evolution

I took a break from wallowing in depravity studying and buying a house long enough to make this bracket. Based on rudimentary statistical analysis of available data, my model has assigned a probability of about 43% as of today for Kansas to win the whole thing.

Sadly, I have my K-State team losing in the round of 8 to Syracuse (with a 40% chance to win that game, all other things being given). I estimate that K-State has a 3% chance to win the whole thing as of today, with all other likely outcomes being given.

UPDATE: Here’s emaw with the bracket I wish I could write.

The lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner. You’ll need them to sing along in about four hours. Don’t worry; you’ll only need to remember the first verse.

Be sure and sing loudly now.

Millions who think as David Axelrod does.

Because I sure do.

Don’t take it personally, dude. Everybody looks psychotic in a balaclava.

The will to power, laid bare by a few of its media proponents — courtesy of an old favorite, the Belmont Club.

So, despite declaring a renewed effort to revive this zombie turd of a blog, I managed to render my computer unbootable for most of the last week by playing with Linux distributions. I’ve been through four different versions of them in that time.

I started out having used Kubuntu, the KDE flavor of Ubuntu. I’m ashamed to say I switched to it for the Plasma widgets.

But I noticed that it was a memory hog, and I read a quote regarding KDE: It’s like snow – it’s pretty sometimes, but after a short time I just want someone to take it all away.¹ So I ditched that and went to a minimal-install version of plain Ubuntu. I used this for several years, in fact at one point completely removing Windows. It’s morphed, though, into a much larger thing, which is not always good. Its user base has also morphed into something like… well, something² really annoying. And sometimes dumb.

A major part of being a Linux user is, after all, the user base, so I dumped that and went to Crunchbang (#!) Linux. It’s a derivative of Ubuntu, which means I got the same ease of use in a much smaller package. I loved it, but Ubuntu has a fixed-release model like that of both Windows and Mac OS. Certain parts are updated constantly, but the distribution overall is not until some appointed day when you go and get (at some retailer for Windows, some white plastic Kaaba for Apple, and your CD burner for Linux) the new version. And Crunchbang — which is developed by one dude — is a version behind.

I really liked the minimalist concept though, so I decided to give Arch Linux a shot. It’s a bit more work than those others, but I’ve managed to get an environment similar to the Crunchbang environment I had before I switched, in a still smaller package. I’m an Arch convert.

And hopefully, I’ll return to posting more often.

1. Incidentally, I feel this way about Apple crap. [↩]
2. If only there were some American phenomenon recently, some recognizeable thing that affects us all, that I could compare it to… [↩]