TMI

I have not been avoiding making note of H. Ben’s death several days ago ... rather, I’ve been quiet because I haven’t quite known what to say. Today, his family is hosting a memorial celebration of his life; and while I would like to attend in person with his many other friends, this will need to do.

[Whisk me straight to the list!]

Heh. This place began not as a blog, but as a place for interested readers to find all the essays I’d written, as they were scattered across the web—and more importantly, as some of the sites began disappearing. I was making decent progress at that task when the blogging bug bit me. The original goal was quickly overshadowed by the fun and value of less formal, more frequent writing. Then, when we switched from our first blogging platform to this one, most of those old essays were left behind, and then deleted by me since they were no longer easy to find in the new structure. I’d always meant to put them back ... but in my usual too-busy, distracted fashion, thinking about it didn’t lead to doing it. Until now.

I make no promises as to how frequently I will add essays to this site, but I will try to remember to do so at least monthly. (A point in favor of advancing this project is that it is a useful avoidance behavior for other projects.) As I add material, I will place the links here, but probably will not announce each addition in the blog area of this warren. Thus, a bookmark might be a good idea if you want to track my progress (or lack thereof).

Comments are not open on this page, nor on any of the essays—which is not to say that I am uninterested in substantive feedback or discussion. I am! Given the age of these works, a better solution for this seems to me to be inviting anyone interested to begin a discussion with a post on their web site; include a link to the essay so that I am likely to see it. Can’t promise that I’ll respond to every such thread, but as I am interested in responses to my ideas and expansions/improvements of them, I will read with interest.

And now, without further ado, the essay list:
    I’m Only Interested in Freedom

Well, I survived the trip. Actually, it was much better than that bare statement would suggest, in most respects.

A while back, Pint of Stout invited individuals to consider a question, and to share an answer to it. As his question was a neat bull’s-eye for me—something I have thought long and hard, and variously about for decades—I hereby accept his invitation and offer my ramblings to accompany his.

The least I can do is be considerate and put it behind the curtain so y’all aren’t unwittingly exposed to my nutty ravings.

With credit (or blame, if you prefer) to MAL for the inspiration, as well as the number one reason.

Not exactly sure what got it working, but after a lot of downloading yesterday and two restarts today, the second hard drive was recognized and I am now copying over many gigs of data. Wish I knew what happened, but I’ll take the success even without the knowledge/understanding. More to come tomorrow ... right now I have Swedish meatballs cooking.

Yep, you guessed it: I attempted to upgrade my Linux OS yet again. That required more maneuvering than I’d anticipated, but I finally got all the preliminary steps completed, and slipped the install disc into my machine. Actually, I tried three discs—each of them sent to me from the Ubuntu Overlords (I think the real name is Canonical)—and failed with all three.

No matter what option I choose from the initial menu, after the "kernel active" message appears in white text, the screen goes blank; then, after a few seconds, the disc stops spinning. And nothing else happens. I had thought this was happening because the discs weren’t set up to handle my nice wide screen monitor; but today I plugged in an old monitor and got the same result.

I can’t download what I’d need to burn my own disc because it exceeds our satlink provider’s niggardly “fair access policy” limit. Exceeding that slows one’s connection to under dialup speed for 24 hours.

I really, really want to have a newer Kubuntu install on my system before I leave ... but I am completely out of ideas as to why I cannot get any of their discs to work in my machine. (Well, I know why the PC one didn’t work—I have a 64-bit machine. But neither of the 64-bit install discs work.) One more try and then I’m going to hit the bottle.

It figures—the day after I wrote this, I found a book I’ve had for years that will be a great help in getting my body more toned in fairly short order.

That’s what I’ve been sorely tempted to tell a lot of people lately. But, despite my wishes otherwise, it simply isn’t true.

Wow. I was out of town for a few days, and when I returned, the landscape had been transformed. Many waterfowl and songbirds had returned, and the snow had largely melted away. I thought that was a good thing—until I ventured into the basement.

After my unexpected jump in motivation yesterday, I have already gotten a fair bit of progress made. I sent off a large box of snolf books, and upon seeing how cheap media mail is, plan to do likewise with as many of my books as I can.

I can’t help but be reminded, as I start to dig through all the stuff I’ve accumulated, of the common admonition, “It’s just stuff”. While I certainly agree that a fair portion of people seem too focused on simply acquiring stuff—succumbing to the siren song of consumerism—and I am too often in that group myself, there’s stuff and then there’s stuff. And sometimes it can be hard to separate the two.

I have been delaying this for various reasons, but I really can’t any longer. It’s time for me to get on with life.

While I don’t recall ever being this bad, I have come closer to ending up on the floor than perhaps I should admit:



Surely there are some others among y’all who’ll confess to that capturing an element of their being as well ...

Another moment neatly captured by XKCD.

Once more I find myself to be well outside the norm of USSA culture. And as usual, I view that as a good thing. However, to the degree that my assessment is accurate, it’s a dismal commentary on our society.