All posts by rbowen

UN’s stance on Sudan

Once again, I marvel at how the UN chooses to handle situations, and, onca again, I wonder why, oh why, do we continue to pour money and resources into an organization that accomplishes so little, at such great cost.

Summary: 136 men of a particular ethnic group (The Fur ethnic group) were rounded up, loaded in trucks, and gathered to a place where they were all executed. The UN Human Rights Commission has released a statement “expressing solidarity with the country in overcoming the present situation.”

That’s very comforting.

Meanwhile Sudan says it never happened.

I once said that social security is a bad system perpetuated because everyone has a grandmother. I think that, similarly, the UN is a bad system that is perpetuated because everyone wants to be seen as being on the side of peace. Peace is a good thing, right? And if we pay our annual dues to an international organization dedicated to peace (even if it doesn’t actually make the slightest headway towards that goal) then we’ve done our part.

Between this and the joke of “peacekeepers” in Bosnia, I’m increasingly persuaded that it would be better to do nothing at all, than to support the UN.

Time to find a new bank

I mentioned that my online banking is less than ideal. Well, now they’ve managed to get my IRS payment plan cancelled.

I think it’s time to find a new bank. Just as soon as I figure out who to address this nasty letter to …

Hunchback of Notre Dame

I’m finding that I’m increasingly a sucker for cheaply priced classic movies.

Today I picked up Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Lon Cheney. It is the black-and-white, silent movie, plus the theatrical organ soundtrack, complete with the occasional sound effect.

I haven’t watched the whole thing yet, but I found a number of things very interesting. It’s pretty clear that the folks that did the Walt Disney version of the movie had watched this movie. The Disney version appears to have more in common with the Lon Cheney version than it does with the novel, even to the point of copying scenes almost directly. I remember being amazed, when Disney did this movie, that they would think for a moment to do this story as a kids’ movie.

Anyways, I’ll probably watch the rest of the movie tonight.

Nearest book, page 23, sentence 5

Nearest book, page 23, sentence 5

It is at its best when sprinkled over a salad just before serving.

Wow. That was moving.

(The Encyclopedia of Herbs, Spices & Flavorings, by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz)

If only I was sitting in some other room at the time …

ok, your turn now. Grab the nearest book, turn to page 23, find the 5th sentence. Post the entire text of it, either here, or in your own blog. Add these instructions.

Wow, this might be my very first chain letter!

Low men in yellow coats

I’m reading/listening to “Hearts in Atlantis” by Steven King. I didn’t see the movie, so I don’t know which of the 5 short stories the movie is about. I presume it’s about the title story.

The first story in the collection – “Low men in yellow coats” – is literature worthy of the best writers of the 20th century. As Steven King gets older, I am progressively more impressed with his writing. Each age has their few really great writers, and in our age, I think that King and Bradbury are certainly two of them. “Low men” is remarkable for its depths of literary allusion, as well as its gut-wrenching descriptions of how darned hard it is to be an 11-year-old. I gathered, right at the end, that there’s a strong tie-in to some other King books that I haven’t read yet, and this gave me renewed interest in reading them. Like my reading list needs to be any longer …

While I know that a lot of people hold King in scorn due to his early horror books, and so will never read anything he ever writes, I think that this is their loss. Yeah, I enjoyed Carrie and Salem’s Lot and It, but I recogize that they are not the same quality of literature as Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis. Great writers are entitled to write a little bit of trash before they write their great stuff. I can only hope that some day I can write as well as King’s trash.

It was the computer’s fault

Kansas City man mistaken for alleged 9/11 terrorist – Apr 22, 2004

It’s things like *this* that make me drive, rather than fly, whenever possible. It’s the main reason I drove to St. Louis this week. And it’s the main reason that I will drive to Atlanta next month. The level of gross incompetence required for this sort of thing to happen, is one thing, but the enormous machinery behind this, and the fact that nobody knows how to fix the problem, is yet another indication – as if we needed one – that the “security” infrastructure is irremediably broken.

St. Louis – Day three

Today someone else showed up for class, but one of the guys that had been there before missed class. So I still had 3. Looks like I might actually have 4 tomorrow.

