Thinking Different for Almost Five Years

Wow, time flies. Some friends of mine had an iMac DV (Graphite) that died, and in the process of getting the hard disk out to transfer their data, I removed the AirPort (802.11b) card. They gave me the card, and I popped it into my Ruby iMac DV, which had not been connected to a network in two and a half years (it had been up and running, just not on the internet). The system needed an update for the card to work, but my friends were also disposing of an ethernet cable, so I had an extra one right at hand and I plugged my iMac in that way. After the update, now my poor old Ruby is connected to my network two ways.

What about time flying? Well, you see, the Ruby was my first real taste of the Mac world back when I won it in an eBay auction in June 2003. I wrote about it in this post that happened to be bookmarked on the system. I went all Mac just less than a year later when my GNU/Linux box was giving me trouble during final projects for college in May 2004. Amazing. When I got the Ruby, I intended to write a series on Open for Business talking about how good the Linux desktop was compared to the Mac. Now I'm one of “those” that goes around and preaches about Mac goodness.

The Ruby still runs nicely, which is pretty impressive for a system that was built nearly eight years ago (October 2000). I think I may upgrade the RAM to 1GB (if I can find a good deal) and move it up to Tiger sometime soon.

Primary Colors

From Five on Friday.

1. When is the presidential primary in your area?
Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008.

2. Do you plan to participate? Have you participated in the past?
Yes and yes. And, yes, I'll admit it right here: I voted Dubya last time around.

3. Do you identify with a single party or do you consider yourself independent? Has that changed over the years?
It has changed. I came to my senses awhile back and became Republican. Seriously, I prefer the GOP because of its traditional stands concerning abortion, cloning, taxes, government size, immigration and so on. Sadly, the Grand Old Party is in a state of flux just now and seems to be fragmented into three parts none of which fully cover the ideals of the Republican Platform; even more sadly, President Bush hasn't helped lead our party very well in staying true to our platform.

4. In your opinion, what are the major issues this year's presidential candidates must address? Which is most important to your vote?
The normal social issues come first. Then, I'm interested in things like immigration reform (I favor improving and expediting legal immigration but absolutely oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants — I don't see why legal immigrants shouldn't be given priority over those who are already breaking our laws), Iran policy (please don't attack it), civil liberties in light of the PATRIOT Act, net neutrality, and a whole bunch of others. Huckabee pleases me on many of these, but not so much on some of the others. A true descendant of Reagan could cover them all.

All the same, vote Huckabee!

5. How do you get your information about candidates at this time of year? What media and messaging impacts your opinion of the candidates the most?

Matt Drudge keeps me apprised of things much of the time. I also keep up on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, its political news and its (often disagreeable) op-eds on the politicians. CNN is the official channel of choice on election night, with its careful calling of elections and relatively even keeled commentary. What media impacts me most? Print or electronic text — cold hard facts and such.

Consumed by Flame

One of my projects last semester was to do historical research on a period of Presbyterian history and present it in some form, be it a research paper, a time line, or something else. Starving for some literary time, I decided the obvious choice was to again dabble in the realm of drama. The result was Consumed by Flame. I've mentioned it a bit before, but here are the gory details.

The drama takes place in 1540s Scotland, at the beginning of the Scottish Reformation. The particular inciting incident is the arrest of George Wishart, the Protestant Reformer, by his adversary, David Cardinal Beaton. It is a very interesting piece of history not just for the showdown between them, but for its lasting and serious aftershocks. To what extent did these events bring about the good of the Reformation and to what extent the bad? To what extent did it shape the negative events of later Scottish religious history? The play tries to engage with some of these questions at their root.

From a formal standpoint, the play follows the classic five act structure favored by Shakespeare. It is almost entirely a prose play, however, unlike many of Shakespeare's works. Besides the Bard, the style of the play was influenced primarily by Aeschylus and Marlowe. Of course, I do not claim to emulate any of these greats well, I merely note where I got the inspiration. Weighing in somewhere between Kit Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in length, I estimate a performance time of approximately two hours, if it were put on stage. I like playing with darkness and light, and, weaving a story that peers into the psyche, and this play follows on those themes, though not as much, perhaps, as Deafening Silence did.

