far. This forum thread helped my get my PC5750 EVDO card working just fine with pppd and wvdial.

Playing Encrypted DVDs

Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free

Then run

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Function Keys on Keyboard

These are the keys on the keyboard with additional functionality (written in blue on the keys and accessed by holding down the Fn key to the right of the left-hand-side Ctrl key) that do things like switch between CRT/LCD, eject CD media, change volume or brightness, etc.

There are few feelings better than knowing that someone’s got your back, or at least is looking out for you, or at the very, very least is holding up their end of being accountable to you.  So, I was really excited when my primary medical provider’s office called me and told me that, while the surgeon I had originally been scheduled to see didn’t accept the Healthy Indiana Plan insurance, they had scheduled an appointment with another surgeon.  They couldn’t find a dermatologist who accepted the HIP in Bloomington, but I could see one about the wart on my hand in Indy, in December.

Today I went to see the surgeon.  I had to wait an long time, or what seemed like a long time, but the receptionist was friendly and clear.  Being fairly healthy, and fairly irresponsible, I haven’t used healthcare services in a long time.  So, I feel like I have few points of reference to evaluate the quality of care that I’m receiving.  I think this is a common problem with folks who haven’t been able to see healthcare providers in a long time - you don’t know what to expect, so it’s hard to hold doctors, insurance providers, and paramedical staff accountable.  The surgeon was to the point, but moved through what he wanted to tell me really fast.  He was glad I didn’t smoke (it saved him a lecture), I had a sebacious cyst which was the result of a natural glogging of the sebacious glands, since it seemed inflamed and was on my neck where infection could easily spread to dangerous places like the spine it should be removed, I could choose to have it removed under local anesthetic at the office or by going under at the hospital.  The first option would be faster and cheaper, but bad if I had a low pain tolerance or an aversion to shots.  The doctor paused only briefly to allow me to make my decision. I chose the local anasthetic because I didn’t want to spend my day at the hospital, and, as I understand it, I am only covered for up to $1100 in healthcare expenses, so I need to watch costs.  The doctor prescribed some generic antibiotics (covered by the HIP, but they would have only cost me $4 out-of-pocket) to get rid of any infection of the cyst and scheduled a date for the surgery.
All in all, I’m happy with how things are going so far, but would be really nervous if I had to deal with more serious or complex medical issues.  I get this sense that I’m being herded through a big system, as efficiently as possible, and that I’d have to really struggle to make my concerns known and have my questions answered.

Oakland has hella Asian people.  Being multiracial and growing up in a place where there were definitely not hella Asian people (or non-white people in general, for that matter), I know my exsperience is really different than a lot of the Asian people who live here, but somehow it’s still comforting.  At the supermarket, I paged through a book about Oakland’s Chinatown, and I thought about how many of the photos reminded me of photos of my grandparents.  It made me wonder what my dad’s life would have been like if he had grown up in a place less isolated from other Chinese Americans.

In the Bay Area, I think Chinese Americans have a huge and indelible role in the region’s history.   I tried to think about how Asians are perceived in Bloomington and didn’t come up with much.  I think they are largely assimilated into White culture or perceived as foreign students, having an akward and temporary relationship with the town.  One perception that came to mind out of nowhere though, was of an Asian family that owns a lot of property around town.  I don’t know how I get this feeling, and it’s hard to trace it to specific comments, but I just feel like there’s this expectation that, because the landlord isn’t white, he should be more down than white landlords.  Stingy, profiteering, condescending, or indifferent treatment that people seem to expect from your archetypical white “evil land owner” seems to be taken as a little bit worse from the Asian landlord.  This made me think about how whiteness is stereotyped and is, in many ways, is defined by a set of paradigms for success in our culture.  People of color seem to face additional barriers to this kind of success and also face additional criticism for aspiring to it or taking part in it.

It’s dangerous to oversimplify what are ultimately complicated policy issues, like immigration, not to mention the huge variety of experience that immigrants face, but most of the public debate on this, and many other issues, seems founded on information, that, even at a basic level is pretty misinformed.  This diagram about different pathways to legal residency and citizenship is an example of helping people understand the basics of policy in a really clear way.

I’ve  always loved things like this.  Recently, I saw a great breakdown of the different positions of McCain in Obama that really concisely summarized the candidates rhethoric, their voting record, and analysis from non-profit issue advocacy groups.  This was in Glamour magazine, but it’s the kind of coverage that I think has been sorely missing in other media I’ve seen.  I’d rather see lots more of this issue-based breakdown, rather than being overwhelmed with manipulative identity politics or Monday Night Football-style coverage of campaign strategy.

As a kid, I read Zillions Magazine, who, like many other print publications, has since gone out of print.  It had a lot of similar diagrams that broke down the dynamics of finance and marketing for youth, trying to help make them critical consumers.

Seeing this flowchart got me pretty stoked and made me start thinking about a How do people get and stay incarcerated in Monroe County flowchart.

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1286:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'defaults.namehint.extended'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM plughw:0
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1286:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'defaults.namehint.extended'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM plughw:0
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1286:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'defaults.namehint.extended'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM plughw:0

I finally looked into this and was able to fix it with the simple command

 $ sudo asoundconf reset-default-card

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCSaF4KC3eE

If I ever need to check my tendency towards being a know-it-all or talking over people, I’m just going to watch this video.

