Category Archives: Personal

Life updates, reflections, and everything that doesn’t fit neatly into another category.

Pope Changes Rosary

Personal

From Christine: I was a little shocked when I first read this but after reading the articles I feel better about it. The Yahoo article presented the information strangely, highlighting a string of statistics and records, and I got the impression it sounded like the Pope is trying to make a name for himself.

I think the NYTimes article portrays things more accurately, and more importantly it also said what the changes would be, which I didn’t get from the first article. For more information you can go straight to the source, or here are some quotes that detail the changes

CNN—Until now the Rosary’s five joyful mysteries were recited on Mondays and Thursdays, the five sorrowful mysteries on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the five glorious mysteries on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The five new mysteries will be used on Saturdays, according to reports quoted by The Associated Press.

ABC—The rosary beads, which Catholics use to keep track of the prayers, will not change. The rosary will still consist of a cross and about 60 beads since only one set of mysteries is contemplated at a time and usually on different days of the week.

Irish Times—The Rosary developed in the Middle Ages from the Psalter of Mary, which consisted of 150 Avés (Hail Marys) said by those who did not have time to recite the psalms in full. Avés took the place of psalms and became a symbol of roses which the faithful wished to offer to Mary. This later became the Rosary.

Sante Fe—Each set of mysteries is dedicated to five particular episodes in the life of Jesus. According to the rosary Web site, the five episodes in the luminous mysteries will be the baptism in the Jordan River, the temptation in the desert, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, the transfiguration, and the triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

Secret of Age

Music, Personal

I’ve discovered the secret of growing old—subtlety. As I get older I find myself starting to really appreciate the shades of meaning in everything around me from art to architecture to music. Especially music. Truly great artists or groups that I may have appreciated only superficially before—Mozart, Radiohead, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane—I’m now beginning to appreciate with more depth. What’s beautiful about great art, in any form, is that everyone can appreciate it on different levels. At a symphony concert you might have some people just enjoying the atmosphere and letting the music wash over them, you might have a critic listening and comparing it to past performances of the same piece, you might have a musician listening intently to one voice, or you might have a composer listening to the intricacies on how everything fits together, point and counterpoint. Each is perfectly valid, and I think that each can enjoy the music equally, regardless of intellectual depth. By that same token I think younger performers who may be incredibly advanced technically oftentimes lack a depth of emotion that seems to only come with age; this is particularly apparent in jazz.

It’s not just applicable to art either, you could say the same thing about relationships, almost anything. Do any older more experienced people have thoughts on this? (Old = older than me) 🙂

Close Call

Personal

I had the biggest scare on the way to Psychology this morning: as I was driving on 610 South when I saw a police officer sitting on the side of the road. And it wasn’t just any cop car, it was one of the Camaros. So I naturally checked my speed, and then went on my merry way. Next thing I know, I see the cop whip out of the shoulder in the rear view mirror and head straight towards me. His lights were blinking and I was panicking and . . . he pulled over the person behind me. In hindsight it was actually pretty interesting to watch it happen, almost like something from a nature show. It was a lot like the lions that you see jump out of the grass and pick off a zebra from the pack.

Pun-A-Day #2

Humor, Personal

Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at them and says, “I’m sorry gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”

Thanks to Mike Wallace for sending me this current batch.

MySQL 4.04

Personal

MySQL AB never announces these things properly, so for those who are interested there is a new version of MySQL out, namely 4.04. Ironically, 404 errors is what I got when I tried to download it, as from their dozens of mirrors I could only find one, so I’m assuming this is hot off the presses. From the tests I’ve run so far there seems to be a very marginal speed increase over 4.02, but it doesn’t seem to have any of the terrible bugs that 4.03 had. 4.03 really should have never been released to the public. I found all the files I needed here.

Pun-A-Day #1

Humor, Personal

I’m a real sucker for a good pun, and I have quite a few saved up, some original some not, waiting for that one time where the opportunity arises to just zing one in there. I mean, how often do you get to say “The trumpets were lost at C!” (rehearsal letter ‘C’)?. Anyway, here goes:

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft; it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

Nice Breeze

Personal

It’s a really beautiful day outside, with just the right amount of wind and shade. It’s just warm enough in the sun to be comfortable, but not to hot to make it oppressive. Even though it feels like it might rain, my weather source says clear skies ahead, so I don’t need to stress again about weather or not I brought an umbrella :).

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

Southwestern Bell Trouble

Personal

For some reason my SWBell DSL can’t get to any of the sites on my server, or actually on my whole subnet. I can ping it from other sites though, and I’ve tunneled my connection through UH to bring you this wonderful update. Oh well, for all its faults, SWBell usually fixes things like this within an hour or two. But to those of you weren’t able to access the site due to your service provider, I sincerely apologize, and if you send me their name I’ll write them a letter. By the by, this box has now been up for over one hundred and thirty-seven days.

Whoops

Personal

To those of you, well all of you, who have been getting 403 Forbidden errors when you try to access this website, I sincerely apologize. I turned the site ‘off’ when I was upgrading the gallery to everyone but me, but since everything looked normal to me, I forgot to turn it back on. No need to adjust your set, everything should be groovy now. Thanks again to those who emailed and called letting me know something was wrong.

Lexus SC 430

Personal

I saw one of these on the freeway today, in “Absolutely Red.” All I can say is, I want one! Either that or a Mini. (A note on the Mini USA site, it’s one of the most usable flash sites I have seen. It lets you link to each page individually, and even has forward and back buttons. It still has non-standard interface chrome, which I tend to dislike, but it’s very well done. Cool.)

PalmTalk Today

Personal

Just a reminder for those who are interested, the pilot episode of PalmTalk is going to air Tuesday at 9:30 PM, right before the news. If you have Time-Warner cable it’ll be on channel 19, and if you have Phonoscope or TV-Max it’ll be on 71. Next Tuesday is going to be an espescially fun episode as well because there are all the new units coming out and we have also ironed out a lot of the technical kinks we had with the first filming. Now I just need to find someplace with cable so I can watch it!

Massive Site Update

Personal

Well, at about 5 earlier today the finishing touches were put on the curlyquotes module for Movable Type, and I began working on posting it. I had a 5:30 class though, so that put things off for a while. Then there was dinner, then some friends, then the phone, and more distractions (I mean that in the best possible way!) till about 11 p.m. By that time I had been thinking about it forever so I had some neat ideas about how to present things and integrate it into the site. Well, three hours and 1300 lines of PHP later, the site now has a Script section integrated with the new membership system. Whew, Talk about feature creep!

The best writing is rewriting, as is evidenced by the regex module reaching its maturity. The basic functionalities of the member and systems are in now, but watch for it to mature quite a bit over the next week or so.

Note to Self

Personal

Todo:

  1. Buy umbrella
  2. Check if it’s going to rain before I go out in the morning
  3. An active desktop item for this would be cool

That said, I do enjoy frolicking in the rain every now and then, but I have electronics to watch after! I can’t think about just myself anymore ;).