GRABBINGSAND

It took all day. It cost me much sanity. It tried my patience. It questioned my viability as a geek. But I have prevailed.

The Specs:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• Motherboard: Chaintech VNF3-250
• Memory: Mushkin DDR400 512MB
• Harddrive: Western Digital 160GB SATA
• Video: Chaintech NVidia GeForce FX5200 256MB (transplanted)
• CD1: Asus 36x CD-RW (transplanted)
• CD2: AOpen 56x CD-ROM (transplanted – non-functioning)
• Power Supply: StarTech 480w Silent Power Supply
• Case: Silverstone SST-J02 Glacier Case

(And damn, is it fast. And a little hot too, so I’ll be getting another fan for it, but isn’t it just the prettiest thing?)

After a little thought, I’ve decided to go ahead and attempt the reading list. If you care to join me, I’ve pulled together links to purchase or otherwise acquire most of the texts. Some of them are a bit out of print and take some searching, others are beyond acquisition and still others just didn’t make the cut because of my own personal tastes (explained at the bottom of the list).

Be warned. This is a long, long list and I doubt I’ll survive even a third of them, but the trying should be worthwhile. Enjoy.
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In the summer of 1977, Allen Ginsberg (“Howl“) taught a summer course at Naropa Institute. The class was called “Literary History of the Beat Generation.” It has been posted to the Internet under the title “Celestial Homework.” As I read through the suggested texts, every other one makes me smile in appreciation, recognition or both. Andrew Marvell, T.S. Eliot, Jack Kerouac, William Butler Yeats, and on and on.

This just might become my reading list for Summer 2004.

[found on BoingBoing]

They miss you.

Unofficially, tomorrow is Carbohydrate Awareness Day. It is a time to reflect on what you’ve been missing, to celebrate the breading on life’s filet, to lounge between two comforting slices of goodness, to ease into the layers of this cake we call life. Sure, I know you’ve been working to trim those pounds, but one day’s enjoyment of a baked good won’t set you back too far, will it? Personally, I’m thinking that a mighty Krispy Kreme donut might be just the thing to counter-balance many days of meat with meat and a side of meat.

I was leaving my office on Monday and someone stops me. He says something about an article he read. “Read about your conservative college, man.”

What?

“Yeah, you went to Berry, right? I read about that gay-lesbian club being shut down by the school. That’s pretty harsh, isn’t it?” I thought he might’ve been talking about the PFLAG group that tried to organize shortly after I graduated in 1994. After the minor commotion caused by several of us participating in the Atlanta AIDS Walk that fall (the administration had issues with our t-shirts that bore the college name), people started moving in an organizational direction. I knew there was controversy, but I didn’t given it much thought at the time. I was trying to find work. There was no time to change the world I’d just left. And while I try to keep up with the goings on at my alma mater, time isn’t kind to reminiscing and every piece of mail I get from the college itself wants my money to fill the alumni fund.

So today, after the emailed urging of an old friend, I took a look at the AJC article in question. First of all, the AJC needs a serious registration overhaul. I shouldn’t have to go through so many hoops just to read a freakin’ article. Anyway. The link is here, but if you don’t feel like giving out your demographic info, just open up the rest of this post.

Long story short, my alma mater is behaving in a manner unfamiliar. Or rather, it is behaving in a manner parallel to the rest of modern-day America. This time, the group in question is called Listen and it’s purpose is to promote the discussion of gender and sexuality issues. It is not a collective. It is not an advocacy group. It is a group to foster discussion. This is key.

And yet, even after the group made it past the Student Life Council, the Board of Trustees said no. Why? I can almost comprehend the denial of an advocacy group. Almost. After all, Berry College is a Presbyterian-affiliated liberal arts college and therefore it would want to avoid any appearance of impropriety that might come from blessing a group that promotes an unpopular lifestyle. It is sad, but understandable. But this is a group that nearly seeks an open dialogue. And isn’t discussion and consideration at the heart of the college learning experience?

I’m unsure what to do. I know that I will not be sending any money to the alumni fund. It is bad enough that funds are being shuffled into a new sports complex instead of the kind of liberal arts facilities I so appreciated ten years ago.

I love Berry. I love all 26,00 acres of it. I love Stretch Road. I love the mudpit that used to be Victory Lake. The Old Stone Diary. The old ruined church in the woods. The Reservior. The House of Dreams. The deer. The turkeys. The scores of daffodils in spring. I visit whenever I can. I’m going to be married in Frost Chapel in October, just two months before the ten year anniversary of my graduation.

