Martin on Linux

Martin has written an article called Installing Linux, Part 1. Anyone interested in, well, installing Linux should check it out. Hey, this weblog is called "The Android's Dungeon," so I'm obligated to have geeky links. You can also check out more by Martin. Extra geek points for the Magic: The Gathering article.

Sadly, Themestream is no more, so those links no longer work.

Heart of Glass

I went to happy hour at Haydee's last Wednesday night. Haydee's is in Mt. Pleasant, which while not the worst part of DC, isn't exactly the toniest, either. Since I had to park on a side street, I decided to be smart and use The Club to protect my car. I originally got this club for the minivan, and it's never really fit well on the Honda's airbag-enhanced steering wheel. But after a bit of fussing, I managed to jam it in there, and it looked like the steering wheel could not be turned.

When I got back to my car a couple of hours later, I had a little trouble getting The Club off. When I finished, I looked up at the windshield and noticed a huge crack where The Club had been pressed against the windshield. I'm not sure whether it had happened while I was gone, or while I was having trouble getting The Club off. I felt like a complete yutz for causing a couple hundred bucks worth of damage to the windshield while just trying to protect the car from being stolen.

Anyway, I found out that my insurance covers it with $100 deductible. Furthermore, I found a place that would come to work and replace the glass in the parking lot. Unfortunately, they ended up canceling because of the weather, but I was able to go in and get it replaced in about an hour. And they had some special where I only had to pay $50 for the deductible. So now I don't have to drive around any more being constantly reminded of my own incompetence by the crack. There's just the bright blue tape on the windshield that I get to take off tomorrow.

Very Limited

I just returned from Blacksburg, Virginia where I attended the SERMON conference at Virginia Tech. I got in Friday afternoon, enjoyed a colloquium talk by my advisor, and set out to find my hotel, the Ramada Limited.

Finding it was not easy. It was very foggy, but I was able to find the sign. I drove around and around the sign, but couldn't find the hotel. I eventually asked someone who explained that the hotel was across the road...the road having been built after the hotel, and the sign.

I checked in. When I got to the room, I noticed that the bed had not been made, and the trash cans were filled with fast food refuse. I called the front desk and said, "I don't think housekeeping has been to my room. The bed hasn't been made, and the trash hasn't been emptied." They replied, "Are there any other problems with the room?" Somewhat nonplussed, I asked, "Like what?" "Well, is the bathroom clean?" "I don't know; would you like me to check?" They did, so I put down the phone and checked. "There's a washcloth in the shower; it doesn't look like the towels have been changed." "OK,;come down to the front desk, and we'll give you a different room." Whew. I guess they figured dirty sheets and full trash cans were one thing, but they prided themselves on offering clean towels.

20th Century go to sleep...

I was listening to "The Boy in the Bubble" last night from Paul Simon's Graceland. (Click on the preceding link to go to Amazon.com and listen to a clip. Click here to read the lyrics.) To me, the song is a beautiful distillation of the essential contradiction of the 20th century (whew, am I getting pretentious?) -- how so much progress could be accompanied by so much brutality?

As the century draws to a close (I refuse to get into arguments about when it really ends), I'm often jolted by its characterization as the most violent century in the history of humanity. Of course, that's true, but is that how we define the 20th century? Is it the century of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Franco? Is it defined by the Katyn Forest, Hiroshima, Armenian genocide, Kosovo, and above all the Holocaust? Or is it the century of FDR, Churchill, Thurgood Marshall, Albert Einstein and Mandela? Is this the time of the rise of democracy, the defeat of polio and smallpox, suffrage, the birth of numerous art forms (cinema, jazz, rock, the weblog...) and the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem? "The bomb in the baby carriage" or "lasers in the jungle"?

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I think we come out of the 20th century better than the way we entered it. For example, look at Paul Simon's Graceland album. When it came out, his use of South African artists drew attention because of the issue of apartheid. Today, apartheid is...well, a memory. The situation that replaced it -- the crime and uncertainty -- is not ideal, but it is hard to argue that good has not been done. I think history will judge the 20th century as one where humanity took important steps in fundamental rights, revolutionized our technology, and started to use that technology in ways that underscored those rights.

But don't cry, baby, don't cry.

Back in the USSR

Going through my old e-mail last night was an interesting experience. One that particularly struck me was an e-mail from Moscow I received in 1991. It really made me feel the passage of time. First of all, it was from the Soviet Union. Maybe you heard about that one in school, kiddies. Secondly, I loved the "non-commercial nets like Internet" part.

I remember that the request for information was disconcerting enough that I reported it to our security officer at work, who I think just filed it away. Anyway, these days when every speck of land on the globe seems to be wired makes it hard to believe that my co-workers thought that this was a fake, because "the Soviet Union isn't on the Internet."

