Powerless

Life gets crazy. Not my own life, which (of course) is a paragon of balance, but lives around me. The older I get, the more I want to just fix it, and the more I realize I can't. I have two friends in mental facilities at this moment, one friend who called me at an ungodly early hour this week, and another who called earlier this evening weeping so hard I had no idea what was actually being said. And, other than listen, I can't do a blasted thing to change any of their situations. As a kid, all I did was listen, because that seemed like the most Taoist thing to do. Now I'm older, I actually care more, I want to make a difference, but I also realize there's less that can be done in so many situations.

OK, so this isn't exactly a post, more of a venting. Not against my friends (because Jesus, Mary, and Patrick know that I've been the one on their end of the conversation more'n my fair share), but venting against my occasionally perceived futility to see life and love making the difference.

Of course, I know that it does. I have anecdotes, you have anecdotes. We have faith, we have hope, we have love. But sometimes, just sometimes, I wish we had miracles (and not just our 21st century ones "ooh, it's a miracle", I'm talking the Big Biblical kind: "Lazarus, come forth" and stuff.)

I'm really not coming down on God's methodology and strategy, I trust His wisdom. Chaos makes little sense without faith in a higher order. In truth, I have no idea what I'm actually trying to say, or why I'm saying it publicly, but there you have it. Maybe next time I'll go back to blogging about computers :-)

Umbrellas Not Required

because Heather asked...

Weekend with the kids, including bad jokes, lazy Saturday, and (God help me) High School Musical (1 & 2) * Neil's commentary on Stardust * the lumina's continued mobility * panda bowl with orange chicken and steamed rice (I know, "boring!") * Underdog * Rob's latest YouTube * KDE 4 * laughing until it hurts * winter starlight * Buddhist economics * light snow * xkcd * being up before the sun * sweet tea * constantly rediscovering how little I know * driving while listening to funny music * falling asleep feeling blessed * smiles in the hallway * the passion of the new atheists (if not their conclusions) * Gilbert Keith Chesterton * my siblings * looking forward to seeing the kids again

KDE 4.0

Well, the new release of KDE is out. It looks pretty (but my guess is that it'll be a while before Pat adds it to Slack, which is cool...) In the mean time, I'm thinking of playing with Kubuntu, just to test the new waters. I have the kids this weekend, but come Monday...

Happy Birthday, St. Knuth!

Today, legendary computer scientist Donald E. Knuth turns 70! It is extremely safe to say that without Knuth's work modern computer science would not look the way it looks today, both in content (Knuth is the Grand Master of Algorithms) and appearance (his work in typesetting is still the basis for much scholarly publication in fields where equations matter).

His mathematical novel Surreal Numbers has helped me gain a better (though, sadly, not yet perfect) grasp Conway's original work.

A Christian by faith, Knuth is an accomplished church organist and a righteously funny man.

A quote from one of Knuth's many works:

"When I talk about computer science as a possible basis for insights about God, of course I’m not thinking about God as a super-smart intellect surrounded by large clusters of ultrafast Linux workstations and great search engines. That’s the user’s point of view." --Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, p. 168.

Happy Birthday, O Blessed Saint of Geekiness!

(Almost) Obligatory (Almost) New Year's Post

I'll freely admit that the calendar is rather arbitrary, as is much of language itself (I won't say "all language," since there may well be deep structures in language, but much of it functions at a far more surface level; regardless, this is not a post about language, so...)

Anyway, the calendar. The cycle of months rolls over, incrementing the year-o-meter by 1. A new year, a time for resolutions: the beginning of your "new" (and, hopefully, improved) life. Every day is a new beginning but New Year's Day (and, for slackful types, the whole "near the beginning of January" days) are an especially significant (though, again, relatively arbitrary) point of re-creation.

