Canon sent her what is a standard corporate response by most compnaies when they see the word "Linux" in a support email.

Dear XXXXX XXXXX:
Thank you for contacting Canon product support.  We value you as a Canon
customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

While considering the desire to provide the best possible support for
Canon's products, Canon must make decisions. Currently, Canon is unable
to provide drivers for Linux.

With this in mind, we currently do not have drivers available for your
operating system.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance with your LIDE
700F.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

Sincerely,

Olaf
Technical Support Representative

So Canon (CAJ on the NYSE, valued at $39.50 a share when this article was written), like so many other companies, is completely missing the boat either from being lazily ignorant or willfully avoiding Linux.  So, here's a quick note to Canon and any other hardware manufacturer trying to claim making a Linux driver is too hard:

Don't do it yourself.  Let someone else do it.  The fine folks at the Linux Driver Project will do it for you.  They have developers who are standing by, ready to do the work for you.  For free.  They'll even sign an NDA with you.  Your only responsibilities are to provide the type of device, the device's specs, the NDA if needed, and to provide the person who will develop your driver with a demo unit of your hardware.  That's it.  Once complete your driver will be included in the Linux kernel source tree.

There is no requirement that you support your Linux users.  The Linux community is very industrious.  If you give us a push in the right direction we can ferret out the rest and get to the destination.

Canon: Help us help you.  There's no reason your LiDE 700F scanner doesn't work in Linux.  The cost to your company would be negligible at worst.  So, let's get on it and help my friend out.  Unless you prefer all of us Linux users buy HP.

The answer I found is relatively simple.  PortableApps.com will let you install a good number of applications onto a thumb drive, each modified so that it keeps all of its information on the thumb drive, leaving no traces on the host computer.  Sounds great, and it is.  Works like a champ.  I run Chrome, Pidgin, Skype, Notepad++, and other applications from it.

Of course this introduces another potential issue.  What happens if I lose my USB flash drive?  Now it's in the wild with all of my information, keys, passwords, etc on it.  Obviously we need to encrypt that drive.  For me, however, the IronKey and similar products were price prohibitive.  I don't need that data secure forever, I just need enough of a lead time after losing the drive to be able to change my passwords.

Enter TrueCrypt.  TrueCrypt is an open source product that allows you to run it directly from your USB flash drive as well, and has a native client for Windows, Linux, and OSX.  Using TrueCrypt you can create AES256 encrypted volumes and mount them using the host machine.  This means that your data is highly encrypted on the drive and any would-be hacker is going to need to figure out your password.  As long as you use a good password, this should take a long, long time.

So, the quick and dirty how-to for those who can't figure it out for themselves:

1. Grab TrueCrypt for your OS and install it.
2. Install TrueCrypt to your flash drive as well.
3. Create a volume on your flash drive.
4. Mount the volume.
5. Install PortableApps.
6. Install any apps you want from the PortableApps web site.
7. Unmount the volume.
8. Take your stuff with you.

Once you're on site at the customer location:

1. Insert your thumb drive.
2. Run TrueCrypt.
3. Mount your volume.
4. Run PortableApps all day.
5. Unmount your volume.
6. Eject the flash drive.

The performance is quite acceptable, and the security more than adequate.  And all in all it's a fantastic way to take your stuff with you.

We both had the best of intentions.  You kept your packages cutting edge and I liked that.  I wanted frequent releases, and you provided them.  Your support for wireless networking was great in days when that was unusual but recently hardware changes and advancements have slowed down.  Hardware manufacturers are starting to release Linux drivers.  Cutting edge and brand new are becoming less important to me.

We still both agree that I need a desktop OS that doesn't require me to fret and fuss with building drivers and software on my own, that I should be able to retrieve them from binary packages and have a unified updater for all of my software.  What I'm finding more and more, though, is that we don't agree on when I should get an update.  You think I should get one as quickly as possible, but more and more you have been giving me broken updates.

Your 9.10 64 bit release was the final straw.  Applications were crashing, shut downs would randomly cause beeping from the PC speaker, suspend to RAM only worked for between one and three times before it required a reboot, you couldn't burn a CD using K3B, and a lot of other reasons I won't detail here.  We both know what they are.  We both know they've been getting worse with every release.

So I'm leaving.  I'm leaving for someone whose goals are more in line with where mine are now.  Someone who provides me with a stable, 64 bit KDE experience that just works, like you used to.

I called Fedora, but we didn't agree on drivers.  Centos and I didn't really hit it off.  FreeBSD and I have been talking about getting together outside of the server room, but that will probably be a long process.  But I've been seeing openSuse behind your back for the past two weeks, and I think we might have rekindled our old flame.  I'll still check in with you now and then to see how you're doing.

Yours truly,

Eric

I finally noticed that when the beeping would start the screen would show an error from modem-manager, a "code 15". I don't have a modem or use a modem. So I ran the following command to remove modem-manager:

sudo apt-get purge modem-manager

So far, so good. I've rebooted about a dozen times with no beeping. I'll keep everyone up to date.

1. Open Dolphin
2. Click Settings -> Configure Dolphin
3. Select Trash on the left
4. Uncheck the box that says "Limit to maximum size"
5. Click OK

Now, this will improve the speed of being able to trash files, but at the expense of KDE being willing to fill up your drive for you.  Be sure to manage your trash if you're going to disable this option.

According to Dell support this indicates the battery is "bad".  They can't be any more specific than that, because according to them the error is non-specific.  The battery does hold a charge, though it is shorter than the charge it held when new.

But here's the great part.  I rebooted and went into the BIOS to see if I could at least clear the warning.  I can't.  I did, however, notice this lovely screen:

Picture of the BIOS screen trying to sell me a battery.

So my laptop is trying to sell me replacement parts for itself.  This might not be as bad if I could stop it from trying to remind me without taking out the battery.

While speaking with Dell support, they too were more than happy to try and sell me a new battery.  They weren't quite as helpful in trying to make the indicator stop flashing, however.

On a side note, is it too much to ask that computer manufacturers spell check their BIOS screens?  They should at least "concider" it.

The good news is there is a workaround for both desktops.  For Ubuntu you'll need to switch out your clipboard manager as described in the bug.

For KDE the process is simple.  Right click the Klipper icon in your System Tray and select "Configure Klipper".  Uncheck the box next to "Prevent empty clipboard" and you're good to go.

I wound up fighting a gentleman by the name of John "Biggie" Dean out of Rhode Island in the first round of our bracket in the Masters division at the Ringside World Championships. John's nickname barely does him justice. He's a mountain of a man with long arms who hits like a truck and stopped me in the third round. He stopped his next opponent in the second round to win our bracket and the belt. Congratulations John, you certainly earned it.

John taught me one very important thing during our fight. He taught me that I need to lose weight and move down a weight class. So, that's what I started doing the day after our fight. I'm going to get under 201 and fight heavyweight instead of super heavyweight.

So I'll be going to the gym a lot, watching my diet more closely than ever, and spending the next several months busting my tail and losing weight just to get ready for my next three rounds in the ring.

I spent a bit more time on it tonight and have version 0.5 committed into the trunk.  In the limited testing I've been able to do tonight it appears to solve all the current issues the plugin has, including multiplying hits by the number of categories a post is in.  If some of you would be so kind as to download, install, and test trunk I would appreciate it.

You can download trunk from here.

So I spent all day Monday and Tuesday getting my food straight.  The turnaround was incredible.  Less than two days ago an hour nearly destroyed me, but tonight I spent three hours at the gym without issue.  So, my diet is quite possibly the most important part of my training.