I’m going to look for an Ethiopian restaurant tonight. 🙂

St. Louis – Day 2

Today had fewer frustrations than yesterday, although I once again got done with the course material rather earlier than I had anticipated. That’s the irritating thing about having students that already know a lot of the material. But one of the students has a lot of really good questions, and clearly really wants to get a lot of good stuff out of the time, so I actually stayed on until the end of the scheduled time working on those questions.

I just went out and found two geocaches, which was my goal for the evening. However, I might end up going back out again this evening. I haven’t decided for sure yet. The week seems to be going by pretty quickly.

I released two more Travel Bugs into the wild. I’m still really peeved that my Coliseum cache was stolen from Shilito Park last week, and even more peeved that I lost a travel bug in the process. But I suppose that it was to be expected, putting a cache that close to a playground, that someone would be attracted to it. Still burns me up, though. Darned kids.

St. Louis – Day 1 – Class starts

I forgot to mention one thing about my trip up. I had lunch at Joe Huber’s Family Restaurant, a mile or so down the road from the Huber Winery. It was pretty incredible. I had some kind of fried fish. I’m not entirely sure what I had. I asked them to just bring me something good, and they did. I was wondering, while I ate, whether *all* the girls in that part of the country are that pretty, or if, somehow, they just got the prettiest ones to work there.

Anyways, class started yesterday, and, of the 5 people signed up for the class, 3 showed up. Once again, I have really good students, which always makes the class go better. However, Solaris had it in for me yesterday, and we spent the *entire* morning just getting Apache + SSL + mod_perl + PHP installed. Then, being flustered about the morning, I picked up the pace in the afternoon, and, of course, finished very early. Bah.

I had big plans for the evening, mostly involving GeoCaching, but I was exhausted, and sat like a lump and watched “Battle of Britain” on my laptop. I snagged it the other day because I remembered watching it at Turi, lo these many years ago. The scenes that I remembered most vividly were exactly as I remembered them.

It’s time to go get some breakfast, and then start day two.

St. Louis – Day 0 – The journey

Yesterday I drove to St. Louis, from Lexington. This time I squeezed the 5 hour trip into 11 hours. 🙂 I made a number of stops along the way, but only about 4 of them were GeoCaching stops.

I drove most of the way with the top down, but arount Marengo the wind picked up and I had to put the doors back on just to keep my glasses from blowing off. The wind was from the south, and really strong and gusty. My glasses blew off once, and I caught them!

Then, about 20 miles east of St. Louis, it got rather chilly and cloudy, and I stopped to put the rest of the roof on. I think I got a bit of a farmer’s ran out of it. At least I’m a little burned. But it was a lot of fun. I don’t think anything important blew away. Although I did notice a few things flick out of the back, in the rear-view, I don’t seem to be missing anything.

I stopped at the Huber Winery near Starlight, IN. I have to say that I’m not particularly impressed. They have a huge operation, and grow all their own grapes. But the people that work there don’t know anything about the products, everything was tasted at the wrong temperature, and none of them were particularly good. I did get a bottle of port, in the hopes that, at a better temperature, it will be better, but I suspect that this was a mistake.

I stopped two places in Louisville to look for caches. Found two. Couldn’t find another one without making myself *really* obvious, so I’ll leave it for another time. At the second stop, Mysterious Norseman, there was a rugby game going, and I almost stopped to watch, but then decided I should keep going.

I stopped at a graveyard near (I think) Marengo, but was not able to find the cache there.

And I stoped at the Ooloitic Limestone Cache, on some highway exit, where I clambered up cliffs to find a BITW cache (Box In The Woods), and get rather scratched up with thorns. My right wrist looks like I tried to end it all up there.

I found Creve Coeur much more easily this time. I suppose that pretty soon I’ll be able to come here without even having to consult a map for the last 10 miles. I certainly hope that this training opportunity develops into a regular thing, although being away from home for a week is a bit of a trial.

Right now, I need to get some breakfast and get across the street to the training facility so that I can set up.