Resolutions are really about "who will you be this year?" I often by-pass resolutions, seeing as how I "know" I'll blow them before Valentine's Day. How does that answer the question of who I will be? It seems to answer it by saying, "I'll be the person I've always been, continuing to coast along with my self in status quo." Have I arrived at all I want to be, all I believe I should be, all that I (in my heart of hearts) would be? No. I mean, sure, I'm an alright guy. Most of you wouldn't hate me if you knew me. Is that all that is in my soul, to be alright? (emphatic note: "alright" is not to be confused with "all right" which implies a level of perfection that I would not claim in my wildest delusions of grandeur. I don't think so, anyway...) No "alright" is probably not enough. Whether the journey is the reward or there is a reward at the end of the journey, merely "coasting" is not enough.

So, what to resolve, and in what form to make the resolutions? Blogging? Private oath? Personal journal? Accountability partner? Each answer to "what form" has something to recommend for itself, none are "right" or "wrong." What to resolve? Ah, easy, to be a better person! And what defines "a better person"? There's the rub. Because I think that our understanding of that changes as we ourselves grow and change. It would have to, wouldn't it, since once you've fulfilled whatever criteria you know have for being a better person, there would be some other level which you might then realize is "better" than who you are now. The more good we become, the more we realize how much better we could become.

Are we doomed to be on the human equivalent of a hamster's exercise wheel: always running but never arriving? Is there no place for contentment? The answer, from considering the above, seems to be no. Contentment would allow coasting.

The paradox is to maintain both contentment and striving. To accept who you are, where you are, what you are, and to not feel a sense of failure for the reality of your present is-ness. Yet at the same time, to be able to see the journey ahead, to realize the steps that will move you further along the path you see (and, more than likely, some paths you don't yet see). To neither beat ourselves up nor praise ourselves for where we are, but to recognize it and accept it with grace (and, as far as possible, good humor), and then to continue to walk: neither crippled by our past nor enticed to rest on our laurels, knowing that even when we realize we have made a mistake along the way, it is a good thing to have realized it (at whatever point we realize it) and then to continue on the path we choose (and sometimes that means turning around and driving 27 miles back down the road to the nearest convenience store to ask for directions). [Ed. note: that was one long, run-on sentence, ugh!]

What am I saying? How should I know? These thoughts should have been thunk early December, to allow time to flesh out all of the details, to figure out my "resolutions" for being who I want to be this year. But, as the name says, I'm a slacker. Too often content to coast, when I should be pedaling and steering. The brain's working a bit now in the right direction. 2008 will be a year to move forward (whatever direction that may be) and to try to become the "me" I sometimes glimpse out of the corner of my mind's eye. My hope and prayer is that each of you will find a way to make 2008 to truly be the beginning of the rest of your life.

Blessed Solstice!

Well, it's that time of year again, where the offices close and I am separated from my dear and precious friends who dwell (to me) in the etherealness that is the Internet. I hope that each of you finds blessings, wonder, and healing during this holiday season. I may slip in on occasion, but then again, I may be offline until next year. Jesus, Mary, and Patrick be with y'all, and, as always, sláinte!

Minutia and More Stuff You Don't Want to Know

Wow, Heather's right: almost a month with none of my senseless posts. That's probably part of the reason for the silence: senselessness. I apparently have less and less to say, so I've been slacking off.

Experiment #1: normally I tell my RSS reader to only deliver geek news. I spent one day, however, receiving feeds from CNN, BBC, and Fox News. Absolutely nothing I needed to know, updated way too bloody frequently for my productivity to survive intact. I would really like to be an informed citizen of this blessed democracy, but 24/7 news services provide too much information (too much pointless information). Maybe I'll try reading a newspaper or a weekly magazine like Time.

I started reading The Golden Compass. I'm only on chapter 3 (I read very, very slowly) but I'm enjoying it so far. Pullman is a very good writer. I suppose that I'll reach a point where my religious sensibilities get offended (but then again, maybe not). A co-worker who went to the film last weekend didn't find anything objectionable. Is this another case of hype getting ahead of reality?

I've also started working my way through watching Twin Peaks. TP was, back in its day, my favorite television show (a title it has forfeited in recent years to Firefly). It's weird, because everyone on the show looks so young (15+ years and now I'm older than most of them!) Still, it's as quirky, creepy, and well-directed as I remember.

