Archive for October, 2009
The False Security of Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is a necessary part of a complex society such as ours. To administer programs, whether publicly or privately, requires a lot of record-keeping and implementation of elaborate policies. The problem is that bureaucracies have an easier time growing than shrinking, and we need to constantly look for ways to trim the fat, continuously. There is an an analogy in [...]
Bad BIOS!
In my quest to get my motherboard (Gigabyte S-series GA-MA790FX-DS5) to wake-on-LAN, I tried upgrading the BIOS from Gigabyte’s download site from version F6 to version F8F. Bad idea! After the upgrade, the system would sometimes reboot spontaneously. This seemed to happen with more resource-intensive processes. The Gigabyte support folks were not really helpful (they just told me to check the cables), and, indeed, [...]
Looking back on a marriage
Music I heard with you was more than music / And bread I broke with you was more than bread
Thus did Hugh Franklin propose to Madeleine L’Engle, beginning the union chronicled in Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage, book four of the The Crosswick Journal series of L’Engle’s autobiographical writings. This [...]
What’s in a marriage?
We just returned from our first wedding since we ourselves got married a year ago. The groom and bride are pretty awesome people: geeks, fans of the outdoors, interesting and engaged in the world. We were glad to be part of the community witnessing their vows. A highlight for me was the acoustic metaphor of how each one is an [...]
Short Story Delight
Sometimes I get so caught up on things I have to do or want to do that I forget to read. When I do read, I seem to be turning more to non-fiction than anything else (who would have guessed?), so that when I do finally remember how much I enjoy narratives, they come as [...]
