Kaimusailing

For a long time I have been wrestling with getting the CF-C1 laptop running Ubuntu or Navigatrix, Linux distributions, to interface with Realtek based wifi adapters. These adapters enable placing the antennae on the end of a long USB cable and they also amplify the signal to enable wifi at a distance. When I replaced the motherboard in my laptop, or actually, swapped the motherboard into a newer chassis, it worked and looked fine. When I tried to load a bunch of ebooks onto it it crashed. Before then it had handled the wifi adapters fine, now I had to reinstall an operating system and get the wifi adapters working. I could get a wifi signal on the communal porch and access the internet, but when it was cold or rainy I would be aboard Kaimu and no internet, except with the phone.
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I finally was able to get a wifi adapter to work. Because I tried so many methods to no avail, I need to document what actually worked for my benefit in the future and maybe to some other Navigatrix user who is trying to use a Realtek based wifi adapter. When I ran the lsusb (the l in this command is an ell) command in terminal I got 0dba:b812 and nomenclature that it was a realtek wireless internet adapter. A search of that cryptic ID turned up a driver named rtl8822bu. Searching installation for that driver turned up some methods that took a long time, yet failed.
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I had done some operations that update data, most of the methods have similar operations using github, a website with downloads such as drivers, and operations that uninstall a driver that doesn’t work and may interfere with its replacement. Here are the terminal commands that were recommended and I used:
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sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y dkms git build-essential
mkdir -p ~/src
cd ~/src
git clone https://github.com/morrownr/88x2bu-20210702.git
cd ~/src/88x2bu-20210702
./cmode-on.sh
(this last command did not work for me and I ignored it)
sudo ./install-driver.sh
sudo reboot
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A few notes, it looks like it doesn’t matter where you create the src directory, the following commands didn’t work very well, when you git clone, you have to have a username and password. You can download the zip file that has the driver and unzip it into the src directory. The ./install-driver.sh command is executed in the folder with the unzipped driver. The sudo reboot command is recommended. When sudo is invoked you have to enter your login password.
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Most of my unsuccessful forays were with a driver named rtl8811au, which was posted by someone who misidentified the driver. The l in rtl is an ell.
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The Realtek chipset is not recommended for Ubuntu or Navigatrix.
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Now that I have installed one, I can install on my other chassis. Maybe I should buy something that installs easier.
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I was going to make some cream of mushroom soup. I had a quart of half and half that will go bad soon (ultra pasteurized, but due date is in April). My idea is to use no stock, just half and half and some spoonfuls of Better than Bouillion, one of chicken and one of mirepoix. I still had some shrimp gumbo, so I deferred to another day.
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Another nagging technoproblem is the new phone doesn’t recognize the laptop as a laptop, it’s an audio device! So, no photos can be bluetoothed to the laptop from the phone. Insane. What about using a simple USB cable? No, when you plug the cable in it recognizes a Samsung android device, but there are no folders displayed, nothing. On the Galaxy S20+ it prompts you, allow access to phone data, well, yes, of course. But nothing happens. If you right click on the phone icon on the laptop and open it in a new tab, you get the phone’s folder system. Now you can access the photos or whatever. Sheesh.
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In the middle of the night an idea came to me, when I am using the usb wifi adapter I am not connecting with the built in wifi adapter at all. The laptop that I rebuilt for Dave and Lynn had its wifi adapter disabled in BIOS and BIOS is locked with a password. Thus they can’t use it for internet, but what if an external usb wifi adapter was used, I had to try that. It was easy to swap my hard drive into their chassis and see if it could access the internet with the external usb wifi adapter. It did.
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I put their hard drive in my chassis and installed the driver for the external adapter as outlined above. Afterwards it worked. I contacted Lynn and Dave and said I had their navigation laptop with a surprise. We found a place to demonstrate the laptop and I showed them it had internet access now, they asked me to order the adapter and cable, a longer cable than the one I was using. Their boat is steel and they refer to it as the Faraday Cage.
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The weather was improving, in the mid 60’s. We will of course get cold snaps, but usually by the end of February the boatyard is raring to go. I will then have about a month to get Kaimu ready to sail North, or maybe not. Nothing is chiseled in stone.
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I was feeling familiar butterfly feelings in my gut. Eloisa hadn’t replied to my It’s 5 o’clock somewhere texts in two days. What the hell. I called her and got her, she was in N. Carolina and didn’t have good phone reception in the mountains where she maintains her home. She went up there for a number of reasons and the most compelling one was that her dog, Blue, needed his medication and she had it there. He got his medication. I know where I stand with a woman with a dog, I am down on the list, down, down, down.
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She came down to St. Marys after I took a shower and dressed in denim and black. She was dressed in denim and floral. Robert was invited to dinner, Robert had already eaten something and was upset about something. The Breezeway was now under the control of Roger, co-renter. He declared all our stuff must go, the pizza oven, Robert’s stuff, OK, the guy who pays for the space can call the shots.