An Innocent Abroad

I was going through some old files tonight, and I came across a series of letters I sent to my friend Melissa during my first real trip overseas -- to visit my parents in England in December 1993. The letters were purposefully more of a trip journal than personal communications. I cleaned it up, converted it HTML, added a few links and
put it on my web site. It's kind of funny to look back at the 21-year-old kid who wrote that stuff. I'd sure love to have an entire month in the UK again, though...

Poor Old Johnnie Ray...

Poor old Johnny Ray
Sounded sad upon the radio
He moved a million hearts in mono
Our mothers cried and sang along and who'd blame them

I was watching the Come On Eileen video the other day and started to get a little choked up. (Now don't laugh.) It's not '80s nostalgia that got to me, it's '50s nostalgia, in a sense. The video showed footage of girls going crazy for the singer Johnnie Ray. Until that point, I thought "Johnny Ray" was a made-up name, but he's very real. And I had never heard of him. His song "Cry" spent 11 weeks at Number 1, but now...poof, he's gone, likely unremembered by many under 50. As far as I can tell, he was either very, very early rock-n-roll, or just pre-rock, and his popularity never survived into the late '50s. The one notable thing about him is that he wore a hearing aid (although that's apparently not the motivation for "moved a million hearts in mono"). As with everything else on the Internet, there's a web site devoted to him -- johnnieray.com. So listen to Dexy's Midnight Runners sing "Come On Eileen" or the Save Ferris version, and remember poor old Johnnie Ray...

Bears Discover Fire

OK, I admit it; I bought this book in large part for the title, and the cover (sadly not available at Amazon), which shows bears with torches.

Wallace was the first to speak. "Looks like bears have discovered fire," he said.

Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories by Terry Bisson is a collection of short (often very) stories. Many, like the title story are based on a single conceit -- everything else is the same, except, well, bears discover fire. And instead of hibernating, they're camping out in the medians of interstates. Or in "England Underway," England starts moving around Ireland, swings past Bermuda and comes to rest off the East Coast of the U.S. The best comparison I can make is to Steven Wright jokes. "Press Ann" can't really be described here, but is now one of my all-time favorites.
Bisson admits he sometimes writes "odd mainstream works" that get passed of as fantasy and SF. While only a handful of his works "count" as true fantasy or SF, they are no less enjoyable. 5 stars.

Future Perfect...

The premise of the anthology How to Save the World, edited by Charles Sheffield is jokingly put forward that science fiction writers have the best ideas; they just never get to implement them. This collection is a mixed bag; some, like "Raw Terra," weren't interesting enough for me to finish. A major theme of this collection is the law of unintended consequences -- "Choice," "The Meetings of the Secret World Masters," "Souls on Ice," "The Product of the Extremes," and others all show less than utopian outcomes when the solutions are implemented. But for near-future SF, this is a pretty good collection of short stories. 3 1/2 stars.

Kartchner Caverns

We toured Kartchner Caverns Thursday. Kartchner just opened up in November, but it's already really popular. Tours are sold out into June. The Caverns were discovered in 1974 by a couple of guys who kept them a secret. In 1978, they clued in the Kartchners, who own the land, and in the 1980s, they brought the state of Arizona in. The neat thing is that since the caves were kept a secret until the state took over, they've never suffered from any vandalism and are in pristine condition. It's a "wet" cave, which leads to some very interesting formations. Unfortunately, they didn't let us take any pictures, but I have a feeling pictures wouldn't capture these amazing formations. Some looked like Cthulhu, but the "cave bacon" was especially neat. It really looks like bacon. Anybody who's in southern AZ should have a look at some really impressive caves...but make your reservations months in advance.

It's No Hitchhiker's...

Well, today in Arizona was spent looking for the ghost towns of Gleeson, Courtland and Pearce. It actually snowed, so the weather wasn't really up for poking around in the ruins. And to the extent it was, well...the ruins weren't so exciting.

But the car trip did give me a chance to finish Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic by Terry Jones. Take a computer game written by hilarious author Douglas Adams, get Monty Python's Terry Jones to write the novel (naked), and you get...a novel that reads like it was based on a computer game. Some talent shines through, but not worth a full review. Sigh. 2 stars.

Rocket Boys

Greetings from Arizona, where I'm kicking back, relaxing and getting some reading done. My latest read is Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys, the based-on-a-true-story tale of the author's childhood growing up in a coal town of West Virginia and making his dreams of building rockets come true. (This book was the basis for the movie October Sky.) One of the more enjoyable books I've read in a while. 4 1/2 stars. Read my review. Also check out homerhickam.com.