"In fact, the only thing I do care about is the fact that I can't care about anything." Wesley Gibson - Wanted

Reason 8: forgot to charge phone.

"Bring the rain"

"No sacrifice, no victory"

Need to download pictures from my camera and cellphone, but don't feel like doing anything.

Intense storm this morning. I think I drove through the worst of it into town, there were places where the water on the road was pushing my car around. When I get home I will have to check the pond, it is still muddy from Sunday morning's rain. The weather has managed to stay fairly cool for this time of year and the pansies are still blooming nicely.

I started reading Cryptonomicon this week. I think I am in love. Again. I am thankful that a publisher would accept and present to the public a book like this. I hope I remember to read The Alchemist in time.

Last week's book club was fun. The"Guernsey" book was easy to read and filled with lots of factoids. The plot was silly enough to mitigate the images of death that filled these peoples' lives, but not so out of line to ruin the read. One of the things I most enjoyed was the list of all the authors and works that inspired the characters. Charles Lamb kicks off the list, and then we find Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Austen, Coleridge and even some Roman Senators. I spent time on gutenburg downloading and reading. The scan of Lamb's A Masque of Days, Newly Dressed & Decorated was so beautiful! I want to find a hard copy and just hold it in my hands. Next month we are reading The Alchemist.

It took the fish only a day to figure out that I bring food at dusk. The turtles seemed to take a few days longer, but now they arrive promptly to greet me. The flower garden is blooming pleasantly and the humming birds are dominating the front yard. So far this June has been lovely. Spending time with the fish, turtles, flowers, dragonflies and humming birds keeps my life balanced.

Today on the Glenn Beck show Stuart Varney mentioned Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." I wanted to pull over and call into the show. When he quoted, I knew what chapter and section to which he was referring. It was kind of neat to feel like part of the conversation instead of just observing.

Oh! Did you want to know *what* he was saying? Mr. Varney was talking about the fact that Nazis, Socialists and Communists are quarreling siblings. They are all collectivism, they all have the same goal, they just war over the method to get there.

Outside the moon is rising, large and orange in the southeast, and in the northeast is an intense lightning storm, silent and red. There is no sound except crickets.

Thursday night is Book Club and this month's book is Brave New World. I am looking forward to the discussion. It was written in 1932 about at the middle of Huxley's prolific career. The tone of the book is so different from Nineteen Eighty-Four and yet the horror is the same. At the end the protagonist is defeated by the contrived society by which he is surrounded. In Huxley's letter to Orwell he says, "The lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience." Roman bread and circuses, indeed.

I love to read an author who sends me to the dictionary and crafts sentences that stand as miniature works of art. The free and liberal use of Shakespeare's works bring a powerful tone to the story. Some of the quotes stand apart as Savage rehearses them aloud or to himself, some are blended directly into his dialogue or stream of thought and make clear his world view. Shakespeare wrote many tragedies and you can feel the impending doom of the character as the number of quotes increases.

When I first read this as a teenager, I did not like it at all. It scared me and I felt it was wrong for people in a Utopia to be so mean. Reading it again as an adult was a good experience. I still think it is wrong to condition people into amorality, and the vision of the world still scares me, but this time I know that it is not real. As a teenager, just like Savage, I felt the fiction to be true.

This is a book that deserves to be read more than it is, and I am glad we included it in this year's reading list.

Took an inventory of my gadgets today; several desktops, a Nintendo DS Lite (pink), Motorola cellphone, Palm Tungsten, Freeloader solar unit, ColdHeat soldering tool, assorted cordless phones, a Dustbuster, 2 weather radios, DVD player, digital camera, router, car-only XM radio.

Quite the collection and there are probably others, but what is missing? A "real" radio or a clock or a watch. I could use at least one of each here in the house, but just over a year ago the only one I had was the Nintendo. It had been in my purse during the tornado. The watch I wore that night, and the cellphone I had both got soaked during the initial crawling out and uncovering the car and cats. I just simply got tired of shopping. I have almost forgotten the radio programs I used to listen to or the feel of a watch on my wrist. I sat and thought today "what do we really need?" I guess only one communication device might be the answer. It is great to be able to listen to the news in the car and play games and walk around the house while I chat. The weather radios were gifts from the Red Cross and Fire Dept for the survivors and are welcome.

