Last friday I left work and was off to pick the girls up, and I stopped at a 4-way intersection.

I got waved through, and as I shifted to 2nd gear, felt something “give”. I lost the ability to shift gears entirely. I made some calls and got M to re-route herself in case I couldn’t get the car home.

As it turns out, a bracket that holds the shifter cables had come apart. Luckily, there was no extesive damage, and the part was pretty cheap. Still, getting the car to the shop, borrowing another car, and putting gas in all these cars (at the rates charged lately) has made for a highly expensive week.

Slax 5.0.8 was released yesterday. I pulled it down with bittorrent through LinuxTracker . They’ve updated the kernel and some stuff with the hard drive installer, but as a live CD, most people probably won’t notice any difference.