Hey PB, I should have also said that the "Auto-dimming issue" is not restricted to just KDE alarms - I just see it with the most consistency there. I've also had the same thing happen when using mPlayer and have read that some others here at itT have too. Only with mPlayer it's intermittent and I can't find the pattern Sorry I didn't report this earlier - it took me a while to figure out the pattern.

Could you please point me in the right direction to find the command for USB host mode? I probably used to have it in my taskbar but it's gone now - to make matters worse a few months ago I had a crash and lost most of the "extra" apps you added to Kmenu. I've been able to rebuild most of those shortcuts as the need has arisen but can't find the command for USB host. Thanks!!

Also, I would like to second the recommendation for Q's Conky - he's right it does work great - I've got it set up to toggle on/off using Ctrl+G. I use it now to replace System Guard because Conky uses less system resources and still give me the information I need (eg: WTF is hogging all my CPU and/or Memory?)