The gender dynamic is insane as well.  I can’t imagine getting talked down to in this way by a colleague, especially when I was well researched, seemed to share the same political stance, and was, umm, correct.  Re-reading the sentence that I just wrote, the fact that I can’t imagine this is pretty telling as I’m sure it’s a reality that many women face on a daily basis, and not just at FOX News.  Frankly, it’s embarrassing to think about all the times I felt like I had to assert myself as an authority, even when I didn’t know what I was talking about and the mildly conflicting point of view was articulated politely and clearly.   I take this as proof that the cultural expectancies that tie gender to authority, and intelligence and the ways one can express them are making us all less intelligent.

At my high school, we called it sagging.  This word described the act of wearing baggy pants that would fall to mid-thigh and, if one’s t-shirt was not also quite oversized enough, reveal one’s boxer shorts.  In the midst of attempts by cities like Atlanta and Miami to criminalize sagging baggy pants, I thought it was really interesting to come upon photos from designer Thom Browne’s menswear collection that he showed at fashion week which featured models sagging their pants on the runway.  It was a stark reminder that different standards apply to the same activity for different people, in different spaces.

The VIM clinic is clean and pleasant, but a sense of stress permeates the reception and waiting area.  I think the VIM clinic is a necessary community resource and respect all the physicians and other volunteers who make the place go, but it is a band-aid and not a cure for the health care needs of Monroe county.   The times that I have been in there have always seemed hectic.  Patients become quickly frustrated when their records are lost, information about appointments was ambiguous, or expectations about timelines and procedures weren’t clearly communicated.  People working the counter try to respond politely and empathetically, but seem on the verge of cracking after being faced with the constant questions and demands that seem beyond the clinic’s available resources to coordinate all the records, appointments, and volunteer providers.  The woman in line in front of me is asking about what seems to be three different appointments.  She was supposed to get a call back about one last week, but never got the call.  She is told that a doctor can see her today, but that since she is a walk-in, she will have to wait.  The woman periodically returns to the counter asking if they can give her any idea of what time a doctor will be able to see her.  She is told she will just have to wait and she returns to the seats, looking nervously at her watch.

I once heard a cocky critic of universal healthcare say that it was totally unreasonable for Americans to expect both the same quality of healthcare they had been receiving and that it be available to everyone.  He also said that the quality of healthcare in the U.S. is so much better than that in countries with nationalized healthcare.  What little I have seen of foreign nationalized healthcare systems seems similar, in some ways, to what I see at the VIM clinic.  Doctors have strange hours, and you might have to get bounced around a few times before finally getting to see the correct doctor.  It seems amazing sometims that such a system works.  And, despite high taxes (and attempts to evade them), and some inadequacies with the care, people do get healthcare, and it’s free.  I think the biggest difference with with more universal care, though, is that the experience is more universal.  When there are problems with the system, there is a collective knowledge about how to navigate around them.  It seems more likely, too, that problems are recognized as systemic and there is more posibility of a socio-political push to remedy them.  In the U.S., with the “beggars can’t be choosers” ideology that underlies so many of our systems, health care consumers are too often blamed for the quality of their healthcare.  We struggle to find a better health care situation for ourselves and our families, and in doing so, have little time or energy left to learn how to be health care advocates for ourselves and others, or to understand exactly why the system is so broken and what we need to push for to improve it.  The frustration experience of dealing with disorganization or waiting to see a doctors at free clinics or the total lack of accountability and run-around that one gets dealing with institutions like Indiana’s now-privatized Family and Social Service Administration is one more way that our culture punishes those whose lives do not match up with the equation of “hard work equals prosperity” that underlies our American mythology.  Sadly, more and more people in America are finding that they’re left out of this rosy picture.

The complex that houses the offices of my primary medical provider that I chose (with a lot of effort) seems more like a hospital.  It is a large and sprawling and awash with muted pastels, potted plants, and out-of-date sports magazines.  I get lost trying to find my backpack before I realize that the reception desk and waiting room where I’m looking is identical to the one just down the hall where I left my backpack.  It doesn’t feel particularly friendly, but it also seems like it just works in a way that the VIM clinic doesn’t.  At least, I don’t feel the same sense of stress here.  The woman that takes my information at the counter seems busy, but collected and she greets me pleasantly enough.  I’m at the right place, they’re expecting me, and despite the trouble I had getting assigned to this doctor, they take my insurance card without complaint.  This is a relief because, for the past two weeks I’ve been more and more worried about the cyst on the back of my neck that managed to double in size and become inexplicably tender at the end of August.  It surely must be infected and its time to have it removed.  I go to see the nurse and then the doctor and both seem competant enough but spend more time entering information into a database on their laptop than examining me.  The doctor takes a quick look at my neck and says that I’ll have to see a surgeon.  She warns that many providers in town don’t accept the Healthy Indiana Plan insurance, so finding one might be tricky.  With that, the exam is over.  It seemed prefunctory, but I can understand that in today’s healthcare system, the role of many doctors is just to redirect patients to other specialists.  An appointment is made with a surgeon and I’m happy that things are finally moving along. It’s nice to just not feel a sense of collective nervousness in this place.  However, when the person scheduling my appointment calls the surgeon, she finds that they don’t accept the HIP.  She says she’ll call the HIP and find out what to do an call back if the surgery needs to be rescheduled. I’m relieved that I don’t have to try to negotiate this myself, but I’m still nervous that she might not call back.  If I want one thing from the healthcare that I receive, I want to feel like others are looking out for my well-being and that I don’t always have to be suspicious or my own constant advocate.  I guess I’ll continue and wait and see if I’m any closer to that reality.