The Question of God: The Conversation

Starting tomorrow and running for four weeks, the Philosophy and Religion departments at Lindenwood are going to be doing a set of “coffee conversations” based on the Question of God, which I've mentioned before on asisaid (part 1, part 2). I'm really looking forward to this live version of the panel discussions from the program. It should be a lot of fun.

They offered it for course credit if you read Mere Christianity and the Future of Illusion and write on the two contrasting books/authors. I plan to do this. I've read the former book previously, but this will be my first pass at anything by the good doctor. I'll let you know how Freud goes.

Monday Brunch on Lunch

1) Do you take your lunch hour at work?
No. Since I don't have a schedule exactly, I eat whenever there is time. Usually between 11:30 and 1:30. Generally I take far less than an hour too. I do take a lunch forty-five minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, however, since I have classes before and after the noon hour.

2) What is your favorite place to eat lunch at?
Tough question. I like lots of places, it just depends on my mood. St. Louis Bread Co. tasted very good today. My favorite lunch is just one that is different than what I had the day before.

3) What do you usually eat for lunch?
I vary a lot.

4) Do you have anyone that you eat lunch with on a regular basis?
Yes, but it varies depending on the day of the week.

5) If not eating, what do you usually do on your lunch hour?
Me, miss lunch? The only other thing I might be doing is frantically working so I can fit lunch in.

Have your Brunch on Lunch in the comments, if you'd like.

Rough Blog Weather

I've been playing around today a bit to finish up text processing, and after much hassling, was able to get a module known as “SmartyPants” to work. It adds support for “smart” characters such as “Smart Quotes” (notice that I'm using lots of quotes to show this off) to text. SmartyPants takes the straight quotes that I can type in a standard web browser and converts them to nice smart quotes like you would see in a word processor. It also takes care of Ellipses… Dashes — and so on. Combined with Textile (well, to be clear, I'm using Brad Choate's Text::Textile Perl module that was written for his MT-Textile plugin), I should now have an uber-text-processing™ blogware program.

If you noticed the blog was unavailable for awhile… well, that was because I was lazy. Rather than using my “sandbox site,” I used the main asisaid code base for testing. Sorry about that. I'm going to try to implement BB Code support soon, but I'll try to be good about keeping up the site during that process.

Since the site has been down a lot, let me remind y'all that the latest installment of the CYOA Dakmoore saga has been posted here.

Problems and More Problems

Well, trying to post my CYOA entry tonight I spent two hours instead of five minutes. I spent more time trying to get the stupid thing posted than I did writing it. For some reason, Safari (the web browser) is messing up the way it posts data, so that Unicode stuff was getting completely garbled. It took me a long time to figure out where the problem was originating from and along the way, I ran into numerous bugs impacting Firefox as well. Ack! On the bright side, SAFARI (the CMS) now uses Textile to format the text. Textile seems to be pretty popular for blogware formatting, and since it is licensed under the MIT license and available as a standard issue Perl module, I decided to integrate it into the system. This means you can use Textile commands in the comments too. If it causes anything to look weird, let me know.

CSS Blues
Ok, so I thought it would be smart to use CSS on my site and catch up with the times. But now I have a problem. If you look at the CYOA entry, you'll notice that the CYOA graphic is down at almost the bottom of the part of the post visible on the front page, level with the last right hand side div area (obviously, this will correct itself as the CYOA post gets pushed down further on the page). I suspect this is because I used clear: right to make the boxes on the right side stop stacking on top of each other. That seemed well and good, but I'm not very happy about being unable to use align=right or left or any div tags within posts without having them pushed way down on the page.

Anyone out there know how to fix this problem? Perhaps the way to make the content div tag isolate everything inside itself so that those things are “unaware” of the right side bar? I'd be very grateful for suggestions. Tables were so simple…

CYOA 4.5: Gregorian Chants

Riley tried to steady her head as an FBI agent named Mark Stevenson droned on about the situation. How had Jon gotten himself involved in this?

“Mrs. Turner, I’d like to say I know who has Mr. Turner and your son, but I’m afraid the local detective has proven less than cooperative in providing us with information. Fortunately, I had a wiretap installed on the department’s phone line and was able to get some key information that my associate is processing at the moment. It seems a group named the Variant Alliance is involved.

