I know about Wake-on-LAN, but all of those types of settings in my BIOS are disabled, and surely I would have to intentionally have a device trying to wake the thing up even if those settings were enabled. So I did some searching. Some people had complained about a version of the BIOS causing the problem, specifically noticing that at midnight the laptop would turn itself back on. While my BIOS version was much newer than the one to which they referred, my problem wasn’t exactly the same, because it didn’t necessarily happen every night and it did sometimes happen during the day if I were to hibernate it in the afternoon.

More searching found this post which reveals the more likely culprit to be the settings on the Intel network adapter.

Seen here, there are additional Wake-on-LAN settings in the Power Management tab (turned on by default?) of my network adapter’s device properties.  I don’t know how specific this is to my particular model of laptop, but if your machine also has an Intel 82567LM network adapter, this probably is relevant to you.

To get to it, go to Control Panel → System → Hardware tab → Device Manager button → Network Adapters → Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection. You can see the familiar-sounding options, including “Wake on Directed Packet”.

Wake on Directed Packet

Enables this device to bring the computer out of standby or hibernation when a packet is sent directly to the adapter.

For example, any attempt to remotely access files stored on the computer will wake it.

I imagine this could mean any networked device, like a TiVo, scanning the local area network would trigger the laptop to turn back on. I don’t anticipate using this feature, so I definitely don’t want it turned on.  I turned off the three options there that also includes the “Wake on Magic Packet” options. I expect this to fix my automatic wake up problem and will know tomorrow if I need to revise my findings.

There is, however another city of Visalia in the country–one that is much closer to Illinois–in Kentucky. Since the MySpace profile has been removed, I can’t verify what it actually said for the hometown. It’s not clear from the reports if it could have just said “Visalia” or if it explicitly listed the state. The same MySpace profile said the guy attended high school in Michigan. The three states, Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky are in close proximity to each other–much closer to Kentucky than California from Illinois or Michigan. I’m not saying the reporting is necessarily wrong, but it is a big jump to report that there is definitely a link to our city rather than another when there is no other evidence–school records or family members with the same last name–living in this city. I think somebody might have jumped the gun when searching for Visalia and finding the California city rather than the one in Kentucky.

I can’t tell you the number of times my husband Justin and I have spent driving late at night listening to George’s cd’s and laughing our asses off. In a lot of ways we “got” his comedy we also “got” each other. We also had the honor of seeing him live on stage three times. When we saw him last in February 2006 he had announced that he had a heart attack six weeks ago over Christmas and that is was his first show back. When he said that I had a feeling that it could be one of the last times we might ever see him.

Unfortunately there have been a ton of fake forwarded e-mails and web postings that people attributed to George that are total bullshit. In the coming days there might be a lot of those going around. Most of the stuff is way too intellectually inferior to have ever been some of George’s unique and genius writings and musings. His humor was hugely influential on so many of today’s comics. His work was constantly pushing the boundaries and challenging our freedom of speech.

If you ever had the privilege of seeing George for yourself you could always tell that deep down he was just a cool and sweet guy. Even though there are so many things attributed to him that are not his own, one thing that I did hear him say on a 60 minutes feature has always stuck with me and I believe in many ways defines him as an comic, artist, and person and that I, myself, related to in many ways. “Inside every cynical person there is a disappointed idealist.” George Carlin 1937-2008

Thank You George you will be missed…

George Carlin

George Carlin, 71, died of heart failure Sunday evening. He was the first comedian I remember seeing who spoke about real things in a painfully honest way, all while being funny as hell. In his writings and performances, there is a philosophy of truth and empowerment that I respect and admire.

Mr. Carlin, you will be missed.

The singing was annoying at best. She kept saying really goofy, new-agey things between songs about our beautiful planet, the moon, and all the wonderful technology/electricity on-stage. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at her banter — and I wasn’t alone. The audience was done with her and applauded at three different points during the last song hoping it would prompt her to leave.

We didn’t get video of the show, but I found an official music video that showcases the lunacy. I love how she’s constantly about to fall down off of those roller skates.