Category: General

General posts.

The Center of the Universe

In an email newsletter today, I got a link to author David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at Kenyon University in May 2005. It’s a nice New Year’s read, the time of year where everyone is thinking about resolutions and self-improvement and so on.

It’s about how we are hard-wired to see ourselves as the center of the uinverse, because in fact we are the center of our own universe, per our own experience and point of reference. And it’s about how difficult it is to break out of that “default setting,” as he calls it. I’ve never read any of Wallace’s work before, but I think I will have to add him to the list of people to read.

Be warned, its long. If you don’t have the time, come back to it later. Here’s the link:
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

2005 Recap

I’m turning this post into everyone’s recap. A review of the year if you will. Post news by month 🙂

January – Unemployed. 2 cats/2 people. Start knitted bag.
February – Unemployed. 2 cats/2 people. Excellent Mardi Gras.
March – Unemployed. 2 cats/2 people.
April – Unemployed. 2 cats/2 people. Vegas trip. Attempt to pay federal taxes.
May – Unemployed. 2 cats/2 people. Turn on A/C.
June – Unemployed. 2 cats/2 people. Philadelphia trip. Mom’s 50th birthday. Nonno in hospital. Kent’s conference in Boston.
July – Get job. 2 cats/2 people. Beth visits Atlanta. Nonno still in hospital.
Beginning of August – Job. 2 cats/2 people. Trip to Philadelphia and Kent’s archiving conference in New Orleans. Discover Farmer’s Market.
End of August – Get laid off. 4 cats/3 people. Katrina. Football draft.
September – Unemployed. 4 cats/5 people. Rita. Trip to New Orleans. Triple 30 Labor Day Birthday party. Dave gets job at the AJC. Eric and Katie get married. Dave and Paul get new apartment. New glasses.
October – Unemployed. 4 cats/4 people. Turn off A/C. No hurricanes. Halloween.
November – Get job. 4 cats/2 people. Unable to get to Philadelphia, stay in Atlanta for Thanksgiving.
December – Keep Job. 4 cats/2 people. Car accident. Kent falls down stairs, breaks butt. Christmas and New Year’s in Atlanta. Jack, Marnie and Grant visit. Mom and Beth visit. Brent and Chelsey get engaged. Colleen and Tom get engaged. Big party and Paul and Dave’s. Still working on knitted bag.

Number One

The Nebraska Cornhuskers are the greatest college team in the history of all things Collegiate. They could beat the best Duke Basketball team by 40 points. They would have hit consecutive home runs over and over again off Roger Clemens when he was at Texas. If the Cornhuskers were a person, they would be Jesus. When they beat Michigan yesterday, it meant that they are going to be great for the rest of time. Other teams will have to start using handguns just to hang in against Nebraska. The same goes for my other favorite teams. The Baltimore Orioles will no doubt become unstoppable based on the results of the 2005 Alamo Bowl, and yes, so will the New Orleans Saints. The Saints will also move back to New Orleans, which will be completely recovered in the next 3 months. Thanks again Nebraska. For fixing everything.

Does this sound weird to anyone else?

From a story on bbc.co.uk about the Iraq election:

At one stage, an election official in Falluja said that so many people were voting, they had run out of ballot papers

ummmm….does this scream “electoral fraud” to anyone else?

How can you run out of ballot papers? Surely you know how many you need based on the number of registered voters, plus a few for spoilage purposes?

Story here

A Christmas Gory

Around the holiday season, I always feel the need to try and return balance to the universe by being a bit of a grinch. People love this about me, and really appreciate what I’m trying to accomplish when I remind them that feeling guilty, spending money on things you can’t afford, accepting gifts that other people can’t afford, and loving the baby Jesus Almighty Dollar is what Christmas is all about.

To counter whichever TV station that will play A Christmas Story repeatedly for a week, thus sucking the joy out of an otherwise fine film, I offer this trailer:

A Christmas Gory

Enjoy!

Ebaying baby toys

I just put a load more toys that the kids have outgrown up on Ebay.

Baby puzzles and toddler electronic toys that a 6 year old and her 4 year old sister don’t play with anymore.

I feel sad. I always laughed at people who said that the time goes too quick and to enjoy it – but they knew what they were talking about.

Oh, and Chloe proclaimed yesterday, completely out of the blue, that she “wants to go and see Buzz”. So if an enterprising 6 year old turns up in Atlanta, give me a call yeah? You made such an impression on her Buzz!

Phishing emails

I don’t know about you, but I have been getting alot of phishing emails. Phishing is the goofy name for a spam email that attempts to collect personal information about you by using a legitimate-looking email. It’s a little more sophisticated than the “Hi I am Mr. Rochard Mbotatu and I am needing your help to recover my 10 million dollars bank account stolen from my mother who was Princess of Zaire when our government was overthrown” emails that everyone’s heard of by now.

The emails I was getting awhile back are a phish scam. Recently, I’ve been getting them from folks claiming to be eBay, the IRS, and my favorite, the CIA. The CIA one was cute. It said that my IP address was logged viewing 20 illegal websites in the past month and that I should open up the zip file attached to the email to reveiw their logs. I’m not exactly sure what an illegal website is, but I’m sure if the CIA has a definition for an illegal website, that I’ve looked at a lot more than 20 in the past month….

Here’s a link I saw today about how to stop phish emails, and a little quiz to test your ability to spot them.

Link: http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.html via Lifehacker