stevengharms

Once you learn Unix you see things differently. With Apple having embraced Unix as an underpinning, perhaps one could now “See and Think Different”.

In any case, Unix users will laugh at this interpretation of the “War on Terror’, as Unix systems administration [HERE]. A hand-holding version for non-Unix gurus is found [HERE].

Note: Unix Admins, being a pedantic sort by nature, are sure to note that a “War on Terror” is, as Jon Stewart put it, like declaring a battle on ennui and makes no discernable sense whatsoever. Ergo the quotey-quotes.

The League of Melbotis lives in AZ.

I flew through Phoenix’s Sky Harbor about 1:30 p.m. the other Friday.

Damn, it is HOT there. I do mean HOT. Sitting in a tin can on the tarmac while waiting to hit the jetway was an exercise in pretending to be a baked potato.

How is it that he can live there?

He is a super hero. No wonder he has no fear challenging Pepsi’s holiday dreck and Burger King’s latest monsterfood.

So, the

1. See the Social Bobcats 2. See the Dogg and Mrs. The Dogg and the proto-Dogg 3. See matt 4. Stay with my dad and lie around in the pool 5. Work on my Snow Crash analysis 6. Look at Cocoa (again) 7. Look at Lisp 8. Last year Dedman recommended The Time Traveler’s Wife which was awesome. This year he has recommended The Historian which looks great. 9. Not think about work. I may need some help in this regard but Dad always kept the fridge healthily packed with bock, so that should help 10. Go to my 10 year reunion 11. See my grandmother and her dog, Ray. 12. Nothing 13. Finish off Moleskine, volume 2.

So, that’s what happened based on my “planned” list. Here’s some things that happened that I didn’t plan.

1. At a big-ass chicken fried steak at Hickory Hollow
2. Saw the Astros whoop up on the Nationals (the DC baseball team, not some rent-a-car center)
3. Was introduced to The West Wing
4. Read about 10 magazines I had ot my magazine backlog
5. Started learning about TextMate
6. Went up to Santa Cruz with Elle, swam in wetsuits, ate at Pizza My Heart, hung around borders
7. Turned 28
8. Whataburger
9. Chick-Fil-A
10. Acquired an heirloom (more on that forthcoming
11. Met a student of urban planning, former high school classmate
12. Explored the newly revitalized downtown Houston
13. Found old college netbooks on German Idealist philosophy and Ancient greek Philosophy

I have one more day on vacation, today, and I’m hoping to work on my Snow Crash essay, read a mag or two, and maybe watch some On Demand or HDivo’d material.

This is the nastiest stuff I have ever eaten. This is a “treat”. Man, give me a Snickers any day.

My co-worker C-Note and I have decided:

“Smells like feet, tastes like a monkey’s ass”

About right.

I’m going on vacation starting TOMORROW and returning to work on the 14th!

I really need a break, I feel my creativity well running a bit dry. Here’s what I’ve got planned in sweltering Houston, Texas:

1. See the Social Bobcats
2. See the Dogg and Mrs. The Dogg and the proto-Dogg
3. See matt
4. Stay with my dad and lie around in the pool
5. Work on my Snow Crash analysis
6. Look at Cocoa (again)
7. Look at Lisp
8. Last year Dedman recommended The Time Traveler’s Wife which was awesome. This year he has recommended The Historian which looks great.
9. Not think about work. I may need some help in this regard but Dad always kept the fridge healthily packed with bock, so that should help
10. Go to my 10 year reunion

[ Angsty post on ‘i hated high school why am i doing this?’ sturm und drang elided ]

1. See my grandmother and her dog, Ray.
2. Nothing
3. Finish off Moleskine, volume 2.

IMG_1547
Originally uploaded by sgharms.

Bedroom picture

See associated entry.

foamorder.com really came through for yours truly, their customer. Some weeks ago I noted that I had received a damaged nightstand with my bed set. They worked with me, replaced the unit from the manufacturer and yesterday swapped boxes with me. With this in place my bedroom set’s look-and-feel was complete.

I’ll post a picture.

Steven’s rules for bedrooms (I’m not a decorator, feng shui expert, or pschologist, take with a grain of salt)

• Absolutely no TV
• The bedroom is a place for 2 activities, I’ll allow a third but with no recommendation: sleeping, sex, and reading. You will sleep better this way. If your mind starts associating “watching Leno nightly from 11-12” with the flat soft place that is your bed, when you are tired your brain will say “Hey wait, where’s the Leno, that’s what we do here!”
• The bedroom should be colored in soothing or dark colors: blues and greens are psychologically peaceful and soothing. White is the color of the peace of death and the white sheets which we are wrapped into after being born, it is appropriate that it should figure strongly in our diurnal death analog chamber where, not coincidentally, the whole cycle is continued in our or in our pursuit of le petit mort (I’ll stop lest i sink into Schopenhauerianism)
• Art: OK, art is good, but I think that sculpture and flowers are the way to go. If you want an image Georgia O’Keefe is ok, but Mondriaan’s “Broadway Boogie-Woogie is just too dang busy
• Objects of religious veneration. I’m a big fan of this, sleep is mystical and so is religion, an item of your faith is a great thing to have. I’d go for a nice Maria, Buddha head, prayer mat, an AUM, etc.

Many people consider that the reason murder is so wrong is because you have deprived another being of all the potential in their future.

