Keeping it short. Turns out, to use Kyivstar’s 3G, you either have to sign a contract or buy a specially marked starter kit that comes bundled with a 3G SIM card. So now I’m stuck with EDGE, though at least in the regional center it’s better than out in the sticks. 5000 MB for 128 UAH, which works out to about 160 MB per day. I think that’ll do for now. And apparently because of the slow connection (I can’t think of any other reason), Pidgin, the pest, won’t connect. Not to ICQ, not to Google Talk. Looked at other clients — I want something multi-protocol, since I never managed to ditch ICQ. Nothing quite like Miranda is out there, Empathy wants to download 35 megabytes, which feels like too long a wait. I miss Kopete.

When I got my hands on a server running a fully legitimate Windows Server 2003 R2, the question arose: what to do about online updates? They close security holes, improve performance, and generally — bring communism a little closer in one particular server.

As far as I know, everyone who doesn’t update their Windows does so because their copy is pirated. But this one was completely legitimate, wonderful, and lawful — a clear conscience and the sheep safe and sound.

Hangs on startup, found the fix here http://www.openkazan.info/node/3120

1. Close

evolution 2. Force-close it completely sudo evolution –force-shutdown 3. Open

gconf-editor , if not installed: sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

4. Navigate to /apps/evolution/calendar/notify, change the value of the last_notification_time variable to the minimum value or just set it to 0.

Launch evolution, enjoy.

Attention! Super news!! The SUPER mobile operator MTS is launching a new tariff — “Super Unlimited Without a Contract”!!!

• 25 MB of internet!
• 25 MMS!
• 25 SMS!
• 1500 minutes across Ukraine with no connection fee!!! Package price — 49 UAH!!!

Hooray, that’s it, I’m switching! That’s like 3.2 kopecks/min! A steal!!

- the package is for 30 days - of those 1500 minutes:

• 1400 to MTS numbers (49 UAH / 1400 = 3.5 kop/min)
• 70 minutes to all numbers except Life (49 / 70 = 70 kop/min) - 30 minutes to Life (49 / 30 = 130 kop/min)

They lie through their teeth. MTS is a total rip-off. I’ll be dragging everyone over to Kyivstar.

In the Firefox that comes with Mint, there is a customized Google search — unusual and inconvenient. And I couldn’t disable it the standard way — you can only remove it entirely, but then there’s no way to add it back. I found somewhere (don’t remember the source anymore, but very grateful to that person) an XML file that needs to be dropped in place of the built-in one, like this cp ~/google.xml /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml because on top of that, every damn Firefox update shoves its own search plugin back in again

The program takes a long time to start.

Writing on the run, before I forget. Got mobile internet working under Linux. 1. Deleted a file in the modem firmware 2. Installed the Leonardo_WebKey app (download here) 3. Fixed /etc/wvdial.conf

That seems to be it — will need to reboot and try it out, might break again :)

Damn proprietary folks, making drivers only for Windows

The long-awaited kit finally arrived — a locked 3G USB modem ZTE MF100 and a Kyivstar SIM card. Under Windows everything worked right off the bat. They also provide drivers for Mac. I figured such a cool Linux would find it on its own (it did find my phone, after all), but no such luck. Turns out this modem is incredibly tricky. When plugged into USB, it first shows up as a SCSI CD-ROM with drivers. Only after that device is disconnected does the modem reveal itself as a modem + card reader. The problem is that disconnecting it in Linux is not so straightforward. Did some reading — there are two ways: 1. patch the kernel 2. patch the modem

Received a letter:

I recommend reading this (setting aside all emotions) http://pravda.com.ua/news/2009/9/8/101146.htm

The guy is right on many points.

I read it without emotions. Then, when I saw it was written by Syoryozha Pidrakhouy — I was disgusted for a long time.

For some reason, half of the Moscovites and “regionalists,” whenever they argue about something — whether about current affairs or past history — tend to tell only half the truth: the half that’s convenient for them, from just the right angle.

Testing another LiveJournal client, and at the same time reporting that today I spent half an hour trying to change the shell in Mint (from bash to tcsh) — without success. It does get changed, it’s written to /etc/passwd, but the terminal still launches bash anyway.