Today has been the technology day from hell.
First, I worked from home today since I had a dentist appointment. Working from home requires that I log into my work's VPN and, of course, only a Windows client is provided for this (Nortel Contivity Extranet VPN with SecurID). Linux and Mac clients are available… for $100. Due to some routing enforcement in the VPN software, I can't use the Windows box as a router. The minute you try to change any network routes, it pops up an error message and drops the connection.
So, I'm stuck working with Windows. It isn't so bad, once you get the hang of things. But, it's like re-learning everything. I was trying to setup a useful, working, development environment (PHP, MySQL, Apache, gVim, TortoiseCVS, Putty) but could never get it all to work correctly. So, eventually I ended up just editing the files through a shared drive, but viewing them on my work box and commiting to CVS from there.
Now, I'm done with work for the time being, and am about to check my email and weblog updates. Jess logs out of my computer and the keyboard and mouse stop working. I reboot, they work again. I logout, it stops working. I reboot, it works again. I hard-kill my X session, it keeps on working. I log back in, then out again, it stops working. It seems like the entire USB bus is locking up. I upgraded my kernel recently, so I downgraded again. That didn't help. I also upgraded Gnome. So… I'm guessing when I log out of Gnome it's doing something screwy that causes the USB bus to go haywire. Of course, all the syslogs are entirely empty.
To make matters worse, I thought all of my issues with the Securty Department at my work were over. But, today I got a call from the ID office asking that I come in and have a new badge made that doesn't have "PROPELLER HEAD" written on it as my nickname. Ugh. Whatever.
So, needless to say, I'm in a grumpy mood. I'm sick of trying to figure out what's wrong with this box, so I've just decided I'm not going to log out at all. If I need to "log out", I'll hard kill it, and hopefully, there will be another Gnome update soon and, hopefully, that'll fix it. Unless, of course any of you know what might be causing this.
