I swear, my Zen Micro is possessed. It’s set on shuffle, yet it seems to favor a single artist.

For example, I was listening to it during a long car ride. Within a span of 10 songs, it had played all 6 of the Cartel songs I had on my playlist, and the playlist contains 256 songs.

That night, out of the first five songs, I heard the 3 songs I listen to by Disturbed.

And just last night, it was “favoring” AFI, playing song after song with a few random songs in between.

It’s probably poor entropy or a poor random number generator, but it’s interesting. I never noticed that before now, so I still say it’s possessed.

50% bill increase due to “ZOMG THERE IS NO GAS WHATSOEVER LEFT IN THE ENTIRE WORLD”

Because there’s nothing the electric company can do to correct this situation, such as using cleaner, cheaper energy. No, no such thing exists.

And of course, if they can do it, the water company will try to do it too.

I realized that the Master and PCM aren’t connected. I can hear sound with “Master” at 0 and “PCM” all the way up, and with PCM at 0 and Master all the way up.

I just discovered that ALSA’s toggling “External Amplifier” setting, while having no effect on sound both with headphones or via the built in speakers, toggles my laptop’s mute LED. w00t.

That’s one of the things I love about computers. You’re always discovering new things.

Take just now, for instance. I’ve had my laptop two and a half years. And I’ve known there was a meter (by way of 5 LEDs) on the battery, but I’ve never been able to activate it by pushing the button. So I was just sitting there with the battery and I pushed down on the button with my fingernail. Bam, 5 LEDs lit up.