irrelevancy

I upgraded to Hardy over the weekend while I was sick. For the most part it was pretty uneventful. I use the Ubuntu variant on my school notebook, so I knew about the changes, but there doesn’t seem to be as much a difference in the Kubuntu variant. I just like the packages being up-to-date.

I installed the new KDE 4.0.4 and resolved to use it for about a week. I noticed the network was extremely slow. I thought maybe it was a problem with the desktop environment, as I hadn’t noticed it after the upgrade and before switching to KDE4.

Then I found this bug, affecting rt2500pci cards like my Linksys WMP54G. The card is incorrectly set to a 1M rate, instead of 54M. A simple $ sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M█ sets it right again.

I was listening to a Loveline episode from 2005-10-19 with Criss Angel as a guest. He had male listeners think of an odd number between one and ten (I chose seven). Then he associated a word with the number (sharp). Then he listed some things and said to think of the one that matched the word (carving knife). Then he said to imagine the object, then to imagine the object falling from the sky (at which point I was a little afraid of a knife falling), then he says something like “and you should be careful because you’re thinking of a carving knife” (at which point I wet myself).

Four callers and the two engineers they asked all picked the object he said. I don’t believe in magic, but I still get a sense of child-like wonder when a trick works.

EndAll, my megalomaniacal Xbox Live identity, turned five years old on May 6th. He was created solely to download extra Splinter Cell levels, but quickly developed a zen-like penchant for murder within multi-player arenas. I proffer a moment of silence for the bereaved.

DoubleSplitter: He hasn’t forgotten the many and various grenades launched at him (while you were teammates, let’s not forget). This is why you are made to suffer mercilessly while playing Tetris.

I still want Flash to fade away, but at least Adobe is acting more responsibly. It’s not quite open source and has done nothing to alleviate concerns over performance and security, the latter of which may affect just about everyone.