“Unfortunately, your county’s detective happens to be the FBI’s former man in charge of Alliance activity, a post that was not filled after his resignation from the agency. I’m afraid if he doesn’t cooperate, finding your family is going to be quite difficult, but I’ll be darned before I’m going to beg a county detective to cooperate.”

“Sir, with all due respect, we’re talking about my family here. If you have to prostrate yourself before the jerk, do it. I just want to know where Jon and Isaiah are… before, before…” Turner’s voice broke up and she started to weep.

Stevenson had a strange sensation come over him; he actually pitied the sobbing woman in front of him. He flipped open his phone and dialed Herrick. Maybe he could intimidate Herrick into cooperating. “Stevenson here. You’re in a lot of trouble, Detective. I took some liberties to listen into your conversation with Mr. Dakmoore and see you’ve been keeping a lot of information to yourself. What exactly are planning to do – play Mr. Hero and save the day? I’m going to talk to Chief Jonson and ask that you be suspended.”

“I’m not surprised you did that. Look, Stevenson, I had my reasons… I’ll meet you at 1700 hours and I’ll brief you on what I know. But I need your assurance that you’ll keep me on the case and play by the rules I know will work in dealing with Dakmoore. They’ve just taken… they’ve taken another person.”

“I’d be interested in your briefing, but I’m afraid I’m still going to have to talk with Jonson. You’re clearly not a team player, so I have no room for you on my team.”

“Look, Stevenson, they’ve taken my fiancée. I need to be on this case.”

“The last thing I need is to have someone with a personal cause on this case, detective. I’m going to have to take over this case. Your behavior has only reinforced my dim view of local departments and frankly your sudden willingness to cooperate is quite telling.”

“So we agree on something – I’m not exactly thrilled with you either. But listen, you know I’m the only one who knows how the Variant Alliance works. They have some demands that need to at least appear to be satisfied; this is something I cannot accomplish alone and you know good and well that you’re never going to get this case solved without me. Leave Jonson out of this – you know you need my help and, while I hate to admit it, I need yours.”

“That’s not my style, detective.”

Riley glared at Stevenson. What was he doing? It sounded like he was refusing to work with the detective that he had just finished saying he needed help from. All of these agents were alike – big heads and no compassion for those actually being affected by crime, she thought. “What’s wrong with you, you, idiot, do whatever he wants,” she blurted out. She couldn’t believe she had just said that to an FBI agent.

Stevenson turned and cast a surprised look her way.

“Look,” Herrick said, “I never kept the information from you to hurt Mrs. Turner – I know I know this group better than anyone else, and I made a call that I could work better alone. Dakmoore is keeping an even closer eye on me than I expected, however, and without some serious action occurring, I think he is going to kill all three of his hostages tomorrow. Let’s save these games for later and stop the Alliance before they proceed. OK?”

Stevenson sighed, he didn’t like being put in a situation where he must cooperate with a defiant local detective, but Turner’s exclamation made him feel a bit guilty. Perhaps he was acting just like Herrick. At the very least, he was not sure how he’d solve the case if he didn’t garner Herrick’s cooperation.

What will you do? Show you are the superior agent that you know you are and agree to work with Herrick for the good of Mrs. Turner. (5.9) Hang up on Herrick and go see about getting him taken off the case and the force. (5.10)

How to Continue CYOA
The first two people to comment here requesting to do so will get to continue the story on their blogs. Just pick which story direction suits you and run with it. Why not give it a try?

As Christopher explains on his blog entry about this, you will probably want to link backward to the previous part (or perhaps both previous parts) so that someone new can read the whole story. Also, it will be helpful if you title your piece with your option number, and likewise provide numbers to correspond with the options at the end of your segment of the story so that things continue in an easy to follow fashion.

Christopher has given permission for participants to “steal” his CYOA graphic (featured at the beginning of this piece), so you may want to include that in your entry for easy identification. Have fun!

Dishing Out About Cable

The other day, it dawned on me. My telephone is digital service provided by the cableco, as is my internet access. Yet, I have a satellite dish. Surely, the cableco could offer something to make it worth my time to switch to cable tv, too, right?