I do know people who have far less electronic involvement in their lives and their point of view is often different than mine. Not political or social views, but of how to spend time. I have noticed that people without TVs or computers or other connection gadgets tend to have watches. At least the ones I know. I miss my watch and still look at my arm for the time and then have to stop and think about where to find out the time. Most of the computer units I see during the day are not fully functional and rarely have the correct time. At home I still tend to look toward the wall where the large rooster clock was before the tornado. I sit and stare for a few seconds at the blank wall and then try to think of how to find out the time.

In the days following the tornado there was only sun time. As the weeks passed, I only saw the time during work, and used my cellphone as my alarm clock. It was also my weather device, my solitaire game and news channel. We had no television service in the temporary house, only the DVD player, small TV set and a few DVDs. We were totally detached from any broadcast schedule and really except for the few morning hours I worked we had no schedule at all. We just survived. Since I still rarely know the time outside of a work appointment it is hard for me to judge if this is a good thing or a bad. My Nintendo does not seem to recognize Daylight Savings Time (small loss) so I often am fuzzy on the precise time. One cannot objectively judge from within the situation, and yet I am comfortable here. Like when we were small children time is whatever we feel it is at the moment. If I lost the majority of my gadgets again today, would I even miss them after a few days? I use them all most days, and really love some of them. The Dustbuster is great! Am I hiding behind them or simply allowing them to facilitate my life?

One of the kittens is helping me type, and The Hunt for Red October is playing on the DVD. Going to sea is to load up humans in one giant multi-layer gadget and enter the domain that we have never conquered. We gain comfort from our dials and charts, the toggles and knobs that we control, comfort in the face of the ocean that we cannot control. Like lying under a roof half torn away by the wind listening to the rain and playing solitaire on my cellphone with the blue lights flashing in the night as the search for more bodies continue. I think my gadgets are indeed my friends.

Guess the Internet survived Conflicker's latest iteration. It also seems to be surviving the release of Legends of Zork. And today's UserFriendly/Wateringhole strips are brilliant. Next off to Think Geek to see what Timmy has planned for today.

I have been so hysterically busy for the last few days that any reading time has evaporated. I even had to work on Saturday, a least favorite choice. Hopefully with a few units restored and sent home I will have time to read again today. Supply and demand; my supply of time is limited and in very high demand! Still thinking about economics, though!

The dogwoods are blooming. Driving to work this morning I saw the drifts of white shining through the rain-soaked woods like lost snow drifts suspended in time and space. The spring flowering trees always look best after a good rain. In case you haven't guessed yet, I live in the woods. Each of the last three years have been devastating to the woods, but still they thrive. In 2007 we had a freak freeze that lasted four days in April, when all the trees had leafed out and it killed all the growth for the year. In 2008 we have an F-4 tornado that swept and crushed growth and animals for over one hundred miles. This year and ice storm in February left us without power for two weeks and shattered what trees the tornado had left standing. Yet the dogwoods are small spreading trees, low in the forest canopy and survived all these disasters. With dead trees and fallen limbs scattered all around them, their characteristic drift-shaped blossoms shine unaffected.

Worked like crazy this week. Just plain exhausted, and need to rest. There are three sad laptops sitting on the table behind me and two laptops and three desktops waiting back at the office. Have hardware on order for several other clients, and all I want to do is sleep. Probably will kick around a little, get my second wind and re-enter the arena of Malware and Trojans. Did ancient Troy have gladiators? Guess not. But I can still pretend when I am working to defeat the "bad guys."

Later all.

Chose to select my Five Favorite Films for facebook. It was hard to choose and I left out some I really love like "Gone in Sixty Seconds" Actually almost any Jerry Bruckheimer film works for me. I feel like he is someone I could like in person. One can only hope.

Twitter has turned out to be much more interesting than I had thought. I am only following 19 people, but their tweets make great reading. Most are people I know IRL, but a few public figures (famous people, celebrities, or ?) There is a reason that some of them have several hundred thousand followers, they are *interesting.* Writing is not easy or natural for most people, we react to images and sounds, very concrete things. Words are abstract. To take these funny little symbols and string them together coherently is an art. You could have natural talent, but like all skills, this one must be practiced and polished. I enjoy movies, but I love books. I love the time spent touching the pages, handling the weight, and studying the typeface. I love settling in to meet mind to mind with another person. To listen closely to what they are saying. To think and to be mentally challenged. I enjoy reading from the computer too. Blogs are cool, and now twitter is proving to be a modern literary salon. Rather than overwhelmed, I feel refreshed and excited there.