Well, if this has piqued your interested at all, and you would like to take a gander at the script, please let me know. I am looking for some comments on what works and what does not in the play. If nothing else, you'll get all of the footnotes and the works cited page, which will give you some nice material to go on, should you desire to do some historical research.

Late Night Project

Well, at 12:20 a.m. this morning, myself, along with a fellow techie at church, were able to finish deploying two new wireless routers and reconfiguring some others so that all of the church building is covered by at least a weak wireless signal. I wish we would have finished a bit earlier in the evening, but it feels good to have the church blanketed in Wi-Fi after talking about such an endeavor for years. Now, we need a good authentication server. Anyone have experience with RADIUS? Any recommendations?

Late Night Haiku XXVI

LXXIII. How a moment past
Once simple seemed, transformed now
To something precious.

LXXIV. Time's cruel wings beat on,
A steady drone unceasing,
As I glance backward.

LXXV. Speak, dear friend, a word,
Ambrosia is a voice heard,
After too long a pause.

Concerning Stevenote 2008, Part 1

It’s that time of year again. If you are at all interested in the trends of technology in the next year, January is the time to learn what is coming up. And not at the CES mind you – these years, the future shows up at MacWorld. Last year it was the iPhone, which managed to shake an industry that had never faced Apple before and start a major shift in the way cell phone development is done. What will this year bring? Tim puts his money on more devices coming out of the Apple-AT&T partnership, for one thing. Read what I think that thing will be over at OFB.

Making the Choice

Early on, I became fascinated with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) since he is a libertarian Republican, one of our best bets of seeing libertarian philosophy on the national stage. That his campaign has some traction (unlike, say, Kucinich's on the Dem side) is an added bonus. But, while I'd like to give him the thumbs up, I cannot. First and foremost, is the Ron Paul newsletter controversy. It seems he allowed a newsletter to be published with his name on it for decades that spewed racist garbage. That's putting it kindly. Now, he claims he was unaware of what was being published, but accepts “moral responsibility” for that wrong. That's nice, but assuming the claim is true, what does that say about his attentiveness as a presidential hopeful? If it is a lie, then that is even worse: he is lying and is apparently a white supremacist. Sadly, I cannot see a route to deal with this issue that doesn't make me feel obliged to reject Paul as a candidate, much as I wish it were otherwise.

Three other candidate fit in my overall political spectrum: Thompson, Romney and Huckabee. Thompson I'm not really considering, because he seems to be lacking in the enthusiasm to win and the polls echo that. Romney and Huckabee are so close to me on issues that they make suitable options, but also confusing options because neither is vastly better on issues. I like that Romney was able to be elected in a Democratic state, and I think religion could actually work to his advantage as a member of a “minority.” However, I'm dubious either can be elected. Particularly Huckabee, though, as an ordained pastor. That said, I feel that given his more reliable stance on social issues and his down-to-earth, midwestern character, Huckabee is the best choice for the job. As I review his policies, I like many of them, such as the FairTax plan. What does give me pause is his positions on Homeland Security and foreign wars, but Ron Paul is the only one talking the talk I want to hear on that, and I've already explained why I can't vote for him. And, I do disagree with Paul on the idea of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq — that's irresponsible.

So, Huckabee is not someone I can pick without some reservations, but overall I feel good about him as a candidate. I like most of his position statements quite a bit. I'd like to see him get the nomination and I'd like to see him in the White House. Barring that, I'll take Romney. If a Democrat wins, who do I want? Well, I'll leave that for another day.

Nice...

I was blessed to spend the evening with two of my colleagues from seminary and their wives. It was just a nice time of food and fellowship. It was a reminder of one of the joys of seminary outside of classes: the other people there. How delightful.

Dreams Amidst the Fire

January 11, 1998 is a day of infamy for me, so normally I find myself somewhat reflective on this anniversary. Today I find myself doubly so after a strange dream last night. I don't usually remember my dreams, but this one stuck out as the setting was a strange blend of the Lindenwood and Covenant campuses on the first day of class for the Spring term at Covenant. Some of my favorite Lindenwood professors were running about getting to the classes they were teaching, and some of my friends were standing in lines registering for classes and doing other errands.

