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  • A Retreat, Then An Advance

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    19  82%  21%  omph ENE bar29.90  windchill19  Winter

                 Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    A DVR.  Hadn’t planned on getting one, but the hdmi connection with the TV demanded it over the HD converter box alone.  Surprise.  I like it.  Already I’ve taped two movies, Cronicas and Killer of Sheep.  When I’m watching a movie, I prefer to start at the beginning and the start times of movies often don’t conform to my schedule.  In the past I would check the replay schedules and try to find a time that worked or I’d skip it.  Now I can press the record button and the DVR records the movie and I can replay when I wish.  Kate’s also used it to tape a TPT series, Jewish Americans.  Guess you never know.

    No more tours until March.  I have ten days before I go to Dwelling in the Woods, days I’ll use to finish the garden planning, edit my sermon for Groveland and produce a 1-page Transcendentalism for Brights, work on my new novel and a short story.  Also, I’ll do the various pre-trip preparations like stopping the newspaper, the mail, reserving a ride on the Airport Shuttle, packing. 

    Also have to plan a one-hour presentation to the brothers, something I want to share with them, a passion or a part of my life right now.  Could be anything.  We switched to this format last year and we liked it.  The way we’d done it before involved a focus on a theme and a common thread in what we presented:  Fathers, Mothers, Death, Myth.  Last year we had a theme, Darkness, but the suggestion was to present the theme in a creative manner.  I chose a ritual of darkness which involved reading poetry excerpts (Dover Beach, The Night by Rilke, Stopping by the Woods on A Snowy Evening that sort) and, in a room lit only with candles, extinguishing a candle with each reading.   This year, don’t know yet.


    GeekWorld Travel Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Yearning for a Time Already Lost

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    1 71%  17%  0mph SW bar30.36  falls  windchill1  Winter

                Full Winter Moon

    Bill Schmidt commented on the last post, asking how I interpret the data in the box.

    My reading of this data is that enactment of stimulus packages can be taken as somewhat reliable indicators that a recession is over, not starting.  I say somewhat because, though I see no data here that contradicts that statement, attaching cause and effect stretches the data.  Even so, it seems to me that history teaches us that recessions strike before any can diagnose them (see my late post on January 17th) and that this data suggests that by the time national concern, especially at the legislative and executive levels of government, reaches an ignition point for action that the recession is either behind us or on its last legs.  That said, everything I can see for 2008 suggests a rocky road, but that is not inconsistent with a recession troughing and beginning to ease into a recovery.  As Captain Piccard used to say, Let it be so.

    Watched Rambo II tonight.  Yes, it’s my shadow side, or the side of me that doesn’t get enough real life action, whatever, but I did get a wonderful metaphor from it near the end.  Rambo, of course, gets routinely shafted by the gubberment and this movie is no exception.  Before he leaves on his mission, he’s shown the very latest in technology that exists just to back him up.  At the end, after defeating everybody (Russians, Viet Cong, American Bureaucrats), he goes into the room with a 50 caliber machine gun on one arm, a magazine of shells draped over his other and blasts all the technology.  We could call it rage against the machine or, the man of action versus the man at the computer console, a not unfamiliar theme in today’s movies.  I read it as a contemporary John Henry fable, much the same as Gary Kasparov against Big Blue.  The common thread in all three is that they yearn for a time when particular human skills had not been mechanized or programmed.  The most important point of all three is that they yearn for a time already acknowledged as lost.

    Also, Rambo says, I don’t know whether it’s original though I doubt it, “To win at war you must become war.”  Or, was that the Italian Stallion?


    Cinema and Television GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • OMG! Bush Lied!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -1  72%  18% 0mph W bar30.10  steady windchill-1  winter

                           Full Winter Moon

    I now have sound going from the DVR/Cable box to the receiver and the 5 speakers.  I also have sound going from the new Blu-Ray DVD player to the 5 speakers.  This is close to total success, but I still have two hurdles remaining.  I have not been able to get any radio signals yet, in spite of connecting the antennas and I have not run the test microphone which will balance the speakers.  Still, I feel largely done with this project.

    In order to get Blu-Ray quality movies you have to get Blu-Ray discs.  Not cheap.  I watched one this evening, Beowulf and Grendel.  This movie takes a spare approach to the story and gives a backstory for Grendel.  It is gorgeous, shot in Iceland by an Icelandic director.  I liked it a good deal, though I’d not heard of it.

    The big screen, HD TV setup came from my love for movies.  This is a stunning way to watch movies at home and, with the surround sound, surprisingly close to the cinema experience.  Movies are as important to me as literature, music and the fine arts.  I’m glad to have this way to view them.

    Now:  It can finally be said.

    “WASHINGTON (AP) – A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

    The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.”

    The life and times of celebrities must be difficult.  Heath Ledger’s death today, whether suicide or accident (and I would wonder if accident isn’t suicide by another name), puts another name in the column of this felled by fame.  To those in the limelight all the time there must be a moment when you either choose life or choose self-destruction, a decision many of us face only obliquely, perhaps at the dinner table.