Now, Dish Network has been good to work with. They have good technical support and they were offering a “free” DVR before anyone else. On the other hand, the Weather Channel lacks local forecasts, I can't get any of the local public service channels (occasionally, for instance, the City of St. Peters might have something interesting on, as does Lindenwood U.), and the DVR is not a dual tuner, so if it is recording, you can only watch what you are recording (that doesn't make much sense, now does it?). Dish, these days, gives you a dual-tuner recorder, but they want fifty bucks to replace the old one that I now own, since I was under contract. The one $50 will get me will be a no-charge leased unit instead of one that is mine to keep (although what you do with a satellite tuner/DVR if you cancel service is beyond me anyway…).

So, I called the cable company, Charter Communications. After talking to several people and getting multiple different answers, I finally got the bottom line: they offer about $13 in discounts for getting the “triple play” package (phone, internet and TV), but they are more expensive than Dish, so I'll end up at the same price point as before. Their DVR is also only a 40 hour one versus the 100 hour one that Dish gives out. On the other hand, they offer the aforementioned channels and some others, a GNU/Linux based DVR (a Moxi box) that can be expanded with an external hard disk, photo card readers, etc., and you can even transfer non-flagged material over Firewire to a computer or burner. Moreover, it consolidates all communication and media services onto one bill.

The question is whether it is a wise choice. Charter is ranked lowest for technical support of major providers. In my experience with their internet service, it is pretty good actually, although presently I need to get a technician out because I cannot download anything of substantial size (100 MB or more) without losing the connection). On the bright side, they have a new CEO who is promising to focus the company's resources on improving support and since I live in Charter's home city, we'll probably see any improvements first…

Google Maps Now for Safari

Google seems to have finally made Maps available for Safari, which is a real treat. It seems very user friendly and I like the fact that you can drag maps around and zoom in/out without having to wait for the page to reload. The only thing they could do to improve it is make a way to point out to the program if it gives you a route you do not want to take. I was trying it out, and it seemed to like going through various crime ridden areas to get there rather than taking the freeway. Sure, I like to save two minutes as much as the next guy, but it is not always worth it.

Tim in the Hands of an Angry God?

When I run into Jonathan Edward's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God once in a week, I stop and think about his masterful sermon. When I run into it twice in the same amount of time, I start to really ponder it. When I run into it three times in a week, I start to wonder if someone is trying to tell me something.

On Sunday, our pastor preached a sermon that was based in part on Edward's sermon. On Tuesday morning, my American Lit class studied Edward's sermon by chance, since the professor had been sick the week before and therefore was behind schedule. On Tuesday afternoon, my Religion in America class took an unscheduled detour to hear part of the sermon preached by the professor. I don't know but I'm starting to get a bit paranoid!

102.

That's the number of brute force attempts on Cedar since November. It is depressing to think that so many people have tried enough to set the alarm off. There are, of course, many more that tried only a few times. Like e-mail spam and blog spam, all of this seems to be done by bots; if the number of bots continues to increase at its alarming rate, it seems inevitable that the house of cards will fall… it is just a matter of when.

Road Map

Ok, so here's the deal. I'm (re)learning Koine Greek. So far, I'm making progress on parts that stumped me previously. I've also spent a good amount of time refreshing myself on stuff I already knew at sometime in the past but no longer could recall in a productive fashion. I wasn't sure if taking 3 out of the 15 hours of my semester schedule and dedicating it to a course that fulfills absolutely no requirements was a good idea, but now that I'm in the midst of it, I think it was a good choice.

The interesting thing is that the instructor taught himself Latin last year so that he could teach that as well. Apparently, he says it is relatively easy to learn Latin once you get use to Greek. Ideally, I will be good to go with Greek by the end of the semester — not a Greek whiz, but with enough knowledge to work my way through it. Where to go from there is the question, but the professor's remarks about Latin have me intrigued.

I'm thinking about trying to see if I could teach myself Latin later this year. If I could do that, presumably, it would make it easier to reach a practical goal: to learn Spanish. In the future it will be a necessity to know Spanish around here (see my previous post on that, here), so I need to quit talking and accomplish something about that soon. This might help and allow me to pick up one of the nicest sounding languages ever to be created along the way.