Found on vacation

Bumper sticker: never re-elect anyone!

Yes, okay, I’m a bad blogger.

Not posting since February. It’s been awhile (duhhh).

Everything looks like it has a fresh coat of paint

Just got a new pair of progressive glasses. Always liked the way new glasses make everything look like it has a fresh coat of paint. I don’t like the headach it gives me getting used to the distortion in my peripheral field of vision.

Passion? What’s thst?

Every job change guru tells you to find your next career in something you are passionate about. The problem becomes, how do you figure that out? What happens if you are interested in virtually everthing, but nothing leaps out to say “Me first!”

Take that spammer scum!

Using the iPhone app for WordPress. LOVE it!

Lets me mark all the .ru comment spam as spam. If only it allowed mass actions on comments now.

Even on the iPhone

First person shooter games give me a headache. Must be me afterall.

The new toy

I’m writing this on the new iPhone 3G S (or is it 3gS?). I likes me my iPhone.

I does not like me my Internet provider though.

Mind you, I’m not talking about AT&T either, but about my home provider. Gatehouse Networks has got to be the worst customer service ever. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they didn’t want our business.

Oh, yeah, they don’t.

Turns out, they want to sell the contract for cable and Net service to Comcast – or so I’ve heard.

If the iPhone didn’t have pretty good 3G coverage, it would drive me nuts.

Repairman Jack

Just read the latest (okay, not the latest, just the latest paperback) Repairman Jack novel by F. Paul Wilson. Bloodlines is a great read. If you like supernatural-type mystery thrillers, you’ll love this as well as the series.

I first started reading F. Paul Wilson back in high school, I think. His SF novel Healer and his future history of the Lanague Federation made me seriously consider libertarian philosophy. One that I haven’t strayed far from since.

Wilson’s Lanague Federation was a galactic government that really didn’t govern. A mutual defense league under which the only hard and fast rule was: don’t keep the people who have the misfortune to be born on your planet there. You don’t have to let anyone else in, but you can’t prevent people from voting with their feet.

His Repairman Jack novels are cut from the same cloth, if made into a completely different suit. Definitely not SF, but mystery/thrillers with a definite supernatural flavor. Heck, almost a religious flavor in some ways. Real good versus evil, but with a libertarian twist.

Jack is a character who lives off the official radar in New York City. No real ID, no drivers license, no car insurance. No social security number, so no credit cards – at least none that can be traced to Jack. He uses a prepaid cell phone that can’t be tracked to him, drives a car that carries real, but duplicate plates. How does he do this? Cash. Works for just cash.

What does he work at, you ask? “Fix-its” When someone needs help, not necessarily legal help, and help that a private detective can’t usually provide, Jack’s your man. You pick up the tab, he’ll find a way to take care of your problem, usually in a long-term, if not permanent fashion.

The RJ series is supposed to, over volumes, track the end of civilization as we know it. With Bloodlines, Wilson is in the year before whatever is supposed to happen. Don’t know exactly what’s going to yet, but I can’t wait to find out.

Not all change is for the worse

My son and I attended a Tridentine Mass today. The Mass, said almost entirely in Latin (the Epistle from St. Paul, the Gospel were both repeated in English and the homily was given in English), wasn’t as stirring as some adherents to the old Mass might claim.

Perhaps its because I didn’t grow up Catholic (I converted less than a year ago), but it didn’t make me feel anything more – and perhaps quite a bit less – than the Vatican II approved rite makes me feel. Having to follow along with an English-Latin dictionary didn’t foster any closer relationship with God. Nor did having half the Mass said by the priest with his back to me make me feel that he was more of an intermediary with the Lord.

I guess that for some people, the thought of having to read, or just listen, to Scripture frightens them. For me, I like hearing the Readings. I like being able to match my own interpretation against the priest’s. I like hearing the prayers. More importantly, I like saying the prayers. I like reciting the Lord’s Prayer with my family. Perhaps, that’s why I don’t like the Tridentine – it makes one too alone.

Watching with Dread and Fascination

I’m not really watching the Vice Presidential debate. I figure I’ll listen to it tomorrow on XM Radio’s POTUS08 channel, where they’ll play it more than once through the day.

I have to admit though, I want to watch it. I’m sure most people with even the slightest interest in the political scene want to watch it. Of course, none of us want to watch it because we think its going to change our minds – even those of us who are mainly leaning undecided/none-of-the-above.

More importantly, we’re watching for the same reason, allegedly, that many people watch auto racing: on the off-chance that there will be a big wreck.

Another very sad commentary on our political culture in this day and age, that we want to watch this kind of spectacle in order that we might watch the zinger, the sharp barb, or the deer-in-headlights moment.