    Cinema and Television GeekWorld Politics 📎and tagged

  • BMI 25.1, Blood Sugar 98. Yes!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    22  82%  28%  2mph NNW bar30.06  wincdhill21  Winter

                Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

    These next three weeks are, on average, the coldest weeks of the year.  I’m glad to see them come.  I love the snug as a bug in a rug feeling of very cold days, work I love and a home place to do it.

    Weighed in this morning.  My BMI is now 25.1 and my blood sugar is 98.  I’ll continue on with the nutrisystem at least for the rest of this month, then I’ll have to have a good maintenance plan in place because I will head off for the Dwelling in the Woods, then 3 weeks in Hawai’i.  Hawai’i should be ok because the fish, fruit and vegetable type menu is common there.  It would not be the same if we were headed to, say, England or Austria.  I feel good about this effort so far.  The challenge now will be a healthy long term eating plan, one I strayed from too far for too long.

    Still no joy on the sound system.  I had the DVD player sending signals through the five speaker set up, so I know I have them connected and working.  When I exchanged the Toshiba HD DVD player for a Panasonic Blu-Ray player, however, I eliminated the sound success I had made.  Since I won’t get the Blu-Ray until next week, I don’t know yet whether I can convince it to communicate with the speakers.  I know, right now, that the coaxial cable I got to connect the DVR/HD box to the receiver did not produce instant results.  Sigh.  I may have to talk with the folks at Ultimate when I go in to pick up the Blu-Ray.  This is part of the learning curve, less steep now than when I opened the first box, but steep enough to block my vision so far.

    Today is more work on the Faery Tale and garden planning.  This is the work I love.t


    Faith and Spirituality GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Has Your Light Gone Out Yet?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  72% 27% 1mph N bar20.68 steady windchill32  Winter

                        New Moon

    Simplicity.  Ah.  About two hours ago I called Comcast to activate the new digital box I got downstairs because the old one, according to Comcast, was a non-responding box.   So, I call this guy.  A disembodied voice that asks me all the usual questions:  phone number, address, name, size of my boxer shorts and my ring finger.  As he talks, he says he’s aboot got my account up. 

    I say, so, you’re in Canada.  Yes.  I am.  How did  you know?  An o or two that stayed longer than usual for my ear.  Oh.

    We talk about Stratford and his fiance and how they want to go their once.  How Chatham, where he lives, has just had a remodel.  He thinks it will become an art city like Stratford.  Then he sends a jolt to my box from Chatham, Ontario.

    It should go out.

    It hasn’t.

    I’ll send another one, a stronger one.  This from a guy in Chatham, Ontario.  He’s communicating directly with my TV converter box.

    Still not out.

    Well, wait about 20 minutes. That should do it.  If it doesn’t, just call back.

    It’s not out yet–an hour and a half later.  So, I’ll call back. Talk to someone else in Chatham.  Start over.


    GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Yes, You’re Right. It’s Hillary, not Hilary.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    12  86%  28%  1mph NNE bar30.09 rises windchill9  Winter

                          New Moon

    If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I’ll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.

    First, an apology to the Hillary Clinton campaign.  My chief proof reader (Kate) caught me in theft of an l from Hillary’s name.  Sorry about that, Hill.  Her win in New Hampshire should sharpen up her campaign and her campaign presence, just as it will do the same for Obama’s.  Both of them need to move a little more to the left for my tastes (ok, a lot more.), but their eventual campaign against the Republican, whoever it will be, will be stronger for having had to clarify their identities and stances.  This is what the primary season does, when it works properly, and, much to my surprise, it is.

    One small step for technology this morning. Kate wants to see a documentary about Jewish Americans broadcast this evening while she’s at work.  I went into the dvr menu, found the how to record stuff, clicked a couple of times and we’re ready.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but, geez, it seemed easy.

    The weather has turned cold again and I’m happy.  As if to underscore my let winter be winter and spring be spring attitude, we had a series of January tornadoes that reached as far north as Milwaukee.   This seems to define a world out of joint, whether climate change or bad luck.  Get out that book of Job.  It’s the only way to deal with this kind of random nonsense.


    GeekWorld Politics Weather +Climate

  • Coming Down off a Techno High

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    30  96%  30%  omph WSW bar 29.85 rises windchill30  Winter

                         New Moon

    Watched an HD movie tonight:  An American Haunting. Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland and James D’Arcy provided the core of a good ensemble cast.  This movie tells of the Bell Witch, an early 19th century century haunting in Adams, Tennessee. There is a cottage industry of folks who believe, including debunkers of other believers.  A bit like a snake biting its own tale.  The book An American Haunting: The Bell Witch recounts the supposedly true events which ended in 1821 with the death of John Bell.  The movie suggests incest, but fails, at least to my satisfaction, to link it to the strange occurrences at the Bell House.  Here is a website with further information.

