The order is arbitrary, incidentally.
I‘ve been playing around with Kubuntu recently. My laptop used to overheat and shutdown in Kubuntu due to poor power management issues with the CPU. A few weeks ago, however, I took a shop-vac to the fans and sucked out the dust, and now it runs beautifully. I decided to try Kubuntu again, and although the fan is louder than in Windows, it doesn’t get hot at all, which gives me the green light to start playing. 
Seth was a big help and was patient enough to answer my many questions as I poked Kubuntu and tweaked it to my satsifaction. If it weren’t for him I would never have been able to get up and running so quickly. As it stands now, I feel comfortable enough to use it to do things like write this blog entry, chat, etc., after only three days!
The best part about learning Kubuntu is that it’s fun. Learning Windows is not fun; learning Windows is a chore. Although the terms “Linux” and “command-line” can seem scary, they aren’t that scary as long as you go at your own pace. And the terminology is awesome. For example, the password manager for KDE is called “kwallet”. While reading a topic about knetworkmanager, I saw a post that basically explained knetworkmanager’s workings as “it takes the [network] keys from your wallet”. How comprehensible is that?! 
That’s English right there—a foreign language to Microsoft. It was vexing to try and configure Kubuntu before because of the other problems ongoing (the overheating and such), but now that these are gone, I can focus entirely on just customising it to best suit me, and that’s fun.
I should also note that my dear friend Cortney celebrated her 17th birthday yesterday, September 12. Happy birthday, Cortney! 
No one else’s birthday is coming up in the next few days, luckily, so I can safely celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day in peace. Nothing else interesting in the month of September, nope. Not at all.
Unfortunately, for all the happy things, there can be some really unhappy things. A shooting happened today, at Dawson College in Montreal. One person is dead and nineteen others are injured. (Read the CBC article.) Not only is this a terrible event, but it is such a completely random one as far as we know—there doesn’t seem to be any cause for it. My heart goes out to the families and friends of the casualities, as well as the people who witnessed the attack. 
I could say something corny like “tomorrow will be a better day”, but it won’t. Tomorrow is a Thursday, and I could never get a hang of Thursdays.
» 6 people have an opinion
The recent Montreal shooting is a testament to my belief (and many others) that goths are the skum of society. Have a look at http://www.vampirefreaks.com.
This site is dedicated the the gothic subculture and retained within it’s membership the likes of the Kimveer Gill (aka fatality666) who was the Montreal gunman. His profile contained pictures of him with various weapons and has many instances of him claiming that when he died he wishes to bring others down with him.
Humorously enough, vampirefreaks.com claims that just because the man was a goth does not mean that they promote/influence such acts of violence. However this goes contrary to the whole theme of the site which advocates death, mutilation, violence, suicide and overall dismal feelings.
All I can say is DDoS vampirefreaks.com 
h34r:
That is a close-minded and narrow assessment of a sub-culture based upon one person’s actions. That sort of persecution and intolerance toward other people’s beliefs is the cause of the disharmony and violence in this world.
The moment that one closes one’s mind to another person’s point of view, one robs oneself of the opportunity to expand one’s own worldview, as well as one’s moral authority to avoid persecution oneself. History has shown that intolerance and narrow perspectives are what lead to violence and war. Parallels of this shooting have been drawn to the École Polytechnique massacre of 1989, which happened because of a man’s intolerance of feminism.
No one deserves to be judged because of what someone else did.
So what about the Nazi‘s? They don’t desrve to be judged because of the actions of Hitler? Come on now, someone who attempts suicide, mutilates their body for the sole purpose of attention is most definetly deserved of the label scum (although the word goth is synonymous with scum). I’m basing my assessment of goths on their actions as a whole. Apparantly fatality666 text messaged his fellow goths at the college a warning to get out of the building. These fellow goths failed to report this before the incident happened. From my point of view if they allowed this to happen then they condoned his actions.
Each individual person who was a Nazi should be judged for their actions. But you are judging all goths because of the actions of a select few.
One of the fundamental freedoms preserved in the Canadian Charter of Rigths and Freedoms is “freedom of association”. Goth was not responsible for this incident just because the perpetrator happened to associate himself with them. Other goths should not have to face intolerance and mistrust because of it; that is unfair to them and to the principles upon which our society is built.
But I guess it’s okay to suspend those principles. After all, no one is calling me the scum of society simply because I associate myself with, say, Linux users. I’m sure that gives the moral authority to call another group of people the scum of society. No one will ever judge me.
The problem then becomes one of intolerance for people toward one particular group; intolerance, one might recall, is what leads to these things such as discrimination against races, sexual orientations, etc. 
For humanity to move past that and stop being so silly, people need to learn to tolerate the fact that yes (shockingly) other people may be different from them. Tolerating someone’s belief doesn’t mean accepting it; heck, one doesn’t even have to like the person, merely acknowledge that being different doesn’t make them any more or less worthy of the fundamental dignity that every human being deserves.
Otherwise we‘re no better than the man who opened fire on innocent college students, because we’re judging people we‘ve never met, people who lead radically different lives, based on our own small knowledge of the universe. If that isn’t arrogance, I don’t know what is.
Yeah I definately agree with you Ben. I mean, it is extremely unfortunate that a few members of a “sub-culture” decide to define themselves (and then, therefore, the subculture to which they belong) with various aspects of human cruelty and inadequacy. No one should be judged because of what group they seem to belong to. I disagree with the idea of “subcultures” anyway, because one group of friends may decide to define how they live as being a “sub culture” … meaning no two people live the same, and how a culture is interpreted is going to change everywhere you go. Labels are for soup cans not people 
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The next best thing in September to Talk Like a Pirate Day is Tachy’s Birthday — oh, except for my birthday.
The Montreal incident is really awful. I was pretty shocked when I heard it and my best wishes to the people affected by it. Right when I heard about it, I remember thinking - that could’ve been at my campus. Things like this happen at unexpected times, so it could be you, me, or someone you know trapped in a situation like that. Scary thought.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 10:53 PM