The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
BTT – Visual
Blanket Nine
Loops & Threads Impeccable yarn in Seaside, Cadet and Forest.
Shout Out for Project Linus
William, who blogs at Philanthropy in Motion, took the lead from Carlo Garcia and is writing about daily donations to worthy organizations. His angle is a bit different. First, his focus is primarily on children’s charities. Second, he takes inspiration from the honorary days (and months) celebrating different causes.
He posted today about Project Linus, in honor of Stress Awareness Month. Check him out!
Weekend Assignment #364: Ahead in the Clouds?
Weekend Assignment #364: Ahead in the Clouds?
Suddenly the marketing departments of Microsoft and other tech giants are all about “the cloud” or “clouds,” the practice of storing large files online and streaming them rather than everyone storing them locally on their hard drives. Do you think this is a good idea, a bad idea or both?
Extra Credit: Do you still buy CDs and DVDs?
The Shack, by William P. Young
I somehow missed that The Shack was a huge bestseller of the spiritual journey variety. “Over one million copies in print.”
I read a few of the reviews on Librarything, and it seems to me that readers judge the book based on how close Young gets to their own theology. The Catholic really didn’t like it.
The premise is that a guy whose young daughter was murdered receives a note in his mailbox, presumably from God, inviting him to meet up at the cabin in the woods where the daughter was killed.
This book is one guy’s imagining of how God might show up an answer some questions and show the way back to a life filled with more love and less judgement. While I found the narrative rather affected, and heavy-handed, it wasn’t a bad imagining.
The one theme I found objectionable was that God continually repeated that people looking for “independence” were delusional and living in the matrix. Actually said, “the matrix”.
The best line was, “Mack wasn’t sure what ‘made it from scratch’ meant when God was saying it.”
Apparently, God likes to cook. OK, then.
I am glad that I read this, but it didn’t exactly change my life.
Again with the Cupcakes
About five minutes after professing that I am not a crazy cupcake lady, and that it is just a Washington thing, I saw a window sign in the Glen Town Center that a cupcakery was coming. Cup of Cake opened sometime when I was on the road and I went in on Thursday before heading to the Library.
They have tables, which is good. And Hot Chocolate, which will make me very happy, assuming it is any good. There are a few more bakery items along with the cupcakes. The cupcakes are $2.75 each, which 25 cents less than the truck in DC and 75 cents less than the cupcakery on 7th street.
I ordered a cake pop, which seems to be the Next Big Thing (meaning that even Starbucks has them now).
I believe I read that it is cake mashed with frosting dipped in chocolate. Read as: sugar bomb. I will not be ordering this again.
The really bad news is the operating hours. They don’t even open until noon and are closed on Sundays.
Happily, it seems I will not become Crazy Cupcake Lady. But I am glad to have them.
Edit: I just read that Facebook page that I linked to and it seems that their hours are changing and they will be open on Sundays soon. Also, Friday and Saturday they will open at 11:30 a.m., which is better. Somewhat.
Mac
I finally went for a new laptop and the crazies convinced me to go with Mac. My brother called me a traitor.
I haven’t done much with it yet. I think I need a Dummies book for the operating system. But I managed to connect to the Internet and transferred my iTunes. The secret is to have your entire library backed up on an external drive.
Am I happy? Not sure yet. It has already dropped the wireless twice and don’t know what the learning curve is like for people that have lived in Windows their entire lives. But I can say without hesitation that this is the fastest machine I have ever worked with in my life.
That’s good stuff.
BTT: Cereal
Booking through Thursday – the question was:
What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever read? (You know, something NOT a book, magazine, short story, poem or article.)
There is a pizza place in Chicago called Gino’s. I would call it in the Top 5 of Chicago pizzarias. Besides the good food, Gino’s is know for allowing patrons to write all over. Everything they can get their hands on – the walls, tablecloths, chairs, benches.
So I have to say that the weirdest thing I have ever read was the red pepper shaker at Gino’s. Someone took out a Sharpie and wrote..something. I forget. It wasn’t Shakespeare!
A Thing for the Place with the Stuff
So. When something lights my fuse, I have to deal with it right. that. second. At work, that means I start dialing the phone without even thinking about what I am going to say.
The other day, as I was doing expense reports, three Metro cards dropped out of my bag. These passes for the Washington DC subway system each had a balance of something like 20 cents.
Stef, my colleague in DC, has worked with our group for nearly a year now. She has been telling me to get a real SmarTrip card. The hard plastic, reloadable cards that real commuters use. I called her:
Me: I need one of those..things!
Stef: What things?!
Me: For the place! The..um..card things!
Stef: Oh. (breathes) You mean a SmarTrip pass?
Me: Yes! Because the cards! Twenty cents! Everywhere!
She sent me the link to order one online.
“I need a thing for the place with the stuff” is a joke around my office. I am not the only person that starts talking without bothering to initiate the brainpower to articulate a coherent thought. Or even a complete sentence. But we generally understand each other. And Stef has officially been initiated into my nonsense.
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, by Joseph J. Ellis
My love for Joseph Ellis’ Founding Brothers
This is sort of the next chapter. The fights over the Constitution, the first presidencies, the founding of the political parties, and so on.
American Creation was much less..heroic than Founding Brothers, thus somewhat less “fun”. The chapter regarding the treaties with the Creek Indians was particularly difficult. The way Ellis describes it, the leadership at the time – Washington, Knox, Jefferson – was trying to do something resembling Right by the Creeks. But the General Public wanted the land. Wanted it. And The Great Democracy did not yet have the institutions in place shut down the greedy General Public. Ellis theorizes that the badness was inevitable.
We really suck sometimes.
After reading this book, I like Jefferson even less. I like Madison a bit more. A bit. And if it is possible, I like Adams even better.
I will continue to read Ellis. He is cool. But this one was kind of a downer.
The Next Dark Age 