That's It!

I have my notify-osd back!

I have a Radeon 7000 dual-head card, and evidently there's a known issue with the driver that comes with Ubuntu Koala. Saying Driver "vesa" like the thread said didn't work, but telling my X config to shut off hardware accelleration did.

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "Card0"
 Driver      "radeon"
 VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
 BoardName   "Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
 Option     "NoAccel"   "TRUE"         # []
EndSection

Will post a pic with all the goodness running later. Thanks, Shub-Internet!