Picked up Sabrent Wireless-G 802.11G PCI from Amazon. Powered up the computer and I was online. No questions asked. Very pleased.

Well I did finish the book, and enjoyed it considerably. I hope to say more later on the book. But overall I’d have to say I’m in a rut. I’ve always considered myself a reader and a writer, but I don’t honestly read that much anymore and I write even less.

The main reason I got through Crime & Punishment was some extended reading time on a long bus ride and a rare business trip. And even then it took eight months to finish.

One factor that has changed in my life is I no longer read books during the day. Whatever daytime reading I do is online. My “deep reading” or “close reading” is confined to the half-hour or so in bed before I fall asleep. That just ain’t gettin the job done.

NURSE: Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile?

And my writing habits – nonexistent. I can’t even send old friends a birthday greeting or a How-ya-doin’? email.

The frustrating part is, I feel a desire to read. There’s so much out there I don’t even fricking know! Listening to Team of Rivals, I realized I had no idea who Lincoln ran against in the 1860 Republican primary or how he beat them. I didn’t even expect the book to explain that.

It’s mainly fiction that keeps drawing me in. I look for a certain mystery in fiction. That feeling of “I don’t completely understand everything, and I want to go back and try again.” In Crime & Punishment, for instance, there is a connection between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, as there is between Sonia and Dounia, and for that matter between Sonia and the pawnbroker’s daughter. I would like to re-examine those relationships, now that I know to look for them.

Then there are the dreams: Svidrigailov’s dream the night before his suicide; Raskolnikov’s dream of a man beating a horse.

I’d like to study all these things. Maybe even re-read The Idiot.

If I only had the time.

I put this in the find what box of Dreamweaver
([A-Z]{1})([a-z]{3,})
And this in the Replace With box
$1
And I was good to go!

Of course, I could also have dumped the names into Excel and done a Left function on them… I guess there are lots of ways to skin that cat.

It’s startling to see how many ways there are to try to hack a website. I’ve already tightened up a couple loose ends based on what I learned from my logs.

They were written by a relative named Francis Pettibone who lived in Girard, Pennsylvania, and served in the 105th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

The 105th saw some bloody battles, including Chickamauga. None of the five letters mention that battle, although the siege of Atlanta is described in some detail.

Video links

If you missed last year’s Big Read, N.T. Wright’s discussions on Luke are worth visiting (or revisiting if you didn’t miss it).

~$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"cordelia"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:40:F4:FD:AD:48
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=60/70  Signal level=-50 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

And the content of /etc/network/interfaces:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

The aesthetic I’m going for is kind of a found art look.

The sources of the pictures are scanned mah jong tiles and scans from some old public domain books.

They won’t be relevant to the content, but they’ll be different.