Sonnet VII
Happiness rushes like a mountain stream,
Rocks fill the creek before submerging down;
Through you, the water cycles back it seems.
But how the rains, o'er powered, do also drown,
Untaught, and caught by stronger current,
Pulled wayward to the craggy edge of doom.
Can what goes down the brook be unlearnt;
Condensed return weaved through Wisdom's own loom?
Precipitate the path a'top the vista,
Let me this happy cycle see in time,
Pouring downward so long a jaunt have moi,
Been carried off in backwards movéd climb.
If this be wrong and I take ash for rain,
Then off to sea for me is now ordained.
Adding More Personality
I'm a technical writer and I always have been. That's OK for a lot of tasks (it may even be good), but I've come to see the limitations of my sometimes dry style. While I doubt I can ever reach the great colloquial tone of someone like C.S. Lewis, I should like to make my writing “friendlier.” It is one thing if you can follow the rules and make something proper (something I'm careless to do here on asisaid at times). It is entirely another if you can make people want to read what you write.
Part of accomplishing this is writing stuff that isn't so technical in nature. Spending time writing on this blog helps. Writing the fiction that I have sitting on my hard disk helps. Writing poetry helps. But I still need to iron things out a bit.
The point of this entry? I don't think there is one. Just an observation I felt like making.
Anticipation
For the last week, I've had a sense of anticipation. While I have reasons to feel that way, I've surprised myself — none of the things I am anticipating seem that likely to occur this week. But, who knows, it would be a pleasant surprise if they did.
In other news, I ran the projector for our pre-service Ash Wednesday prayer time tonight. It was the first time we tried a pre-service prayer time (it was 30 minutes before the beginning of the service), and I'd say it went pretty well. The projector needs some adjustments — it's color seems to be getting worse — but it was still legible. I setup the slides to loop through twice, that way people coming in after 7:00 PM would get a second chance to see see the slides ten minutes later.
I was hoping to drive the projector directly from my PowerBook, and therefore take advantage of the nicer look of PowerPoint:mac 2004, but couldn't get the video feed switch to take a guest computer input for some reason. So, I loaded it up on PowerPoint 2002 on the projector's PC and it still looked OK. What a relief. At 7:26, the prelude started and the screen went up so as to not upset those who aren't fond of the screen blocking the stained glass windows.
I love the Lenten season vesper services. I'm curious, my readers, do your churches have Lenten services?
Late Night Haiku
IV.
Why do I doubt it?
Crickets at night do not worry.
God takes care of things.
V.
Snow falls gently down,
The roads like frozen slick ponds.
A night to stay in.
VI.
Joy comes to me now,
Like the soft snow to the ground.
God leads if you wait.
Dad Update
I'm off to bed and I haven't even read the comments here yet, but I wanted to mention that Dad had his gallbladder surgery today and it went very well. There were a number of potential major issues, so it is really a blessing that everything went so well.
I'll be back tomorrow.
Sunday Brunch: Singing in the Shower
Here is this week's brunch. Have yours in the comments.
1) Do you take baths or showers?
Baths with a quick rinse off afterwards.
2) Do you like the water super hot or just tepid?
Tepid is probably best, or if it is really chilly out side, perhaps a bit of a warm tepid. Super hot bath water just makes me feel like I'm being roasted rather than cleansed.
3) Do you use bath gel, bath crystals, bubble bath, or other scented stuff?
No.
4) What do you like to do when you take a bath shower?
Like Christopher, “lather, rinse, repeat.” Unlike Christopher, I don't “occasionally […] take a nap.” How does one take a nap in the shower?
5) What is your one item essential to a great bath?
Warm water.
CYOA I: Part 2.2: The Dakmoore Connection
Harrison County Detective Benjamin Herrick fiddled with his badge as FBI Special Agent Mark Stevenson briefed the department on the case. It had been one very long day, and it looked like it was only going to get longer. The patronizing attitude of the FBI only made it worse – just because he was a local detective didn’t mean he was less capable than Stevenson. He had worked on the Federal level but had resigned his post for a quiet job in a small town after being nearly killed by a bomb planted by the shadowy crime syndicate Variant Alliance.
“Jon Turner’s job at the IAEA gave him access to a lot of technology that many hostile nations would love to get their hands on,” Stevenson declared, while bringing up a PowerPoint of Turner’s job description. “By examining call logs over the last few months, we believe the temptation to sell knowledge of that technology overwhelmed Turner. We found that he had made calls to numerous embassies in Washington and to various foreign nationals scattered around the U.S. and Canada, some of whom we found in our database. We believe he was dealing primarily with Syria, but indirectly through third parties.”
“And you think his ‘clients’ then decided to take him and his family out?” Herrick was a bit skeptical. “If he was providing information to them, wouldn’t they want to keep him around?”
