Get current logged in user under 3.1, re: remove “Howdy”

Why fiddle around with jQuery when you could just run a filter on gettext to specifically target that text? Perhaps you simply don’t know you can do that, so here’s how..

add_filter( 'gettext', 'change_howdy_text', 10, 2 );
function change_howdy_text( $translation, $original ) {
    if( 'Howdy, %1$s' == $original )
        $translation = 'Logged in as %1$s';
    return $translation;
}

Hope that helps. 🙂