said Dan Youngquist:

| Might try moving or deleting the .trinity folder first.  If it's a
| Trinity configuration problem, that might take care of it.

thanks. actually, you sparked me to go check my ~dot-directories to 
make sure there was nothing that night be conflicting. i detected a 
couple of possibilities in the form of old .kde/ i'd saved for 
reversion if upgrades didn't go well. renamed 'em, rebooted, and so 
far the symptoms are gone. (though they were never present right at 
first after a reboot.) fingers are crossed. i've kept my desktop 
pretty much the same for about a decade, so i know how to make it 
back into what i like, but i've never enjoyed it and would just as 
soon not do it again!

anyway, you tapped the lightbulb and made it go on. thanks!
-- 
dep

The shortest distance between you and great fingerstyle
guitar playing? The new instructional DVDs from Marjorie
Thompson, available now at www.MarjorieThompson.com