Tired

I was going to write a nice post, but all of a sudden I feel completely drained and exhausted and I think I will hit the sack instead. Maybe tomorrow…

Dante's Prayer (Lyric)

When the dark wood fell before me / And all the paths were overgrown / When the priests of pride say there is no other way / I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see / Though you came to me in the night/ When the dawn seemed forever lost / You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean / Cast your soul to the sea / When the dark night seems endless / Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me / By the deep well of desire / From the fountain of forgiveness / Beyond the ice and fire / Cast your eyes on the ocean / Cast your soul to the sea / When the dark night seems endless / Please remember me

Though we share this humble path, alone / How fragile is the heart / Oh give these clay feet wings to fly / To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart / Lift this mortal veil of fear / Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears / We'll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean / Cast your soul to the sea / When the dark night seems endless

Please remember me
Please remember me

-Loreena McKennitt

QOTW: Omnipotent You

Here's the oft promised QOTW from David McGlone:

If you could be God for about 5 days, what things would you try to change or accomplish with your life in your 5 days? (this excludes trying to save the world, stop hunger, etc etc. Basically you are God with powers to control your own life and destiny and not be able to change history or fix it before it happens).And if you want, give a brief explanation why you chose the accomplishment or change.

That is TOUGH! OK, I'll admit it, from this standpoint, I'd want to use part of the time to make my life pleasant — I won't pretend I wouldn't want to. Here's the thing though: being God means having three very important qualities. These are:

1. Omnipresent
2. Omnipotent
3. Omniscient

With those in mind, I'd probably use my time much more wisely. Arguably since God created time that would mean that if God handed me His powers for five days I'd also be able to step outside of time and get more done. But, that's aside the point.

So what would I do? Probably cause the clouds to rain properly translated copies of the Bible to all of the people of the earth. I'd also do some miraculous type signs (maybe the sun wouldn't come up one day or the seas would turn to blood one day) to get people's attention. Then I'd use a booming voice to tell everyone to read the book that had hit them in the head to figure out what was going on. Perhaps I'd even provide a few pointers while on the “megaphone.”

Of course, that goes back to that omniscient characteristic. If I truly had the qualities of God, I would do just what God is doing right now because God already knows what is best to do.

Sheesh

I needed to setup a new web hosting account for someone today. Sounds easy enough. Of course all of my welcome message templates were stored in Evolution, which wasn't working (none of GNU/Linux was because I am in the process of reorganizing my disk). So, I had to speed up my reorganization, move 30 GB (or so) back onto GNU/Linux — which took forever even over Fast Ethernet, alas my PC doesn't have Gigabit nor does my router — so that I could get to the mail message. It finally just completed, so I can get that account setup before I go to bed.

Finally.

Late Again

The QOTW is late again, but hopefully I will get it up tomorrow. Sorry for the spree of short posts…

Power to the People

Power has been somewhat elusive around St. Louis since the storm yesterday morning. I lost power from eight in the morning until after three yesterday afternoon, and overall, I seem to be fortunate. At that point 8,500 homes were without power in St. Charles alone. Some estimates I heard put the metro area total at something closer to 90,000 still without power as of this morning.

Traffic has been a mess because of all this. Many traffic signals are still out or are flashing red because of the outages. Long traffic jams were the norm today. And while waiting in traffic, the most common sight seemed to be tons of trees split right down the middle as if a giant axe had split them apart. I saw one tree, apparently uprooted, that looked like it had probably been there for at least 100 years.

Walgreens employees at one area location today could all be seen congregating at the doorway of the closed store since apparently they hadn't been sent home but no business was possible in the store. One of the fireworks vendors, Red Rocket Fireworks (d.b.a. Crazy Dave's Fireworks), apparently lost three of its ten area tents to the storms — destroying all of the remaining inventory at those tents. Today was the day they were suppose to pack up, so the storm came just a bit too soon to avert the loss of the fireworks.

Quite a storm.

Rendezvous with the Desktop

Last week, Apple's Free Software implementation of Rendezvous for POSIX systems was updated. Despite getting some coverage from the GNU/Linux community, do we continue to face a landscape where distributors ignore this great technology as most of them have in the past? Read my take on Rendezvous and its importance to GNU/Linux on the desktop at OfB.

Star Spangled Day

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Happy Fourth!

That's all for now.

Rain

Finally. There were some showers today that seemed to help greatly with the dry trees and grass. It was probably the first such rain of any size in almost a month. Woo hoo!

How's everyone else's weather this summer?