That hand-me-down laptop I got my hands on? I installed Kubuntu on it this evening. For the most part it went well, but for the fact that I cannot get either of the Orinoco wireless cards working that I’ve tried in it. I’ve Googled, I’ve dug through the Ubuntu forums… nothing. The damned laptop sees the card, loads drivers, and… promptly turns off the lights on the card and gives up.

I just spent well over an hour fighting with the damned thing, and now I’m through. I’m supposed to be relaxing, dammit, not feeling like I’m at work…

One of the joys of my job is the occasional new music CD thrown my way.

Depeche Mode’s “Playing The Angel” sounds like a throwback to “Violator,” but with the latest (of course) production tricks as well as a bit of a Nine Inch Nails sensibility… I mean, even more than Violator had. I won’t say the whole album’s great, but parts of it are pretty darned good. Pick it up on sale if you’re at all into the ‘cheMode thing.

Franz Ferdinand’s “You Could Have It So Much Better” is, well, accurately titled. There’s nothing on the album that sounds any different from, let alone any better than, what you heard on the first album. The best moments on the new record, in fact, are those moments that remind you directly of bits from before. It’s pretty bad when a band has to ride the nostalgia wave on only their second album, eh? Do yourself a favor and steer clear of this one, folks.

Why was I too lazy to actually write up proper media reviews in the proper media categories? Easy: My body’s been giving me hell most of the day, especially my wrists and elbows. The less typing, the better. Besides which, neither of these albums really deserve that kind of effort…

Tonight, on a Very Special Episode ™ of CSI ™, Nick Stokes tries to save a little girl who everyone else is convinced has already been killed, but… he can hear her voice in his head, leading him from clue to clue.

Gah. I hate Very Special Episodes. I like the character of Nick well enough, but c’mon. First the two-hour season finale, now this. Are they setting him up for a write-out, or did George Eads just work this kind of thing into his contract back when he was threatening to quit the show a couple of years back? Feh.

Ah: It pays to Google, my friends.

The plot of this episode was modified at the last moment to accomodate for a sudden change in William Petersen’s availability — originally, Gil Grissom was going to be the CSI convinced that the younger daughter was still alive. (Source)

Fair enough, then… but still. Can we get back to our regularly scheduled mayhem next week, please?

Today I burned the second of five DVDs in a series of VHS-to-DVD transfers made possible thanks to a wonderful person who found the tapes and loaned them to me. I need to play-test the disc on my entertainment center, but I’m generally hopeful since I now know how best to process these things.

I also played Heroes of Might and Magic IV with my son for a few hours. There’s a soft spot in my heart for the Heroes line of games, as well as a smaller soft spot for some of the regular M&M series. We had a pretty good run, and hope to finish the game off in the next visit or so.

No, really, I think that’s all I got accomplished today. Tomorrow? Prep work on the anime site. (Astute readers will remember I promised something along those lines a little while ago…)

Look! Look! Check out the upgraded gallery!

Thanks to the incredibly-well-designed import method, all old links to gallery content will still work, by the way. Oh, and those of you for whom I’ve set up Gallery installs should poke around this new system and decide if you want me to do the upgrade or not. Just let me know, eh?

Not bad for an hour and a half of work, is it?