Well the C----mas season is upon us (don't want to offend anybody out there by making reference to any particular deity that may be associated with this celebration). Strangely, I find myself thinking less about the holiday this year and more about the baby. There's more of a mystery there than the standard "hero born of a virgin" story. Mostly because he didn't grow up to be a typical hero (nor even a typical wiseman). Like a zen koan, the mysteries of this particular Western faith invite contemplation without complete solution. It's like my good friend the Dolly Llama says, "Baby Jesus is the bomb, dude!": a small package that will unleash fiery power upon an unsuspecting world.

Whine #1: I'm getting really, really tired of being a computer geek. Sure, I like it, but I'm getting tired of it. Does that make sense? Sometimes I wish that I only knew Windows, and just enough to get my work done. I have no reason to dabble in operating systems, programming languages, artificial intelligence, artificial life, computational math, and a host of other topics I am neither qualified to discuss nor paid to learn (and consequently, I only half-learn, at best).

On the other hand, I am paid to know more about cataloging standards, copyright law, and theological research and writing than I actually know. If you hit forty and don't know what you want to be when you grow up, you'll end up being nothing. (Not that I'd claim to be a nothing. No, that's claiming too much. Ah, if only I could a genuine and for real nothing...)

Oh, well, a very delightful day to all of you (about 1.5 readers left, by my survey)!

Reading & Watching

I recently finished Rudy Rucker's latest, Postsingular. Like all of his books, it was a wild ride through far out ideas. It was also very well written. I dropped a line about the book on amazon.com (my first, and perhaps only, time writing for them).

I'm currently reading Joe R. Lansdale's The Bottoms. I picked this up last year at a used book store, because I've like the little Lansdale I've read. He's an author from East Texas and writes a lot about East Texas. Since my dad and his whole family are from there (and fled back there after sojourning in the Midwest long enough to sire my siblings and I), I have some kind of weird (but sadly explicable) fascination with the place (Dr. Freud can stop reading now!)

I've put off reading the thing for so long because, quite frankly, it's a horror-mystery violent murder kind of story. My stomach for this genre has been gradually fading over the years. It's a good read, just dark and disturbing in places. I'll be glad to be done with it.

Other items tossed around my apartment with bookmarks in them: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, The Nature of Number, and Devices of the Soul. I know, sad, sad taste in recreational reading.

I've also downloaded Richard Dawkins's 1991 Royal Institution Christmas lectures. This is a series of lectures given by scientists in the UK for children. It started with Michael Faraday back in the day (19th century, I guess). Anyway, Dawkins has made his lectures available online. It is amazing to watch an Oxford professor trying to connect with a lecture theater filled with children. It is disconcerting to watch him tell them that there is no creation in the universe until late in its history (i.e., after we arrive and start creating). It's rather like telling a room full of children that there is no Father Christmas (only worse, if you happen to believe in God, like, say, I do). This is the same man who says labeling a child "Christian" or "Hindu" is akin to child abuse. I've only watched the first two of the five letures, and a sense of fairness compels me to finish them (that and, despite his rabid atheism, he is a charming and engaing communicator), but scientism (as opposed to science) seems to be the order of the day.

On more mundane viewing, my friend Patti has kept me supplied with tapes of The Office, so I am current on one TV show! That's probably enough (although I'd really, really like to be seeing Heroes in real time).

Well, enough snore-fest trivia of my doings and happenings.

PS - I just checked out four more books while I was here at the library posting this. I think I may have a problem...

CSI Lincoln

"Damnit, Wren, that was evidence," the sergeant barked.

I looked up from my half-eaten Krispy Kreme. Sure, this kitchen was a crime scene, but it was obvious the victim had not died because he had eaten a poisoned donut. The bloody body with the detached head (87.5 cm away from the severed neck, I had measured it) suggested that, maybe, decapitation was the cause of death. That or explosive gas pressure, but that was too horrible to contemplate. The UV blood sniffers didn't detect any blood on the closed box of donuts (let alone inside said box). The victim, one Mr. Samuel E. Perkins, age 47, lived alone. The donuts were going to go to waste, which would have been the second crime committed on these premise in the past twenty-four hours. And besides, I had skipped breakfast. Again.