Others feel that because a person has dependents, murdering someone causes a web of damage throughout the community.

Both of these assertions lie at the heart of the liberal understanding of jurisprudence as pertains to homocide.

But to see a dependent in the arms of the man you kill, to realize you will unalterably change their future, and to do it anyway - for no good reason.

[LINK]

Then, my friend, what use has a society of one such as this? None, hislife should be forefit: jail or death penalty, whichever is cheaper for the tax payer and more painful for you.

That said, I’m anti-death penalty in this world, but I’m pro-death-penalty in the Platonic world, where evidence is complete, and the enacting of the penalty is not enmired in our process - yes all that despite my “liberal” views on most things.

The juggernaut that feeds J.K. Rowling’s bank account is not to be stopped and I, for one, shall certainly not be tossing myself beneath the wheels to use my corporeal mass to stop its onslaught.

I visited Borderlands Books after the book’s release after grabbing a tasty cr?pe breakfast with my girl Elle chez Ti Couz. We headed up from 16th on a lazy Sunday past the hipster botiques and furniture stores as we picked our way up Valencia.

I had only planned on grabbing a copy of Piers Anthony’s Macroscope, but I wound up favoring my independent bookstore my custom by grabbing the Anthony work and taking HP6 on the way. HP6 cost more, but having this place there after a tasty cr?pe is worth supporting and buying it at Costco or Wal-Mart doesn’t build the community of the Mission district.

Anyway, it was a fine book (no surprise). I must be honest, I’m very much in awe of the way Rowling’s writing style has matured with her characters. HP1 is rather cardboard-cutout in terms of both narration and character development. HP2 is more of the same, but HP3 marks a turning point, the na?ve models of behavior and understanding associated with being a youngster start to fall apart in an increasing series of morally complex situations. This real-world (wizard noir?) style writing reached its zenith in the 4th book, the Goblet of Fire. The subsequent book, Order of the Phoenix, kept with the style but I feel got a bit confused in its voice. The action sequence at the end of the book was confused, muddled, and a bit blas?. Trying to manage an enemble onslaught presents formidable challenges that seemed to muddy up the end result. It also brought in that most powerful bone of contention: prophecy. I thought this was a backwards step.

(Rowling excels at first-person action: Harry chased the Snitch, Harry and Voldemort trade barbs. This is surely an extension of her excellent feel for teenage dialog - the where of the conversation is a backdrop for the conversation)

…BUT this book turned it back up and is firmly on the footing of HP4. Here are some key focus points

Yuck, party mel?e combat (w00t D&D) returns

We see a return of group-action fighting. I still find this a bit irritating: “X did this and Y thought that but ducked under Q’s spell of something.” I realize this is an attempt to give some of the other characters some screen-time and to make it seem like the Hogwart’s class is not a bunch of potatoes plus this dynamic ?bermagus.

Nevertheless perhaps it would be better to put our supporting cast fighting, as we call in the video game trade, mini-bosses in the scene of combat versus the hurlyburly “some guy was knocked out, and this guy ran after that bad dude”. I don’t feel that any of these characters are in jeopardy - I feel like it’s a game of freeze-tag with much higher stakes. It’s an astounding display of kinetic energy, but there’s not a lot of dramatic depth associated therewith. See: Any Michael Bay film - actually don’t, just remember noise, and blowing stuff up.

Prophecy

The old nag of prophecy was trotted out in the last volume. groan Prophecy inevitably leads to narrative dissatisfaction; as my friend Roahn says, “Just who the hell is in charge here?”.

I have written extensively on this topic so this is a real sticking point for me. Nevertheless, Dumbledore resolves, with all the skill of those Greek characters for whom prophecy was so irksome (and not infrequently lethal), that odd quality of prophecy which leads to the orobous-like loop of:

Is prophecy objectively true because it’s objectively true or is it true because someone chose to believe it, and if, when they chose to believe it, did it not do just as much as if the prophecy had been objectively true in the starting case

I’ll not detail its mechanics here because it’s one of the best bits of dialog in the series.

Tying loose ends, establishing the framework

This book goes a long way in explaining the mechanics of The Dark Lord: How can he rise again, what was up with unicorn blood in part 1, what’s up with the prophecy, what’s up with his fixation on HP. Ultimately Rowling is cleaning up house for the climax of the series in the next, and final, book: Harry’s final confrontation with The Dark Lord.

Harry gets lucky

No, no, not with Hermione or Ginny, Rowling voices one of my criticisms (as many others’): Harry is not particularly smart, not particularly gifted, he just seems damn lucky. This is voiced by the darkly-tinged Snape early on in the book. I regret that this criticism is not reversed, Harry doesn’t seem prone to study (Hermione is still his reference library bitch on this one), he doesn’t really seem to have learned from the last book to this one (in the previous he tried to learn a skill, he failed, it would have been helpful, not once during the summer did he brush up on it?), he just seems to mark time on the wall and avoid getting killed or worse, expelled, through dumb luck, dumb being the operative word.

Dumbledore steps up

The benevolent headmaster, all too often a mere plot device, gets developed as a character (although I would have liked to have seen more).

Well, I’m ready for book 7 a year or so from now. I hope they release some really cool leatherbound editions for all 7 some time. Wouldn’t be cool if they made big Magic Grimoire-looking books?