Not too guilty about battery discipline.

[elfs]

One of the things I'm paranoid about is Lain's (my laptop's) battery. Thinkpads are notorious for chewing up their batteries and spitting them out, often mandating that the batteries be replaced every year. Since the one in Lain is now 17 months old and still as reliable as it was last year (well, mostly; I've down from 2h40m to 2h20m or so), I'm doing pretty well.

Part of the reason that I'm doing pretty well is that I maintain a sense of battery discipline. When the battery is full, I pop it out of the charger. This is a recommended practice. But sometimes I forget, or don't notice. This is especially bad if I'm using Lain as a network node and export the X session elsewhere; the "The Battery Is Now Full" warning pops up on the console, not the exported X session.

Well, I wrote a program in python, using PyGTK, to monitor the battery and forward the message as a pop-up window to a list of displays, not just the native one, when the battery is full.

Now I just have to remember to use it...

Comments

[lionman.livejournal.com]

Yours spits it out when it's done? Mine just keeps trying to chew on the empty carcass. :-)