"I dunno, Sarge," I began, between bites of my Chocolate-Iced Creme-Filled delight, "I think finding a large, sharp object covered in blood might be evidence. This, this is just a little taste of heaven." I held the box out to him, "Want one?"

John Kemeny

The BASIC programming language gets much grief from the hacker elite who dream in C++, Java, C#, and other object-oriented monster languages. The truth is that many of the computer professionals of today cut their teeth on some version of BASIC. Indeed, Microsoft's Visual Basic is arguably the most successful language in the world for hobbyists as well as numerous Windows consultants.

BASIC was born on May 1, 1964, at Dartmouth College. The brain child of John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, two math professors. Tom is still alive, but John Kemeny died back in '92. Both names were, perhaps, mentioned in my old high school data processing class (circa 1983), but "mentioned" is as far as it went.

John Kemeny was a Hungarian immigrant to the US. He worked for Richard Feynman during the development of the bomb at Los Alamos (this was before Kemeny had even finished his undergrad degree). While in graduate school at Princeton, he was the mathematics research assistant to Albert Einstein. After co-creating BASIC, he went on to become a President of Dartmouth (but insisted on being allowed to teach a couple of classes each semester). Kemeny was the leader of the commission that investigated The Three Mile Island accident. He died on December 26, 1992, at the age 66 of unexpected heart failure.

Why share an outline sketch of a life that passed so many years ago? I think because I stumbled across the following when doing some research on the history of programming languages, and it made me want to remember. After John Kemeny's death, this was written in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine: "The newspaper said John G. Kemeny, 13th president of Dartmouth College, died of heart failure. Clearly this was a mistake. John Kemeny's heart never failed anyone."

Further research confirmed that this man, who is mostly known for a maligned product, but whose intellectual biography is as impressive as any in the 20th century, was remembered by those who knew him as someone who's "heart never failed anyone." That line haunts me, maybe because I know that when my life is over it will not be true of me. But perhaps, like Scrooge, there is still time to redeem the life that remains.

Postscript - What did Kemeny think of himself? When he handed over the office of president of Dartmouth to his successor he made this comment: "History alone will be able to judge whether my presidency was good or what my record is worth, but there is one thing I do know for certain: I'm one hell of a good teacher."

On Finding an Empty Plastic Bag Where I Really Expected to Find a Soul

What colour the little scream,
that proceeds all day from my heart,
as silent as a tomb and as large as the universe?

astral ball bearings,
greased lightly with faux mirth,
falling through the web of self-lies and forgotten stories.

madness claims each tomorrow,
a dark sun rising over an infinite jest.

Scanner Vote

Anyone have any input on which would be a better replacement for a dead Minolta PS 3000 scanner: ether a Plustek Omnibook 3600 or an HP Scanjet 5590?

Yet Another T-Shirt To Blow Money On

The sad flashbacks of the middle-aged geek:



More details at the site.

Restroom Story: You've Been Warned

So, I notice this guy on campus, an undergrad student, wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Buddha that read "Rub My Belly for Good Luck." Ok, yes, Buddha would think it's funny, especially on a conservative Bible college campus. I wanted to say something when I first saw him, but something in me said "wait." Since that's the same something that keeps me from sticking my finger in the spinning blade of a fan (well, there was the one time that sense failed me... but, another story, another time), I opted for listening to it. As Buddha would have it, ten minutes later this student was standing at the next urinal over. I turn and say, "I'm sorry, but this really doesn't seem like the time or place to reach over and rub your belly." I'd like to say that rendered him speechless, but he fires back "I appreciate that." "Still," says I, "wearing Buddha on a Bible college campus, that's pretty gutsy." "Uh-huh," he returns. "Well, have a nice day!" I smile. The student then left the restroom fairly quickly.

I'm not sure whether this story is more Funny, Creepy, or Pointless. But it's been forever since I've shared any bathroom humor on this site... (and too long since I've posted anything. If this is what I'm reduced to, I may as well close this blog now).

