cat >/dev/null

I just lost a fight this morning.

Apparently, talking about people you’d like to sleep with does not qualify as oral sex.

Am I the only one in the world thinking that nothing is going to change anyway?

Poor, silly, deluded me.

“But aren’t you the one who’s always saying there is no right and wrong, it’s a duality, and dualities are an illusion?”

“How does that apply?”

“You tell me! I don’t even know what it means!!”

Dharma & Greg - Good Cop Bad Daughter (3×14)

Since my life is a complete bore lately, I decided to get a kick and upgraded my notebook to Kubuntu 8.10.

I have to confess a serious case of love-hate relationship with Ubuntu. The more I get suspicious about it and its makers, the more gracefully it runs on all my hardware. I think it does that on purpose. Just like last time, when I upgraded from 7.04 to 8.04, I was secretly hoping the upgrade would leave me with a heap of smoking ashes. And, just like last time, the process went as smooth as silk.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by KDE 4.1. I didn’t like, or even understand, most of what I saw of the first dot zero releases, but I sure like what I see now. Of course there is a lot of eye candy, which I don’t care about in the slightest as long as I can disable it (I can’t afford it on my relatively slow hardware, and losing cycles for no good reason tends to bother me anyway in the long run). But it feels like there also is a lot of sensible stuff behind the scenes. I’m still playing around, but most of what I’ve seen has been improved. I always thought KDE was a terrific piece of software; this new release surely carries on the good tradition and probably ups the ante.

Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t had my little problems. The Alt+F2 thingie that used to be called MiniCLI has now been replaced by this wonderful new thing called KRunner. I like it very much, but it seems to have a nasty bug, it does not store settings nor the command history. This is a big pain, since I use the thing a lot. I see the bug has been fixed in SVN, I hope the fix gets to binary soon.

Also, VLC video output defaults to XVideo extension, which seems to cause a major screwup with my graphics card (Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02), xserver-xorg-video-intel X.Org video driver, version 2.4.1 whatnot). After a handful of seconds of video play, the display goes completely berserk and there is no way to get anything back but doing the Three-Finger Salute. Forcing VLC video output to OpenGL fixed the problem. And by the way, VLC 0.9.4 totally rocks.

I had to uninstall NetworkManager since it messed with my wireless card and my own scripts. OK, I have to be honest here: me and NetworkManager, we don’t get along very well. I don’t like it and the feeling seems to be mutual. No big deal, I can’t be friends with anyone, can I.

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

The Merovingian, Matrix: reloaded

It’s a real shame that one of the bands I’d die to see live is doing a gig I’d rather die than go to, on the most inconvenient day of my totally inconvenient year.

And who knows when they’ll be back.

somebody say something!!

The big news is that finally Google has a competitor.

But they don’t seem to have a high self-esteem.

UPDATE 20080825:

They seem more self-confident by now. Too bad for them I took a screenshot back then.

And to those of you argumenting that their not showing on the first page may have been a testament to the fairness of the search results… well, if you ever show up… I guess you’d probably be right.

Last Thursday I went to Umbria Jazz in Perugia, to see Gary Burton with Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow and Antonio Sanchez.

Not surprisingly given the musicians on stage, the concert was very good.

Thanks to my very resourceful friend Rick, we got the chance to meet Mr. Metheny backstage after the show and have our complimentary photograph with him taken.

In case this ever happens to you, this is a list of things you may want to say to Pat Metheny while you’re waiting for your photo to be taken, in the form of fictional dialogues.

(Y: you, P: Pat Metheny)

Y: wonderful night. and it’s a great honor to be here.
P: thank you.
Y: no, thank you!

Y: please tell me you’re working at the new Group album.
P: hm. you should talk to old man Lyle. boy, is he lazy!
Y:

Y: what about tonight’s rendition of Question and Answer. I’ve heard it live many times, but tonight it was so special. your solo was terrific.
P: glad you liked it. I have to admit it was quite good.
Y: you could definitely say that.

Y: first time I see Steve Swallow live… gotta say the old man kick serious bass.
P: didn’t you know yet?
Y: actually I heard about it before, but now I can confirm. and hey, you did quite good, too.
P: oh, thanks, pal!
Y: no prob

This is how it went instead:

(A: andrew, P: Pat Metheny)

A: sorry to bother you.
P: no problem. (as in: let’s do this quick, will we?)
A: (hinting at Rick) we’ve been to a lot of your concerts together. (as in: it’s a precious moment for us.)
P: thanks, man! (as in: what, you want your money back?)

What’s left of this moment is the most out of focus, stupid-faced, boy-do-I-look-fat photo of me that was ever taken, and a great lesson to be learned: do not ever impinge on your heroes’ lives.

Ever.