There is a bug

Somewhere in X.org or KDE or, possibly, one of the apps I have loaded all the time.

At some point, the average memory usage of X goes from around 6% to 12%. CPU goes up a little.

But, when this happens, GUIs are annoyingly slow.

I have been trying to reproduce the problem, but I can find no consistent trigger. And killing off apps one at a time doesn't solve the problem, either. Once X goes to 12% mem use, it is there until I restart it.

There is another bug, too. Screensaver stops working. The screen goes blank and locks, but the screensaver (pipes 3D) doesn't run. This too is solved by restarting X.

They don't seem related on the face of it.

I hate restarting X. Restarting X means my apps that aren't sessions smart, like shell sessions, Xemacs , and a couple other apps, have to be set up all over again. It's annoying.

Sigh.

EDIT to add. Found the offending app. Firefox. I knew it sometimes gets carried away with itself and I've had to kill it from the command line several times. I didn't know it sometimes makes X through up its hands in disgust.

Firefox is still my browser of choice, though. When Galeon when was "upgraded" to run on gnome 2.0, it lost most of it's useful features. The other browser projects just don't provide the features I use every single day. I guess I'll put up with bugs in Firefox just the way I put up with bugs in EVERY OTHER PROGRAM I use. (Including programs I've written. :)

car trouble

Rachel's car was stolen in Berkeley a couple of months ago. We stalled doing anything about it for as long as we could but finally had to give up hope of recovery about two weeks ago.

And now the car has been recovered. It took the cops awhile to find it because: A) they don't look very hard; and B) it had a faked license plate.

So, the insurance company, which now owns the car, gets to sell it and recoup their losses.

All that and Rachel has a new Jetta (lease rather than own, though).

It seems that car theft in Berkeley and Oakland are primarily about having a getaway car. Most cars are recovered quickly and without damage. It is not the place to accidentally leave your keys in your car or to have your roommate leave hers in her car door.

Love.