The Journal of his Delights

It seems that world opinion is firmly against John McCain. According to a poll at The Economist, if the whole world were voting, there’d only be two red states. Click through to see the map:

Vote Obama or McCain: Global Electoral College

I’m not surprised by Georgia. I imagine they’d rather see a hawkish American president to side with them against Russia. As for Macedonia, the voting looks close.

And the funny thing is, The Economist’s readership isn’t exactly liberal. The world is just fed up with U.S. politics and foreign policy.

I love this video! I’ve already watched it five times straight. It’s an affirmation of what humanity is capable of—that we can create something simple, happy, playful, beautiful, and cool for the love of it, of creating, of doing.

Many thanks to Emily for introducing me to Lykke Li and Bon Iver. If I ever take over the world, she’s definitely my top pick for Minister of Cool.

The Story of the Blue Flamingo

Somebody once told me, “Hey, you’re funny. F-U-N-N-Y. Funny.” There’s a blue flamingo in the story too, but I forget that part.

My apologies for the lack of updates, but I came down with a rather nasty bug last week. There was also a dramatic increase in new clients. Fortunately, my workplace is rather progressive, which is what you’d probably expect, and I was able to work from home for the week. That said, I had to prioritize work over everything else, as I was operating on very little brain juice the entire time.

Which also means, unfortunately, that I don’t have a new poem to share with you. There are two new poems that have potential, but they’re both still in the very early pupae stage.

Instead, I’ll just share one of my older poems, one that makes me smile (if I can say that as the author). And this might also be a good time to mention that my poetry is not autobiographical. *grin*

Reuniting

The patter of water on concrete,
the sound of the rain’s slip-fingered fall to earth,
delicate like the bones of the inner ear,
made for listening to a softly beating heart.

Figures glide by an otherwise empty corner,
huddled against the damp and dark,
passing under a lamp post,
actinic beacon, spark, and measure
of the distance traveled to stand by this roadside
waiting for dusty memory—

a lost room of peeling yellow paint,
bright daffodils in a blue bottle,
and long dark hair spilling
from bed to knots in the floorboard.

Water drops from umbrella
to the street below, the dead outer skin
crumbling from the persistence of weeds,
pried open by their ugly beauty,
making way for the reuniting
of rain to the tenderness beneath,
the soft earth waiting for this necessary mercy.

I’m going to try something a little scary, and self-impose a deadline. Specifically, I’ve decided to post a piece of poetry to the Journal every two weeks.

One, it’ll give the pieces a write a place to live, and two, it’ll force me to write without being hyper-focused on making the pieces perfect.

If I’m going to practice the craft of writing, then I need to write and keep writing. And while I do write in the mornings, I expect this will help keep me focused.

I’m not sure how long this exercise will last, but I hope you enjoy it while it does.

Before:

After:

And after again (in close-up):

Sorry, but there are no “middle” shots. If you’re curious, just imagine components strewn across that nice looking table, boxes stacked in the corner, instruction manuals piled up on top of each other, and me going very, very slowly so as to not wreck any of the beautiful parts.

I’m still missing a sound card and a good keyboard, but so far things are looking good. It was certainly the easiest build (of the three I’ve now done). I didn’t even have any problems installing Vista. Blessed indeed, and my oh my, but the thing is so snappy. *big grin*

I spent an hour at Fry’s Electronics looking for a keyboard this evening. In the end, there wasn’t a single one that I loved, so bought a cheap $15 keyboard instead. This is not where this story will end, however.

Given how much time people spend on their computers, it’s surprising to me that they often don’t invest enough in making sure their keyboards are comfortable and match their bodies and personalities.

And yes, keyboards have their own personalities too. Clicks or no? What about the size of keys and their placement? And perhaps most important of all, what’s the just-right amount of resistance when you press down on the keys. The goal is to find a satisfying typing experience.

That’s why I was at Fry’s testing out keyboards instead of ordering one sight-unseen from Newegg. Not having found one, though, I think I’ll have to take my chances.

Enermax makes a keyboard that gets great reviews. It’s supposed to feel great, but unfortunately, it’s not a brand for sale at Fry’s and so I’ll just have to roll the dice, order it, and hope for the best.

It’s $80, but if it’s as good as the reviews say, it’ll be worth it. And for those that blink at the idea of spending $80 for a keyboard, just think—it (and the mouse) are the interface between you and the computer. Given how much time you spend at the computer, you’re going to want a tool that will fit you as well as possible. And if you’re a writer, the case especially holds true.

I’m spent out till my next paycheck. Thus the $15 keyboard is needed to get the computer built. But once I have some cash on hand again, I’ll be ordering something (hopefully) a bit better. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Several weeks back, the hard drive in my computer became corrupted such that the computer couldn’t complete a boot up. The only solution was to reformat the drive, but there was some panic when I discovered that my automatic backups somehow excluded all of my writing. Fortunately, a solution was found, the hard drive reformatted, software reinstalled, documents restored, and all was merry again.

Until the hard drive failed. Again. This time with a horrible death screech, and no matter how much I pried and prodded, there was no sign of recovery. Oh, and I’ll mention that this incident took place 12 days after the warranty expired. Ahem.

This time the backups did include my writing. Yay! Except for the last day’s worth before the failure, so my last writing session wasn’t included; the session in which I broke through a thorny problem that had been holding me back. Boo!

Such is life though, or should I say such is the nature of hard drives. Every single computer I’ve ever owned has had its hard drive fail. Correction—not my old Apple IIc. That venerable machine existed before hard drives existed in personal computers.

I had been planning on building a new desktop anyway, so this just means that I’ll have to move the schedule. I suppose I could just buy another hard drive for the laptop, but that’s no fun. And besides, it’s a sweet little system I’m planning.

Yes, friends, the last of the components will arrive this week, and the boy’s about to unleash his inner geek again.

And this time, there’ll be backup options up the wazoo. Three hard drives in RAID 5 configuration, an online backup service, and maybe even an external hard drive just for storage/backups.

Overkill? No, not really. RAID 5 provides both speed and data parity at the cost of one hard drive. The online backup service is free (up to 2 gigabytes), and provides insurance in case of something catastrophic happening to the machine as a whole. (Fire, earthquake, acts of God, etc.) And the external hard drive is handy tool to have in any situation. Backups for all the machines in the house and all the data available in one place should I need it.

And given how cheap storage is right now, it’s a reasonable proposition. Just take a look at this 7200 rpm 640 gigabyte hard drive from Seagate. Three of those will run me $255 at Newegg.com, and set up in a RAID 5, I get data security and 1.2 terabytes of relatively zippy storage. That’s a frickin’ steal.

As for the rest of the machine, I’ll have more later this week. Mwuhaha!

I wanted to share a fantastic clip of Ira Glass (from the radio show, This American Life) talking about the early days of being a storyteller. It’s great inspiration for when you know you have a long way to go.

I also highly recommend the other clips from the series.

One more note, this time a quote from author Holly Lisle:

To keep working, to keep learning, and most of all, to keep writing—until goodness starts seeping into our pores through sheer bloody determined repetition.

From everything I’ve read, that’s pretty much what it takes.