The Last Post
Here is the last post of the year. I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's Eve. It has been an interesting year — not what I hoped, but not a bad year by any means. For what it is worth, my resolution for the new year is to improve my blogging frequency.
What's yours?
The Star's Song
Go over to Erin Bode's MySpace page and listen to her second sample track, “the Star's Song” (you don't have to have a MySpace account, no worries). Bode is a local indie jazz musician, and I heard that song from her new Christmas CD on the radio the other day. The song is an original composition by Bode and her band. I think it is the first song I have ever heard from the Christmas star's perspective. It's worth your time, check it out.
Her Christmas CD is $18 over at ErinBode.com. I haven't heard the rest of the CD, though I'm tempted to order it.
Happy Christmas Eve!
Unwell Cleaning
Well, I seem to have caught some bug that's held me down the last few days — I even had to miss teaching Sunday School yesterday. I had a few symptoms for most of last week, but kept thinking it was allergies; apparently it was a bug of some sort that was just taking its merry time to attack.
It finally hit early Sunday morning. I think (hope) I am on the mend, but it has been a bit frustrating moving so slowly just a few days before Christmas.
On the bright side, I've continued to catalog my books (I now have 212 of my books in a computerized catalog) and I've sorted through about two years of unsorted papers from classes and put them in appropriate (real) file folders.
So, at least I can feel like I accomplished something, right?
Still Tweaking
How's the new look looking to you? I've adjusted my page navigation tool on top and added some Christmas cheer. Now if I could get done coding and actually post some stuff, eh?
Now With Multi-Page View
One of the major oversights in my initial design of SAFARI (my site's blogware) is that it could only show one page per category. So, given that each category shows the 10 most recent posts, anything older than the 10 most recent posts vanished. Now, I've added a search engine style bar to the top of every category page (including the front page) allowing you to move through all six and a half years of asisaid content, not just the most recent postings.
The new navigation tool is probably alpha grade, and I'd appreciate any reports of bugs you notice, but overall I think it is working well. Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.
T-Mobile Selling Linksys Routers for $19.99
Anyone need a Linksys WRT54G router? T-Mobile is selling their branded version for $19.99, even to non-customers. Just go here click any phone on that page and then choose the Linksys router (they also have a D-Link router available).
If the information that has been reported is correct, the model is a customized version of the WRT54GL (the “Linux version” that has a larger amount of ROM). I needed another router, so I ordered one; my invoiced showed the model as a WRT54GS, which is the “Speedbooster” model, which fits the reported specs — essentially a WRT54GL with double the memory of a normal WRT54GL.
Semester Finished
Well, another semester is checked off, and with it, I am ever so slightly past the half way mark of my seminary career. I find it amazing I've been at Covenant for two years now, or — more properly — will be so in January. I have learned a lot, been pushed hard, been worked on by God and have had the pleasure of getting to know many brothers and sisters in Christ. It has been hard, even painful, but good.
And speaking of pain, I have completed the first part of Hebrew. That feels tremendous, and means I can look forward to… the second part. The first two weeks of January, I will be in an accelerated Hebrew class dealing with weak verbs and other nasty things. The class itself is for two and a half hours per day, but it comes coupled with an estimated six hours of out of class work a day. It will be Hebrew Bootcamp. And that makes me nervous.
But, once I get past that, hopefully I will have completed most of the “feared' milestones at Covenant. Others include Greek, of course, and Acts and Paul, which I completed this semester.
Still, there are two years to go and undoubtedly many surprises therein.
Happy Thanksgiving
I have far more to be thankful for than I deserve, though too often I don't reflect enough on that. Just this very day has been a day with much for me to thank God for.
Blessings to all of you on Thanksgiving!
Life and Stuff
It seems like this semester has been wild — inexplicably so — to the point that blogging just isn't happening. Which is a shame. I find I am far better off when I blog, since blogging is often a way to process things and get ideas. I need to make myself pick up the habit of writing a blog post a day, even if it is a short one. That sort of goal helps to make one pull stuff out and analyze it, rather than just wait for the “perfect post.”
Instead, it leads me to post posts like this one. Fancy that.
For Veterans' Day
For Veterans' Day, it seemed appropriate to post one of the most notable poems coming out of the Great War, certainly the sort that sticks with you once you've read it. I had just been talking about this poem with Jason K. not all that long ago.
WILFRED OWEN: Dulce Et Decorum EstBent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!— An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
In memorium. The armistice was signed 90 years ago today, offering a brief respite before the smoldering embers of discontent raged again two decades later.
