One of the reasons I chose Kubuntu was it shipped with KDE 4.1 and I was excited to see how it was working once they got some of the kinks out. Most everything runs smoothly, but there's the occasional odd thing.

1. Startup sound gets cut off. No matter what I fiddled with, I couldn't figure it out.

2. Bluetooth support not working. I knew about this before I installed, and I tried to get it working with the gnome bluetooth tools. It's not essential on this laptop, but I'd like to pair up my headset in case I want to make Skype calls.

3. Resume not working. Suspend/resume worked out of the box, though it stopped working once I upgraded the nvidia drivers as the ones that come with Intrepid had some issues. Once I upgraded to the beta drivers, resume failed. Nvidia has already acknowledged it's their fault and they couldn't get it into the 180.22 drivers, so for now I can use hibernate.

4. Even with the updated nvidia drivers, the tray icons got corrupted. I just learned to live with it.

5. Windows were a bit sluggish to resize, but again that's chalked up to the nvidia drivers and something I can deal with.

6. I used to be able to set my numlock on (I have a full keyboard for a reason). In one of the updates, that function is gone in preferences. I hope they bring it back.

7. The panel was a little quirky. Took me a while to get it just the way I want, and sometimes it'd resize itself. Some of the applets wouldn't vertically center. It wasn't intuitive how to move the panel around (I usually place my panel at the top of the screen).

There were some other niggly-bits as well, but for the most part eveything was minor annoyances.

Last night I thought I'd give 4.2 RC1 a try. After a bit of coniving, I managed to update Kubuntu. My overall opinion is it's a bit more polished, definitely a lot of work has gone into it. The startup sound now plays all the way through, the tray icons aren't garbled (though some have gray boxes around them sometimes), it was easier to manipulate the panel, there's more desktop effects, the task bar stacks up open windows now.

I tested suspend and resume again, just to see if it might work, but alas it's  still not resuming. I'll wait for new nvidia drivers to test again. What I did find odd is there are now two power managers (or maybe there were two before, but I didn't notice), one is the Guidance Power Manager and the other is PowerDevil. They look like the do the same thing but I don't think I need them both running.

There's a few more things I want to test out, but overall it's starting to look like  a good release.

Trends Are Cyclical: the Asus Eee Keyboard:

Toxel.com » Modern Electrical Outlets and Power Strips:

I'm really going to have to buckle down and become one with my Blackberry. I'm so not used to having one.  Being on call means I'm going to need to keep it on me at all times. It's been so long since I've been on call, and even then I was always in front of my computer or at work, so it didn't really matter too much. Just another habit I've got to get into I suppose.

Luckily, my woman sleeps with  earplugs (something about me snoring too loud?) so when I bring the Blackberry in, she won't hear it in the bedroom when it rings.

For some reason, I'm not so excited about getting the Blackberry, which is kind of odd for me, I used to be a big gadget dude. I used to get all the PDAs when they came out, but my last few phones have been Motorola RAZRs, just plain simple phones that I've grown to love. I still love gadgets, just not as gung-ho as I used to be. I think it's because after the newness wears off, I'm bored with it and move on to the next new thing.

This of course is my cop out post, I did at least post, even though it's not really what I'd call content. I do have several articles I'm going to be working on and posting (aside from the daily postings) so stay tuned for that. I'm also going to tie in my facebook, friendfeed and google reader content as soon as I get time.

Usually when I'm opening a new tab, it's through middle clicking a link to open in a new tab. I do think the search box will be handy, though. If I use the search bar at the top, I most always want the results in a new tab anyways. I'm all for making the browser smarter, something that learns how you use it and becomes optimized for YOUR workflow.

Aza’s Thoughts » Firefox Proposal: A Better New Tab Screen.

So, now I'm going to use it, temporarily here at wordpress.com, and eventually it will have a permanent home on my domain. I'm currently working on setting up a custom WordPress MU/Buddypress site. Until it becomes even semi-operational, I'll post here and migrate when I'm ready.

Though I've set blogs up for numerous people, this will be my first real attempt at keeping my own blog. I've got tons of ideas for posts, most of which occur to me while driving (unfortunately), but if I can remember to jot the ideas down, it should be a worthwhile read. It should be a mix of observations, opinions, technical & geeky stuff.

I have been recently laid off, but hopefully I won't be out of work for long. I have links to my current resume and LinkedIn profile if you're curious. I can do freelance work as well, I'll add a page soon with more information and rates.

I'm still working on an About page, until then you'd be better off checking my Facebook profile.