I'm blogging on this since I use Thunderbird as my email/calendar client on OpenSolaris (it's the default anyway).

It's easy to enable bi-directional integration of Google Calendar within Thunderbird Lightning, so here it is.

1. I'll save you abit of a chase, download the Google Calendar Provider is here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631

2. Now that you have d/l'd the extension, open from Thunderbird: Tools > Add-ons > Extensions > (bottom left corner Install), which will provide you with a window to select the location you downloaded to, select it and you're done installing, other than the restart. On to step 3., the configuration.

3. Now you can add your Google Calendar by going to Calendar > Add new calendar > (select the On the Network radio button) > (select the Google Calendar radio button) and enter the location, which will be the ical link of your google calendar. You will be prompted for your login information.

You should be good to go, go ahead and make a test calendar entry from Lighting and check your Google Calendar via a browser for the test entry.

Together with Sun's Teresa Giacomini, a number of Global OpenSolaris User Group Leaders and myself we had our first simultaneous IRC/conference calls this last week. Really very rewarding, to see something we've been going back and forth on the OpenSolaris mail-lists come to fruition in a relatively short time.

So what, you may be thinking, it's a conference call .. big deal. Ah, if you notice above I said "Global". When I'm up others are asleep and so on. Yet after a number of back and forth and forth and back emails regarding the time of the call(s) we finalized the dates. Co-operation and community, can you dig it open sourcers! 

Talking live to each other was great. We 'scribed from the call to those on IRC unable to call in (there's that co-operation again), vocalizing their written questions & comments back. Good ideas regarding our groups and the framework for our future calls .. even a few jokes. It flowed easily .. other than a recurring question, "Who's first?"

Before I proceed any further; flashing your bios incorrectly/incompletely CAN and most likely WILL render your machine useless. The information which I am providing worked/works on my specific machine. 

Now to the task at hand. Having only OpenSolaris on this machine and wishing to update my bios firmware I had two choices:

• use a recovery disc I made after purchase, which would entail installing Vista for the sole purpose of this procedure
  
• use a usb stick with the needed bin on it and flash from that

I chose the latter and here's how I did it:

1. Download the spXXXXX.exe from hp site
   
2. unpack the .exe using cabextract
   
3. rename the extension from xxxx.FD to  xxxx.BIN  /* x = the alphanumeric string proceeding the extension */
4. insert USB key ; cp xxxx.BIN /media ; umount /media  ; shutdown
   
5. Remove the battery from the unit
6. Unplug mains
7. Hold down 'Windows' and 'B' keys ; re-plug mains and press power button
8. After the flash completes and before the machine starts, remove the USB key
9. Done
   

The next meeting of Unix Unanimous will be held at 6:45 pm on Wednesday 12 August 2009, in room BA 5256 of the Bahen Centre for Information Technology at 40 St. George Street, on the University of Toronto campus. Map

More info may be found at http://tlug.ss.org/wiki/Unix_Unanimous.

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