when your wireless icon goes somewhere

Then try:
On the panel add: Add to Panel -> Notification Area

And you have again your wireless indicator in the panel

T60 and wireless

1. Installed
http://www.ngsys.eti.br/pub/miscelaneous/patch-wireless.deb
2. /compat-wireless-2008-08-06$ sudo checkinstall make install
but errors

(Reading database ... 136579 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking compat-wireless-2008-08 (from .../compat-wireless-2008-08_06-1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /home/magg/dwnl/compat-wireless-2008-08-06/compat-wireless-2008-08_06-1_i386.deb (--install):
trying to overwrite `/usr/sbin/b43load', which is also in package patch-wireless
Errors were encountered while processing:
/home/magg/dwnl/compat-wireless-2008-08-06/compat-wireless-2008-08_06-1_i386.deb

3. removed patch-wireless.deb
4. compat-wireless-2008-08-06$ sudo dpkg -i compat-wireless-2008-08_06-1_i386.deb

5. /compat-wireless-2008-08-06$ sudo make load

6. I installed linux-backports-modules-hardy