My sister dropped her nice Core Duo laptop a few months back and busted the screen. She picked up a new laptop, and gave me the shell of her old one, so I pulled the screen off and installed Ubuntu 8.04 Server with SVN on it. Run’s like a charm!

Some more updates and pictures on the full article.
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So, after this laptop install, I’m officially an Ubuntu fan. The damn thing doesn’t even have a screen, and the keyboard controller is unplugged. Did Ubuntu care? Hell no. I put the disc in, hooked my desktop keyboard and monitor to it, spent about five minutes on configuration and left it alone. Now I have 120GB’s of encrypted subversion goodness for E29. Yes, I am cheap

A few short updates for anyone not following me on Twitter:

July 13th was my sister’s birthday party at Smith Mountain Lake. It was also the first trip to my parent’s house since I did those mods and work to the bimmer, so I was looking forward to the trip. On Wednesday, the day before the trip, I pulled up at the condo, turned the car off and tried to turn it back on. Click. Nothing, starter was dead.

I had BavAuto emergency ship me a new Bosch starter and started pulling the car apart on Thursday, so we could leave Friday morning. After eight hours of pulling apart the intake manifold, fuel rails, and anything else in my way, I gave up.

We went to the lake in Christy’s Corolla and had a great time. I had bought a 21 year old bottle of Glenlivet for Christy’s 27th b-day and E29’s 2nd anniversary ( both on June 29th ), but decided to give it to my sister since it was her 21st birthday. Everyone in the family had a drink, and hated it, except Christy and I

Giles went along with us and swam in the lake and a pool. I think he had the most fun out of everyone.

A few years back my mom tried to get me a Wii for my birthday, but couldn’t ( obviously, since they are still sold out everywhere ). Well, she finally got her hands on one and gave it to me Christy and I have both played until we’re sore. Christy made a Mii that, yes I do admit, looks exactly like me.

We got back home on Monday the 14th and I tried one last time to get to the starter on the car. After a few more hours, another E46 fanatic on the forum I visit said that the easiest way to get the starter out on a 330 coupe is to remove the transmission.

At that point I really gave up and called a rollback I sent the car to In Motion Motors ( who I recommend to everyone now with a Mercedes or BMW ). They got the car back to me in three hours, but with another problem.

Pre-starter blow up, the car was pulling 5.7s on the 0-60. Post-starter and repair, it was hitting 40mpg in 8 seconds. I seriously was holding up traffic trying to get going after a stop light.

I talked to the IMM guys and traced the problem down to a faulty camshaft intake sensor. After another call to BavAuto, the new sensor came Wednesday morning. After pulling some stuff out the way, I found that the IMM guys had forgotten to plug the sensor back in after the starter replacement

I plugged the sensor back in, and it was good as new. Since the sensor was cheap and they tend to fail after 80,000 miles or so, I’ll hang on to the extra one.

Unfortunately I do have some more repairs to add to the list before the car will pass technical inspection for the track:

New S-belt ( upper )
New front control arms
New lower coolant thermos
New rear lower bushings ( the bastard is actually cracking )

Ah.. well one of these day’s she’ll be 100% again