    Feel like I’m coming down off a techno high, a sort of cyber electric dream occasioned by optical cables, coaxial cables, HDMI cables, speaker wire, subwoofers and high definition televison.  Alice could tumble through an HDMI cable into a virtual wonderland, I have.  This is an enchantment of sorts, and as such it must be encountered with awareness, not naivete.

    Hey, how about that Hilary, huh?  Coulda fooled me.  Looked like Obama was a shoe-in in New Hampshire.  Just what this means for the race is anybodies guess right now.  I love it.  Real candidates in a real horse race.  Jockeying for position, fighting over the issues and over how to organize campaigns for types of candidates who’ve never run before in this serious a manner.  This is (to use a much abused phrase) a historic moment for American democracy.  It can be a time when we win back the world’s admiration if we allow ourselves to enter the process without cynicism.  Hard, I admit, but possible and desirable.  Imagine a campaign about real politics and not weirdo ideologies.


    Cinema and Television GeekWorld Politics 📎and tagged

  • Can You Hear Me Now?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  72% 28% 0mph WNW  bar29.83 rises windchill32 Winter

                     New Moon

    Inching closer.  I now have sound through the av receiver and into the surround sound speakers from the DVD player.  That’s a step in the right direction.  But.  After I plugged in the HD box from Comcast, I noticed it has coaxial outlet–coax to coax on the AV receiver.  That would be the coax cable I returned this morning.  Hmmmmmm……  So, maybe one trip.  This is a lot like plumbing except I don’t understand plumbing.  This I get; it’s just more complexity than I’ve dealt with for awhile in terms of externals like wires and connections.

    Took a nap, feeling somewhat refreshed.  Gonna workout now.  Faery and the Gunflint Trail has become a fascination to me, carrying me places I didn’t know existed.  Which is the fun of writing. 


    GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Lovecraft Meets Sigurd Olson

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    39  74%  29%  0mph NNW  bar29.59 steady 39windchill  Winter

                   New Moon

    New technology takes some time to absorb.  This setup has optical links, which I’ve never used before, and the cables I have don’t work with the receptacles situated on the DVD player, TV and audio receiver.  So, back to Ultimate Electronics.  Then, since I’m using an HDMI connector with the cable HD service the box Comcast has with the HDMI cable is the DVR which costs more.  Of course.  And so on into acronym chaos.

    As luck would have it, however, the Woollies meet in Minnetonka tonight at the Istanbul Bistro.  The route to there from here takes me both both Comcast and Ultimate so I should have all the supplies necessary to put this puppy to bed by tomorrow.  The speaker connections are all in place, the subwoofer is ready to woof and I’m ready to hear the damn raindrops.

    No joy on the Asia tour as a result though I do have a plan:  faith traditions of Asia.  I’ll hit the Ghandara Buddha, the Mandala (tour requested), Poet Contemplating the Waterfall, Confucius, Kuan Yin, Pocket Buddha, Jizo and the Divine Rainmaking Boy.  

    The Gunflint story progresses nicely.  Sort of HP Lovecraft meets Sigurd Olson.

    Kate’s off today.  Nice having her around.  She’s finishing up the second curtain for the living room, a red brocade with a pale gold dragon fly motif.


    Art and Culture Family GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Lashed to the Mast

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    31  91%  29%  omph WSW bar29.75 rises windchill31  Winter

                                 New Moon

    There is something seductive about the large screen TV experience, seductive in an Ulysses lashed to the mast sense.  The visual image is close to movies in a theatre, though not the same.  Hard to describe, but it makes me want to keep watching.  I don’t like this part of it and will have to pay attention so I don’t fade into the couch and become one with the fabric.

    On the other hand the picture is fantastic.  The set has so many different bells and whistles that it can accomodate different formats with ease and its easy to use.   Well, sort of easy.  I’ve still got the manual to read.  RTFM as my cello playing significant other in law likes to say.  The HD DVD player upconverts and it does make non-HD DVD’s look great, not HD great, but crisp and clear.  Since DVD’s are my main interest in the large screen, not sports (though I do watch football if the Vikings co-operate and win games), this set will take my interest in cinema to a different level.

    I’ve gone down two belt notches since the middle of December when Kate and I started Nutrisystem.  I’m already scanning for maintenance after we finish with it at the end of January.  At the end of twenty-eight days I’ll get on the scale and take my blood glucose.  I expect both will show positive trends.  It’s the blood glucose level I really want to manage; so if it’s down, it will be a great reinforcer for maintaining a lower weight.

    The New Year has begun well: some weight loss, workouts going well, writing in the AM underway with a good story happening, the new TV, the video calls with the kids and plenty of snow.  That last, unfortunately, has melted some over the last couple of days.  I hope we get some more snow soon. 

     Asia tour work tomorrow, finish the speaker setup, work some more on the Gunflint Faeries.  Good night and good luck.

                           -30-


    GeekWorld General 📎and tagged