“It seems Mr. Turner started to get cold feet. We were able to crack several encrypted messages that had been caught by our surveillance systems over the past few weeks. Turner had initially insisted on only providing information about countries under IAEA surveillance, but apparently that was not what they really wanted; they wanted the technology.
“When they confronted Turner with their real desire, he started stalling. Apparently he didn’t mind hooking them up with our diplomatic enemies, but he did have some qualms about being directly involved in the transfer of several key schematics of advanced fission devices.
“This morning,” Stevenson continued, waving his hand in the air, “Turner received an e-mail telling him incentive for cooperation would occur today. It was two hours later —”
“When Mrs. Turner called dispatch,” Herrick questioned.
“Exactly. Once the Mid-County Fire Protection crew was able to extinguish the remnants of the house that were still burning, I did some investigation and found a wire tap on the phone line, just a few hundred feet from the house. When they intercepted her call and realized their effort might be found out, they activated a remote explosive device to silence her.”
“So where’s Jon Turner?”
“He’s missing, although we believe he has been kidnapped by the organization he was dealing with. Jon was in New York preparing a briefing at the UN for the secretary general at the time, and a camera outside of a Manhattan coffee shop shows someone with his likeness being charged at by two men in black and carried away.”
“Have you heard anything from Parkway Med’s ER concerning Mrs. Turner’s condition? Maybe she would know something more…” Herrick was interrupted by the secretary’s voice coming in over the intercom.
“There’s a Mr. Adams on the line that wants to talk to you, sir. Line one. He says it is urgent and concerns the Turner case.”
“Thanks, Maria,” Herrick replied. Herrick punched the blinking button on the phone as he glanced over at Stevenson and the agent gave him a knowing look. As soon as any crime like this one hits the media, everyone thinks they have an urgent scoop. “Herrick,” he said into the receiver in an annoyed tone.
“Mr. Herrick. Well, it is finally time for us to talk again. The pleasure, of course, is mine. We have Turner and his son and plan to use whatever means we can to get every bit of information we want from him. I think this is going to be a treat,” the voice that had talked to Riley responded.
“Dakmoore – if only I can see the day I never hear your filthy voice again.”
“Glad to see you still have your exquisite sense of pleasantries, Benny. Let me cut to the point. We want one hundred million dollars by noon tomorrow – no make that euros, you know, with the exchange rate and all.” Dakmoore chuckled for a moment. “Remember the good old Alliance days? Good days, Ben, good days – you almost had us before you resigned from the Bureau, not that you ever would have actually been able to put the remaining pieces together.” Dakmoore sounded amused.
“Get to your point,” Herrick interjected.
“I see you aren’t the reminiscing type, Ben. You need to quit being so rushed all the time. Well, as I was saying, one hundred million Euros by noon tomorrow or we will use the technology we’ve acquired in a big way. No tricks this time, Benjamin; you amuse me, but I won’t spare you if you get in the way.”
“Aren’t you being a little presumptuous in assuming that Turner will speak that soon?”
“Oh, tsk, tsk. You don’t really think we depend on only one contact, do you? I’m hurt that you would underestimate me, detective. We want Turner’s information for future ‘use,’ sure, but we’ve already obtained everything we need. Turner was too dumb to realize that the information he was left out might be filled in by a more cooperative underling.” The phone went dead.
What will you do? Tell Agent Stevenson the whole story and then go with him to fill Washington in about your knowledge of Dakmoore. (3.1) David continues the story with this option. Explain to Stevenson that it was really nothing, because you know that no one knows Dakmoore like you do and you can pursue this much better by yourself. (3.2) Christopher takes the story in this direction.
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!
Quote du Jour
— Jonathan Edwards, Narrative of Surprising Conversions
Turmoil
I feel like I've been in between decisions for months now. This week, I've started to try to clean things up and push toward tying up loose ends, but I still have way too many things up in the air. I know God is leading me somewhere, but I am just too dense to know where. Part of me thinks I just need to sit back and enjoy the ride for awhile, part of me think that His leading is to start being more proactive. What I fear is that I am too comfortable with the status quo and maybe that is part of the problem.
Edging Toward the Ninety/Ten
Over at OFB I've posted a new commentary that follows up a previous one on the need for desktop simplicity. The point, in short, is that Mac OS X fulfills the needs of the 90% of users who use only 10% of the features without alienating prosumers. This is done by wise interface choices. GNOME is trying to copy this and Firefox has already essentially copied this as well.
This time I tried to take a more conciliatory tone so that hopefully readers will focus on the need to accommodate the average user rather than my philosophical disagreements with the GUI design of KDE and OpenOffice.org. I do not believe KDE ought to be changed, but rather the community should see the need to throw support behind projects that do aim for the “90/10” feature set if it wishes to mainstream GNU/Linux desktops. So far response has been good; hopefully it will encourage more thinking on this topic. The article does not apply to just GNU/Linux, so give it a read if you want to hear my thoughts on UI design.