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So we went to dinner, she being spent after 15 hours of driving, but you know she has incredible stamina, for what it’s worth, and I was very hungry. We went back to the restaurant where we had that remarkable birthday dinner, for me, and now we would have a semi-outdoor dinner with Blue in attendance. He was really wound up, jumped on the table, scooted around. I ordered the special. Normandy scallops and some fries and cole slaw. She ordered in a peculiar way, she outlined how she wanted her food to be placed, and when it came out, it wasn’t that way. We had no utensils. My special scallops, could be used as bullets to shoot up a competitor restaurant. The utensils came after I requested them. The French fries were good.
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Eloisa was like a commander with the wait staff, she outlined how she had ordered her entree and how it didn’t come out that way. They went off to get utensils and maybe figure out the other things.
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A guy came into the space right next to us and began setting up musical paraphernalia, He had a nice guitar. I could see Eloisa was yawning now and then. We can leave. She said maybe we could be here for the first set.
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I had to make a pit stop and Blue insisted on accompanying me. He was resolute. We ended up in the john and he made sure I did my duty. We made our way back. He getting attention from the wait staff.
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The next day I decided to make cream of chicken mushroom florentine soup. I needed to borrow Robert’s vehicle to move my stuff out of the Breezeway. Roger, co-renter of the Breezeway wanted it all, so we had to go. Pizza oven, flat box of seasonings, and all the other stuff. Yes, I am messy and clutter up wherever I go. Roger has the demeanor of Gordon Ramsay. He was sweeping the concrete floor after I got away with my goods. I was entreated to take Doc Brisebois shopping, but Robert said, I’ll take him, let him know. I asked to go with them. I rode around the boatyard and couldn’t find Doc. I got organized, shopping list, wallet, warm jacket, it was in the mid 60’s, but even a little blast of wind made me shiver.
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Robert was just going to drop Doc off at the Walmart, run some errands, and then pick him up at a location. I was up for that. I needed Benadryl, a sleep aid for me, but in some studies it has been shown to relieve long covid symptoms. And I have been using it for a long time.
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I bought some free range organic chicken for the soup, a box of wine, of course, kale and mushrooms, we went back and I had to cook. It was only 2:48 in the afternoon, so I didn’t have to start right away. Stow the perishables in the fridge. Do a game on the new phone, then Geoff the chemist shows up. We chat. Roger and Eloisa walk by, he, ebullient, she, slim and tall, going up to his boat near the entrance to the boatyard. Geoff and I talk more and they come back and I find out she will be cleaning Roger’s boat, she had to see it first before she could commit.
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Geoff has to go back home where his wife is crunching IRS numbers, doing their taxes, he felt he had to get out on the bike before she bit his head off. If you make a lot of money, taxes can be a difficult thing.
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Having been kicked out of the Breezeway and by any sense of survival, out of the communal kitchen, I resorted to the last resort, cooking in Kaimu’s galley. Stress. Bring all the unwashed, and some should be condemned, utensils into the galley, some boatyard water with its sulphurated healing powers, Dawn dish detergent, blue sponge, the kitty litter bucket, and get to work. Warm soapy water in a neglected sauce pot. Seafood remains are particularly pungent when the sit for a few days, they form crusts and clots in the soapy water. Throw out. Rinse. Wash again. More of the same. Finally we have a clean sauce pot. Use it to create more hot wash water to clean more things. Soapy things. Eventually all have been washed and await rinsing, all into the kitty litter bucket.
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There is some reorganization, from cleaning to prepping. I dice an onion in the usual way and put it in a zip lok bag along with two garlic cloves that have been thinly sliced. The mushrooms are too far gone, but I remove and discard the stems, and slice the caps after rinsing them in a bowl of water. Kale is separated from its stalks and rolled up tightly, sliced off green spirals of kale, then slice them again, longitudinally.
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The stock pot is filled with the veggies, the chicken thighs, a tablespoon of chicken base and one of mirepoix base, a cup of water, about ¼ cup of cooking sherry, and the sauce pan has a half stick of butter. I connect the propane and light the burners. Soon the stock pot is boiling away and the melted butter is getting flour one spoonful at a time. The roux is stirred smooth. I remove it from the flame from time to time, just keep it hot enough not to burn. When the chicken thighs are half cooked I begin adding half and half to the roux. It is obvious the half and half has gone sour. I am using only about a cup and a half of it. I reason it is now like using sour cream, a little goes a long way. I add water to the roux mixture, then add it to the stock pot and let the flavors mingle. I am tasting this concoction all the way through, tasting the roux, tasting a small bowl of the stock pot soup and the roux, making sure it will be OK if I add them together.
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I text the usual customers that we will be having the soup on an outdoor stone table near the wood shop. I bring the soup, bowls, plastic spoons, and box of wine to the table. I bike up to the Breezeway to get Robert and Eloisa and return slowly with Robert, but he goes to the travel lift area to drum up some business. I sit at the table and have a plastic of wine. Eloisa arrives with Blue. We each have a bowl of the soup. She says it’s good. Helicopter Dave and Roughrider Lynn arrive with their own booze. Eloisa has produced a baguette of whole wheat bread that pairs perfectly with the soup and also with the burgundy. Robert never arrives. It gets increasingly chilly as the sun sets and we break up our Pizza Night soup dinner. It is cold enough to refrigerate the soup in the stock pot. I leave it overnight.
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The next day is a big clean up job. There are maybe 3 or 4 cups of soup left, they go into the fridge. The image is a shot of the stock pot just before serving.