Problem with wireless

[Trey Sizemore]

I'm trying to get wireless working on a Compaq CQ50 laptop.  It *was*
working at one time, but stopped recently and I have since installed the
latest Ubuntu on it (kernel 2.6.35-28).

Network Manager from the Gnome taskbar shows wireless as disabled.

The wireless indicator just above the keypad on the laptop is blue,
which I believe indicates that wireless is on and working.

Some hopefully relevant output:

$ iwconfig 
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off

$ lspci | grep -i ether
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless
Network Adapter (rev 01)

$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1d:72:7f:e1:15  
          inet addr:192.168.1.78  Bcast:192.168.1.255 
          Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21d:72ff:fe7f:e115/64 Scope:Linkauto lo
iface lo inet loopback
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:4401 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2198 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2989055 (2.9 MB)  TX bytes:371609 (371.6 KB)
          Interrupt:42 Base address:0xa000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:720 (720.0 B)  TX bytes:720 (720.0 B)

$ less /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Not sure what other info is needed to try to diagnose the underlying
issue, but let me know and I'd be happy to provide.

Thanks for any assistance!

-Trey
-- 
  Trey Sizemore
  trey at fastmail.fm