And I used to be such a promoter of Berry. “Your son or daughter is graduating high school? Well, let me tell you about Berry.”

But now… well… I guess the flowers are still pretty.

(If you are a Berry Graduate, please comment here with a means of reaching you by email. There is a move to make a display of support to the Board and/or the President of the College, but the numbers are just not on our side.)
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Pardon me. I just need to keep track of some links and this is the most convenient spot to put them. If you have any interest in installing Windows XP on a new Serial ATA drive, then feel free to click along and read. If not … well … look at this picture of a little red panda and have a nice day.

• Installing XP on an SATA Drive (Sudhian Forums)
• Slipstreaming a Windows XP Installation (TackTech)
• Windows XP Corporate Deployment Tools
• Downloads for Asus K8V Motherboard
• SATA on Chaintech NForce 250
• Windows XP Install with Extra Drivers (How-To)
• Prepping an Athlon 64 Mobo Install

(And all because I feel the need. The need… for hard-drive speed.)

And now, a break from the political activity afoot to lend an attentive eye to a few notable nominees. I love a good award show, I must admit, and there are two shows that get my eyes entirely every year. The Academy Awards? That’s one. The other is the Tony Awards broadcast.

I don’t have the budget or the time to catch everything that stumbles across the New York stage in a year, but still I’ve noticed a few nominations that deserve some new shelf decor. Avenue Q is up for best musical, and probably deserves it. I’ve already sung the praises for the cast album. The singing X-Man has been nominated for The Boy From Oz. Other nominees include Audra McDonald and Christopher Plummer and Alfred Molina… oh, and Mrs Huxtable, too.

Imagine this.

Let’s say that my nextdoor-neighbor has a sprinkler in his front yard. It’s automatic. For some reason, it always manages to pop up and start spraying right as I’m walking out to my car in the morning, spritzing me from head to toe. This happens two or three times. So I call my nextdoor-neighbor and I tell him that he needs to do something about his rogue sprinkler. I get up the next morning, step across the drive and … damn, I’m splashed again. Now, I’m fed up. Something needs to be done about that sprinkler, so I step on over and unhook it from the hose. I call my nextdoor-neighbor and I tell him that I have his sprinkler in my garage for safe-keeping. This upsets my nextdoor-neighbor , but I assure him that his sprinkler will be safe and sound until we get this whole situation straightened out.

What I failed to mention is that I left my nextdoor-neighbor’s sprinkler in the same garage where I keep Jimmy, my blue-assed orangutan with multiple personality disorder. Usually, I can trust Jimmy, but he has some days that are worse than others. Unfortunately, he finds the captive sprinkler on one of his bad days. The sprinkler is smashed with a hammer, used as a back scratcher, smacked like a puck and worn like a hat. After the day is done, it resembles no sprinkler known to man.

One of the neighbor kids manages to peek under my garage door to snap a Polaroid of Jimmy wearing the sprinkler fedora and he gives it to my next-door neighbor. My next-door neighbor is furious, speechless and indignant. Sure, his sprinkler had timing issues, but did it deserve fashionable repurposing at the hands of a primate?

Probably not. As much as the sprinkler bothered me, my next-door neighbor has been wronged. Such an event is beyond unfortunate and it is just not the way things are done around my house. An apology is certainly in order and I am the one to do it.

So I march right across the street to my other neighbor and I apologize to him instead.

“This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts… Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.”
– George Will, Washington Post (5/4/2004)

Way to go, George. Because it isn’t about liberals versus conservatives. Not anymore. This is about liberals and conservatives versus neo-conservatives, because there is left, there is right and then there is wrong.

I’ll make this brief. I forgot my allergy meds this morning, and that’s my own damned fault, so I’m not going to rail against anyone for the burning blaze across my eyes. I could point an accusatory finger at the trees, but they’re just doing what they do and who can blame them? Furthermore, I consumed too much caffeine last night at dinner (coffee) and after (Diet Coke), so I couldn’t slip into anything resembling sleep until the wee hours of this morning. Again, this is my own fault, so I’ll look to the mirror for the staredown. And hey, maybe I could’ve curtailed my virtual heroics before 11:30pm, thus allowing myself to relax a little before attempting to sleep through my aforementioned buzz. I could’ve done all of these things.

In light of this, I hope you can understand the nature of my simple and humble request on this 4th day of May. Please, for my sanity and your safety, if you are going to refer to me by name, do not call me Tom. My parents christened me with two syllables and I happen to like them both.

Thomas. Not Tom.

Thank you. Have a nice day.