Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The more he watched churches, the more they seemed like living creatures with personalities. There were stone churches on the corners of older neighborhoods, some of them erected in the 19^th century. Their solidity seemed to transcend movement and change, as if ancient hammers had pounded them into place to keep the town from blowing away like a tarp in the wind." -- Real Live Preacher (Gordon Atkinson), 207-06-27 (RLP has a syndicated feed on LJ as preachermanfeed; I haven't gotten around to checking whether RSS feeds have already been configured at GJ, IJ, or Blurty)

"The more he watched churches, the more they seemed like living creatures with personalities. There were stone churches on the corners of older neighborhoods, some of them erected in the 19^th century. Their solidity seemed to transcend movement and change, as if ancient hammers had pounded them into place to keep the town from blowing away like a tarp in the wind." -- Real Live Preacher (Gordon Atkinson), 207-06-27 (RLP has a syndicated feed on LJ as preachermanfeed; I haven't gotten around to checking whether RSS feeds have already been configured at GJ, IJ, or Blurty)

Brief thunderstorm, dropped the miserable temperature four or five degrees F, made lots of noise ...

And in the one strike that made things flicker, every device I've checked so far[*] came through without a problem, except one:

The file server rebooted. I'm running the fsck script now. (*taps foot impatiently*) The bedroom Linux box doesn't seem to have been affected directly, but suddenly any app that was touching a file from downstairs became unresponsive.

I'd been meaning to stick a UPS on the file server the next time it was powered down for any reason. I just hope the scavenged UPS that I plugged it into a few minutes ago is in good enough shape to do the job.

(This is a mere annoyance, not a Real Problem. I just find the notion that the only machine at all to hiccup was the one that all the other boxes complain about not being able to find.)

[*] I haven't checked the clocks on the VCRs yet, nor tried to ping my housemate's computers. But I do expect the file server to turn out to be the only device that glitched.

[Make that a nine degree drop in temperature -- it continued to fall after I'd posted this. Much less miserable now.]

Brief thunderstorm, dropped the miserable temperature four or five degrees F, made lots of noise ...

And in the one strike that made things flicker, every device I've checked so far[*] came through without a problem, except one:

The file server rebooted. I'm running the fsck script now. (*taps foot impatiently*) The bedroom Linux box doesn't seem to have been affected directly, but suddenly any app that was touching a file from downstairs became unresponsive.

I'd been meaning to stick a UPS on the file server the next time it was powered down for any reason. I just hope the scavenged UPS that I plugged it into a few minutes ago is in good enough shape to do the job.

(This is a mere annoyance, not a Real Problem. I just find the notion that the only machine at all to hiccup was the one that all the other boxes complain about not being able to find.)

[*] I haven't checked the clocks on the VCRs yet, nor tried to ping my housemate's computers. But I do expect the file server to turn out to be the only device that glitched.

[Make that a nine degree drop in temperature -- it continued to fall after I'd posted this. Much less miserable now.]

Something somebody else wrote in a locked entry, about really Not Wanting To Know About It if any of their friends thought a certain act was acceptable, reminded me of something I know I've mentioned in several places in the past but don't recall whether I've written about in a blog entry here:

As far as I can remember, only one movie has ever given me nightmares. When I was a child, and already a voracious reader, my parents thought I should see a movie that was coming on the television. I didn't completely grasp the plot until I read the book when I was a little older; I found some parts confusing at the time. But the most important images and the basic idea stuck with me and gave me nightmares for the next several nights running.

Most of you have probably already guessed: the movie was Fahrenheit 451. I would wake up in terror from a dream about either being arrested for trying to extinguish burning books, or being thrown on a pyre of books. Or of being restrained, weeping, forced to watch books burning. <<shudder>>

I have enough trouble dealing with the notion of books being burned or buried in a landfill because they're unsalable excess from way too large a print run, or because they're damaged beyond the point of salvage, or because smebody's freezing to death and the books are the only fuel available. Those scenarios make me twitch uncomfortably. The idea of burning books because one disapproves of their content, or trying to eradicate all copies of a work, is right out. I'd have to agree with that other blogger in saying that's a squick.

This isn't connected to anything in particular except, as I mentioned at the start, having been reminded of that movie by what someone else said about the unacceptability of burning books.

Something somebody else wrote in a locked entry, about really Not Wanting To Know About It if any of their friends thought a certain act was acceptable, reminded me of something I know I've mentioned in several places in the past but don't recall whether I've written about in a blog entry here:

As far as I can remember, only one movie has ever given me nightmares. When I was a child, and already a voracious reader, my parents thought I should see a movie that was coming on the television. I didn't completely grasp the plot until I read the book when I was a little older; I found some parts confusing at the time. But the most important images and the basic idea stuck with me and gave me nightmares for the next several nights running.

Most of you have probably already guessed: the movie was Fahrenheit 451. I would wake up in terror from a dream about either being arrested for trying to extinguish burning books, or being thrown on a pyre of books. Or of being restrained, weeping, forced to watch books burning. <<shudder>>

I have enough trouble dealing with the notion of books being burned or buried in a landfill because they're unsalable excess from way too large a print run, or because they're damaged beyond the point of salvage, or because smebody's freezing to death and the books are the only fuel available. Those scenarios make me twitch uncomfortably. The idea of burning books because one disapproves of their content, or trying to eradicate all copies of a work, is right out. I'd have to agree with that other blogger in saying that's a squick.

This isn't connected to anything in particular except, as I mentioned at the start, having been reminded of that movie by what someone else said about the unacceptability of burning books.