i hate winter storms, but i love kde

Winter storms suck. Cars run into each other (sometimes right next to you while you're waiting at stop lights), you can't go outside without a bajillion layers of clothing on (and even then..). Sure, snow is beautiful, but more in an abstract concept way. It's less fun when it's blowing -30C snow flakes in yours face.

P. and I did some grocery shopping, picked up some movies to watch (holy moly is The Dark Knight a terrific film!) and generally prepared to spend the next couple days in the house. The cats are going a bit stir crazy already, but we're pretty well stocked for the weekend.

I didn't get the multi-screen bug count as I planned on as a number of other things intervened. All good things for KDE, but things that needed paying attention to right freaking now. This means I have lots to keep me busy during the weekend storm. :)

So while I grumble about the weather outside, I can truly say that I love the KDE inside. See, I've been quietly putting up with a certain crasher bug in KMail since the new header bling went in: whenever multiple messages were selected, right clicking in the message view (e.g. on a url) would cause an instant crash. That's something I happen to do a lot (part of my "how to deal with hundreds of emails a day" regiment). So this evening I went spelunking in the KMail code to see where it was crashing.

KMail is not trivial stuff, and while I have a handful of (largely inconsequential) patches in there I do not pretend to have a deep understanding of that code. I tracked it deep into the guts of things and then ended up with a quandry, not knowing exactly what the correct answer was. This is typical of KDE, I find: there's a problem, so someone at least tries to do something about it. I love that work ethic.

However, lost as I had become, I emailed the developers with my findings, my question and my surrender. Three hours later I see a response on the mailing list from Thomas McGuire saying, "Typical KMail crash. The msg was deleted via unGet() behind our back and
became invalid. Fixed in r896262." Indeed, that fixed it.

That, even more so than the lovely dram of Lagavulin in my glass, warms my heart. We may live in a world that tries our hearts and tests our stamina, but there are islands of people here and there that share a commitment that can lift my spirits even in the midst of a winter blizzard.

Some islands are big enough to be continents. KDE is a large and great tribe on one of those continents, known as FOSSland. =)

Cheers to the KDE PIMsters, bah to the people who can't drive when the snow falls. ;)