I was set on heading to my Covenant mailbox to see if I had gotten any of last semester's papers back and ran into a particularly notable friend, L. In real life, unfortunately, I unwittingly managed to drive a wedge in my friendship with L, and have not talked to this friend since right after the end of last semester, though I attempted to do what little I could to rectify things once in a letter. At any rate, in my dream all of this had taken place, but it turned out the letter had had the hoped for consequence and my friend had forgiven me, much to the Dream-Me's surprise. We had a very nice, normal conversation as we walked to check our respective mailboxes. It was all very delightful, but I woke up in the midst of it and quickly realized none of that had really happened.

This haunts me, because I am a fixer. Something broken is a challenge to me that I feel obligated to find a fix for. In this case I realized the wisest course of action may not have been to even send the letter, but having done that already, it is certainly wisest to say nothing more. Being powerless to fix something, though, always leaves me pondering the potential ways I can fix it — a trait I got from my grandpa. And that leads me to why this day is infamous to me.

On Sunday, January 11, 1998, my family was getting ready for church at 7:10 or so in the morning when my uncle called. He lived with my grandparents at the time. We had just been over to their house the night before for a sort of “final party of the Christmas season” before all of the decorations and such came down; it would be the last really normal time I'd ever spend with them. My uncle was panicked on the phone. Their house was on fire and they had narrowly escaped it. As it would turn out, a small crimp in the aluminum wiring of the house had ignited a fire in the attic which had smoldered until it finally swept down into the garage and then the main part of the house. Most things on the main floor of the house were destroyed, and my grandparents would not have survived had my uncle not awoken — the ceiling in their bedroom collapsed, likely just moments after they escaped.

As my family drove from St. Charles over across I-70 to Maryland Heights, our hearts sunk. Their was a gigantic black plume of smoke in the air, and we knew where it was coming from. We arrived while the fire was still in full swing, cruelly eating away at the always previously joyful house. My grandparents were antique dealers and the fire had taken quite well to their treasures. But we never would have guessed what else it took. My grandmother would eventually die of dementia in 2005, but really showed no sign of its onset until that Sunday. The fire was too much for her and she started on a rapid slide into the clouds of Alzheimer's.

My grandpa, as it would turn out, had a terminal cancer that was probably already in full swing, and which caused confusion as well, and while we did not know the cause, this too was apparent immediately after the fire. But it was made worse, I believe, because my grandpa was a fixer — he had infinite patience when something required it and the determination to match — nothing was beyond fixing if he put his mind to it. But my grandma was. He could do nothing to pull her back out of the fog she entered so suddenly. He denied anything was the matter with her to us when we tried to probe in concern, but after he died, we found contact information for the Alzheimer's Association amidst his things. It seems despite his own bout of irrationality he was very aware of what was the matter with my grandma, but refused to admit it to anyone else to protect her. Until his own disease made it impossible for him to do so, he poured all of himself into the project of keeping her afloat. From an outside perspective of years gone by, it is really something beautiful to behold his determination driven by love, but in the immediate ashes of the fire, all I saw was that my grandparents, who had been an absolutely huge part of my life had survived but been all but taken from me anyway.

I wish on no one the horror of digging through the rubble of a fire, doubly so in January. The smell of the fire sticks to you for long after you leave the site with a scent that is surely straight out of the Inferno. I can still conjure up the smell just thinking about it. If the smell is not enough of a reminder, the ash is nearly permanent on anything it lands on. The pain of seeing the house in ruins is, at least temporarily, overcome by the far worse prospect of sorting through those ruins. It lingers.

And so it was, really, for my grandparents. They did not live so much as linger after that day. They were two of the most amazing people I have ever known, and two I could do little better in choosing those to emulate. Those two amazing, loving, wonderful, unique people in a cloud of smoke were snatched away.

January 11, ten years ago. Time's winged chariot moves so quickly.

So Much to Write About

I have so much to write about, but today just went zooming by. I have some ideas other than politics tomorrow, more reflective type stuff, and then I'll talk about my candidate endorsement sometime soon. Sorry for the delay. Tune in tomorrow!