The importance of boot times and USB

So, $DEITY_OF_CHOICE decided that my area of the U.S. hadn't been slapped around by the weather yet, and was probably overdue. Of course, the only information that had been on local news sites and news broadcasts was bad weather miles and miles and miles away, so I was blindsided by this all.

Cue the thunderstorms and tornadoes. So power goes out very early on into this debacle, and I have no clue where I'd have a battery powered radio.

But I do have a UPS that reminds me that it has engaged with its shrill intermittent beeping. Only the essentials are plugged in: Cable modem, firewall and mail/web server (Suse 9.2). The Suse box is of no good to me, because it won't recognize any USB keyboard/mouse from Logitech plugged in after BIOS bootup. Awesome.

So, spurred into action in the dark, I boot up my laptop (Open Suse 10.some_way_too_early_release) with its own UPS (aka full battery).

And wait. And wait. And the blinking of the splash screen icons seem to synchronize with the beeping of the UPS just to rub it in. And wait. And finally when the UPS is about to give out, I get in and head to a weather site...and no net connection. Now in the past, no power did not necessarily mean no cable net access, but that was the case this time.

Moral of the story? The lack of cable access was the villain, but not by much. To everyone working on speeding up OpenSuse boot times and working on USB PnP and drivers, I salute you.