Smart card reader driver not so smart
News ·Thursday February 2, 2006 @ 17:58 EST (link)
About a month ago I finally got my RAS connection to work working (I think it was a bad routing table on the client). But it's still a little tricky: the smart card driver is broken and tends to lock the process (sometimes the entire machine); fortunately it will relent and return control if the USB card reader is unplugged. So the login process goes something like this:
- Connect the USB reader and insert my smart card (badge).
- Open the IT Connection Manager, click Connect, enter PIN.
- After it connects and gets 5-7 seconds into verifying the password, disconnect the smart card reader.
- Wait for the machine to be scanned, and terminal serve to my machine.
Our DVD player is back, we got an automated call this morning and I picked it up after work at the local store; seems to be working fine and they actually provided a callback number for the technician that worked on it (I imagine that's at least partly self-interest; Circuit City probably contracted out to the company, and if the player fails and we tell Circuit City first, it'll probably be a black mark against the contractor). We started E. R. season 4.
Lots of new bugs coming my way at work, new areas, some interesting performance and idle-time issues.
The people that sold us our house are in their new place, but haven't finished moving out yet; they'll be out and we'll be in by the 13th, which is when my mother arrives in town to visit us and sundry relatives across the border in la Colombie Brittanique.
On the Net::SSH2 front, someone's looking to get it to work on perl 5.6; I set 5.8 as the require version to avoid cruft and compatibility hacks, but I recognize that 5.6 is still used in a lot of shops (e.g. despite an attempt at an upgrade, athena's still using it), and I'm willing to work with this guy and anyone else so interested to make the required changes, although I would like to keep the 5.8 "path" as clean as possible.
Good news about our DVD player: CityAdvantage did come through for us; in about 10 days after we dropped it off at our local store (the web page said we'd have to ship it out, but our receipt differed and we went with it), we got an automated call saying it was ready for pickup; picked it up the same day, it was wrapped in tape with the name and contact info for the tech that fixed it (probably because it's contracted out, and if Circuit City hears back first then the contractor gets dinged financially or perhaps dropped). We can take it back within 90 days and get it repaired for free if it fails again, which is a reasonable cushion. Count us satisfied.