When I read Hayek, or Lewis, I often wish I could sit and visit with them, to hear their ideas in their own tone of voice. One of my most treasured possessions is a CD set of most known recordings of J. R. R. Tolkien reading selections of his written work. Sometimes I read along with him, sometimes I just sit and listen. When I read tweets I hear the voices of my friends speaking.

(Speaking of speaking, I am watching GiSS while I write this, is anyone as cool as Sphinx ?)

While reading The Road to Serfdom, in places I think I see hints of humor, and I wonder how it would sound if Hayek were sitting on the couch here, just telling me his ideas and thoughts. Then I wonder, if the translators caught his tone correctly. German is very expressive, and Hayek was clearly bi-lingual but was his English in 1944 this correct and smooth? Trnaslations make a huge difference as SoS Clinton discovered in Russia recently. But tonight I will not worry about it, and simply enjoy my meeting of minds.

"It is necessary in the first instance that the parties in the market should be free to sell and buy at any price at which they can find a partner to the transaction and that anybody should be free to produce, sell, and buy anything that may be produced or sold at all." Hayek. So straight forward and so simple, and yet utopia. In other words, unattainable. But the closer any society can come to realizing this ideal, the happier the people in it. I cannot understand why some people cannot keep their noses out of other people's business, literally. If two parties can engage in a transaction that pleases both of them, why do some others get so offended that they *must* interfere? Are there people who are so little inside that they cannot live their own lives and must destroy those who can? If someone is busy producing something that can be sold they should not have time to worry about what the next person down the road is doing. Many people misread the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The pursuit of happiness does not refer to chasing pleasure, but instead to being free to choose a life occupation that is what one wants to do. It means the government is not empowered to micro-manage its citizens.

Imagine, I raise chickens, and you weave baskets. You need some food and like fresh eggs and fried chicken. I need baskets to hold eggs and feed. If we can decide on an happy trade of eggs and chickens for baskets, and we are both completely satisfied, whose business is it except ours? I do understand the need for joint cooperation for the betterment of society, i.e. taxes. I know that each citizen cannot afford to build a strip of road that they need, and that some services, such as recording of legal records require someone to be supported by the whole community for the good of all. But there are reasonable limits to taxes and governance. Hayek uses the term "method of coordinating individual efforts" and this is a wonderful way to describe what we all need. He also points out that competion is a superior method to that of coercion to obtain this end. That is something the Founding Fathers clearly understood. And that our current government does not. Carrots *do* work better than sticks alone.

Tired, more later.

Thunderous rain storm today. High winds and lightning added to the excitement. Later I walked down to the pond and listened to the frogs peeping, chirping and croaking. A red-tailed hawk glided by, so silent and smooth. I love being here after the rain.

When disaster strikes who do we protect? When Pompeii was destroyed people huddled together and died. When the Titanic sank, some brave souls helped others to safety, but mothers put their arms out to their own children, a husband reached to reassure his own wife. When we fled our home last year ahead of a killer tornado, we sat together in a storm shelter. When disaster strikes we instinctively reach to save those we know best, our beloved family and friends.

When this country began to feel the tremblings of an economic earthquake, who did the Congress reach out to protect? Big business interests. We would hear the media quote Congress members as saying that they always listen to their constituents, and that consumer spending made up over two-thirds of the economic activity of this nation. So when individual consumers began to lose that ability to spend money did Congress rush to the side of the tax-paying voter and offer aid and comfort? No, they passed new legislation that made declaring personal bankruptcy more difficult and humiliating to obtain. When families were leaving their only home with no idea of where they would spend that night or any other, or even have a legal address anymore, was Congress quick to extend lines of credit to the working-class citizen? No, they began offering to the banks and lending companies that had repossessed the private property multi-billion dollar packages of aid.

It seems to me that the "nearest and dearest" to Congress is the financial industry. I don't think they know the tax-payers, the citizens, the voter.

