zubatac

Dr. Edward Lechtenberg is
(a) an excellent oral surgeon, and
(b) located across the street from Verna's Donut Shop, in case you feel inclined to celebrate the fact that your gums are healing fine.

(Context: I had my wisdom teeth out two weeks ago.)

I finally feel like I'm biking a non-trivial amount again. About time. (Working from home has its disadvantages.)

And I made a new userpic for this kind of thing a week or two ago, and I finally get to use it!

It's Passover and Easter-- miracles all around.

Now, sometimes there comes a time in one's life (well, mine, not necessarily yours) when it's easy to want a miracle. Thankfully, it doesn't happen very often-- because when it has, it's generally been in times that were in some way, well, desperate. (Before you jump to any conclusions, life is good at the moment; I'm just reflecting back here.)

But most of the time, this talk of miracles is really just plain scary. Not in a conscious way, perhaps. But those little things you'd like to see changed even when it seems impossible, things that could use fixing in myself and elsewhere-- it's often hard for me to really, truly want them changed. How bad are they, really? Is the life here in Egypt really so bad?

Miracles, by definition, break the old rules. They aren't just transformative-- they change things in a seemingly uncontrolled, wild way. It would be a little bit easier to handle a miracle that miraculously preserves the status quo. But if that little thing that has been bugging me suddenly got changed, what next? What would be the next thing to hold me back? What will be asked of me then? Safer to just sit here, putting a brick on top of brick, just watching the gravestone that's too heavy to roll away. It's hard to put one's heart into wishing for a miracle if you can stop to think about it, if you're not too busy crying out for help for the brain to engage and the fear to kick in.

It makes me wonder what the Jews in Egypt thought of all of the commotion that Moses was making. If they really didn't have any second thoughts, then either their life must have truly sucked, or their faith was far greater than mine.

And it makes me feel very comforted that Jesus was as human as he was divine, and surely in a position to understand why we fear miracles (even while we pay lip service to wanting to subject ourselves to God's will).

Happy Passover and/or Easter to those of you to whom these mean something!

This has been making the rounds on Facebook. I don't do Facebook, but pekmez infected me anyway.
( Meme and my contribution behind the cut. )
Now go make one yourself. You know you want to.

Meme from coraline:

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
   
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
   
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.
   

Also, a bonus picture of The Albino (from The Princess Bride) enjoying the above:

...but I now have a strange urge to figure out how to make a cake in the shape of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain.

( me vs Verizon; contains mild technogeekery. )

Verizon DSL: (some) USD/month [sorry, I have gljiva semi-asleep on my lap and can't look it up]
Setting up a caching DNS server on a Linux machine: less than half an hour
Configuring the wireless router to tell all other machines at home to use the new DNS server: 2 minutes
Being free of Verizon's name service crap: priceless

I bet this one has made the rounds already, but if not, World of Warcraft crowd take note: an Amsterdam addiction center now has a video-game detox clinic. >=)

(If I'm behind the times again and WoW is no longer the "in" MMORPG among my friends, you know what I mean.)

Sometimes I miss coatrack.

For those of you not reading pekmez's journal: I'll be at my company's Mother Ship in scenic Santa Clara, CA between Mar 19th and 24th. I'd love to see all of you in the SF area (yes, this means you). My evenings from Sun to Thu are currently open, and I could likely swing lunch too if that works better for you.

["The SF area" sounds funny. But I didn't want to change it.]

And this time I'm (gasp!) car-enabled. [But not crazy enough to drive to Davis, sorry! =) ]

You can comment on this thread, or send me e-mail...

(I started writing this after shoveling for the second time today. I hope only have to do one repeat before tomorrow...)

Like I predicted, my LJ habit (and much else besides) was consumed by an angry ocean as soon as I went back to work full time. I haven't posted in four months, and reading followed soon after. Which is too bad, because (a) I like reading what you all have to say, and (b) I like to occasionally rant.

Thinking about this, I'm deciding that keeping up with what you write is, very sadly, hopeless. I just don't have that kind of time or dedication. =( [In other words, you put it in your LiveJournal, you should just assume that I won't have read it. On the other hand, pekmez might tell me about it.] Today is a good example of why I don't read LJ regularly... though that may not be entirely fair: everyone seems to be posting today, and I think I have a guess why. =) But I've been hoping to spend some time working, so I can take some time off this week and go cross-contry skiing with gljiva and pekmez, and this plan has utterly failed. My only hope is that we will be horrendously snowed in tomorrow so the office is closed and I can punt work and go. >=)

On the other hand, ranting may not be hopeless, so I'll try doing that more in the upcoming months. A warning: one of the upcoming rant topics will be on Searle's Rediscovering the Mind, which Hex has lent me and which I'm on-and-off reading, which may then be followed by other philosophical commentary. If you want me to create a filter so you don't see this crud, lemme know.

OK, time to get swept under by a wave again.

When I was configuring my LiveJournal account, it asked me for my "list of interests."

The concept of listing my interests has always been a bit amusing to me. Does that mean all things that I may ever be interested in discussing with someone like dpolicar? (I might as well go cut+paste the English dictionary in that case. And maybe portions of other languages.) Or everything that I may have a consistent desire to talk about or do? (That's still quite a long list, and not one that I can just come up with out of thin air, either.) Or things I may actually hope to get to do in the foreseeable future? (Thanks to gljiva, that's a very short list.)

Of course, what listing my interests really means here is none of these things. The interests I'm listing will be used for two things. First, you will be able to look at them on my info page, perhaps getting a bit of amusement out of that. (This is what prompted "changing diapers".) Secondly, lj users will be able to search for the interests I lists and come up with me. (This is why I haven't included, say, "Hrvatska" or "Croatia"-- which I do care passionately about, but you folks likely know that and I don't care if any web.dorks out there do.)

This is how languages get customized (and sometimes evolve) to fit our needs. [English majors in the audience, this is your queue to take potshots... =) ] If LiveJournal needs a term (e.g. to denote "people who I want to allow to read my non-public entries" or "...whose journals I want to read regularly"), they will pick a word that's concise and "close enough" (e.g. "friend"). But "friend" in this usage is really not someone you're very close to, or even necessarily acquainted with; it's really most aligned with its very old meaning of "one that is not hostile" (Merriam-Webster).

So "friend" now has a new (old?) shade of meaning-- confined for now to a very specific context. But it may not stay that way... See language drift. Drift, language, drift!

OK, it's way past my bedtime now. Good night.