The Night Before...

Tomorrow, at long last, is the open house for the remodeled library. One more day and all of this madness will be over. It's been... hmm, well, not exactly fun. But the place looks great! (Note to self: post pictures for the terminally curious).

On a completely different note, a conversation today brought forth the phrase "theoretical drunkenness" which I thought was a Grand Idea. I googled the phrase, and it came up with no hits! Ok, it's too cool to go to waste, so I'm going to make an otherwise empty blog just to capture the phrase. If you're truly terminal in your curiosity, check out Theoretical Drunkenness (actually, please don't).

Can't Stop Me Now

This weekend my brakes failed. Not totally, just mostly. I was in traffic. In Bloomington. I had the kids with me. Not fun. Thankfully, we made it home in one piece and my car is at the mechanic's.

On the positive side, we found 1 GB usb drives for $10 at Office Max, so I was able to make some amends for the techno-woes of the week before.

We're in full force here at the library, moving towards an Open House on the 9th. All of which to say, I need to get back to shelf construction...

Oh, I caught disc 1 of season 2 of "My Name is Earl" last night. Fun!

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

I've caught the Heroes bug. A friend of mine loaned me the DVDs and I watched all seven discs in the space of a day and a half. My favorite character is Mohinder Suresh (followed by Charlie and Molly). I don't want to talk plot because spoilers are bad. Am I the only one who sees this show as seriously addicting?

Techno Woes

One expected, one not (the latter one being, predictably, my fault). Firstly, my notebook died. Well, strictly speaking its video died. It was to be expected. I paid $75 for it a few years back (obviously used). Unfortunately, it died while I was giving a presentation in a class. Typical.

The other woe... well, let's skip to the lesson learned. USB drives (thumb drives, flash drives, whatever you choose to call them) do not survive the laundry very well. Always check the pockets. I know that, but I got lazy. Now in the space of four days I'm two toys short of a full box.

On the other hand, I have moderately ok health, better than average working conditions, and good friends and family. I have Internet access, a roof over my head, enough of a weight problem to be able to claim "well-fed," and access to almost any book I could ever want.

On Zaphod's third hand, oh, wait... he's not real (never mind).

Finally, A Self-Help Book for Me!

Bullet Points

• I read The Flight of Peter Fromm this past weekend. It's about a young fundamentalist who attends a liberal seminary. It's an older book, but an amazingly great read! Highly recommended to anyone who's been to seminary, might go to seminary, believes in the Christian faith, or knows some one who believes in Christianity (does that cover most everyone?) It does not come out on the side of conservative faith, but I still found it very affirming. If you read (or have read) it, let me know what you think (unless it destroys your faith, and then, I apologize in advance... but it really did pull me closer to faith in Christ, which is strange, given the story...)
  

• I've watched some of the bonus features on the Serenity Collector's Edition. And I've found a lot of cool Serenity stuff on cafepress (now, if only I could afford to waste money on cool stuff at cafepress).
  

• Palm announced that, after all the hype, they are not going to make their Foleo (kind of a sub-notebook that's not really a notebook but would work really well for me), which means I have one less item to covet (that's a good thing, right?) Still, it was a sweet little piece of vaporware...
  

• Our library is functional but still not finished... even my office is in a state of semi-disrepair. It's not an altogether bad place to be, though.
  

• I have my kids this coming weekend (very good!) and then, on the following weekend, a visit to the homelands to be reunited with my comrades from high school (also very good!) Another plain glass bottle of the local root beer, eh, Morgan?
  

• I also watched the $5 Walmart Batman the Movie DVD. You know, with Adam West (the real Batman). I was just going to pass it by, but when I saw the audio commentary was West and co-star Burt Ward, I knew I really, really wanted to experience it. Funnier than you'd think, but not as funny as I had hoped. Still, Frank Gorshin's Riddler always makes me laugh.
  

Someday, I'll start thinking again and write something that's almost worth reading. Until then, thank you kindly for your continued patronage!