Keyboard repeat rate

["Bruce J. Keeler" <bjk@mobilesys.com>]

I notice that after resuming from a suspend, the keyboard rate is
woefully low.  I set about correcting that problem by dropping this
script into /etc/apm/events.d:

#!/bin/sh

case "$1" in
resume)
    case "$2" in
    suspend)
	if netstat -na | grep ':6000' ; then
	    xset -display :0 r rate 150 30 
	fi
	;;
    esac
    ;;
esac


Problem is, it doesn't work.  Indeed, just running the xset command
on a command line doesn't do anything.

However, if I set the rate by going into the Gnome control center, it
does work, and the xset command works as normal after that.

So the question is why does 'xset r rate' not work until after I've
used the Gnome control center?

Configuration:

Debian Woody
Custom Kernel 2.2.16
Dell Latitude 7500.