We give them positions and funding and like a very young child they simply see us as providers. Most parents know that a critically important lesson that children must learn to survive is the power of "Please" and "Thank you." The true power of these phrases properly applied is to acknowledge the provider of all that you possess. A baby simply cries and reaches out, and the parent is enchanted. But as a person grows up, they must learn to request what is wanted in a way that is respectful if they wish to continue to receive. Anyone can grab something away, but you will probably one get to do it one time.

Right now it feels like Congress is desperately grabbing anything from anybody standing near enough to wrap up, coddle and protect their baby: Finance. Notice the outrage over the A.I.G. bonuses. Anger at individual tax-paying employed citizens, no anger at the corporate entity. The corporation must be protected by Congress at all costs, human lives are expendable. The taxpayers funds Congress and all its games. It is easy to get angry at the large financial corporations, but who created them? Actually the answer is Congress. Who wrote the laws that allowed less-than-transparent business practices? Who passed legislation that required the banks to write loans to people who were not qualified for the level of lending? Who can point fingers at others better that a first-grader? Who reinstated the mark-to-market rule?

The weirdest thing about trying to figure out what Congress is doing, is the totally schizophrenic feel to everything about them.

Deep into Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." It causes me to stop and think that many authors from the first half of the twentieth century felt the need to clearly define the terms they used in non-fiction works. Working through Chapter 3 and he is still clarifying what the terms used to mean, what some other people have used them to mean, and what he means when he uses them for the rest of the book. Extreme hot button words like "liberal" "socialism" and "planning" become sharp and clear when viewed from these three points of view. Lewis and Huxley share this trait. If you read these authors carefully, you must form an opinion on what they say. But I am afraid that some people cannot "learn" a new definition of a word. To imagine that someone else means something different when they pronounce that set of sounds is impossible for them. I have seen it on the faces of students who were not mentally ready for the challenge of the work in front of them. I believe they could learn it if they could be roused from the mental slumber that their environment has lulled them to.

Roman Bread and Circuses.

The weather is slowing improving. After the ice storm, of course, *anything* would feel better!
The gardens are starting to return to life and the lilac's buds are showing. And the cats are spring-crazy.

The workload is going well. But I wonder about what people don't seem to care if I see. Some of the files on units I have worked on, are at least of questionable taste. Some might be illegal. Can I collect hazardous duty pay for finding out things that I absolutely do not want to know about a customer? Will insurance pay for brain-bleach?

Probably not.

I am going to try to tie all my online points of presence onto my main website. Stuff like flickr, facebook and even blogger just sort of grow and get weedy. I think this will be much better.

In about 90 minutes I will be returning to a building that I have not been in for exactly one year. Today is the first anniversary of the Tornado and there will be a memorial service in the Community Building where last year I was working the Primary Election when the firefighters came in and told us to get to shelter. We have just spent the last nine days without electricity in freezing weather.

I cannot believe that it has been only a year, or that the first year is over. I don't know what will be said or done tonight. I am going, but ready to leave at any time if I get too upset. Recently I looked at some photos from the first 24 hours and it was very, very hard. At least with this year's disaster we got to keep our house. :)

Time to leave soon, and I am nervous, I just want it over, I am afraid that some of the neighbors are going to get very emotional. I don't know if the families of those killed have been all notified, I don't know how I would feel in their place. Mine is hard enough.

Bitter cold this morning, there was ice on the front door. As I looked out the window I could see the red blaze of sunrise on the tops of the trees and houses. The sky was stark clear. I thought you rarely see such a clear red sunrise in the middle of winter, and wondered what the weather would bring. It brought snow.

Got Open Office and FireFox loaded on Methuselah yesterday after I upped the RAM. This is an amazing machine. Ancient (Crucial could not recognize the hardware or brand) and runs like a rock. Windows 2000. Might be changing that to Intrepid Ibex later. (or sooner.)

:)

Very cold today and windy. Trying an Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD on a rather dead Toshiba laptop. Don't think it is going to work. I am probably not going to gut it and look for loose connections on the motherboard, and the new hard drive did not work, so this may be it's last chance.

Bright weather, sunny and cool. Kind of nice. Waiting on two deliveries for rebuilding two computers for a customer. Book Club tonight, this month's book was The Book of the Dun Cow, one of my favorites.

Do need to add some utilities to the Utilities Page on the website, just feeling slow. :)