Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

I've resisted saying anything about the tragedy at Virginia Tech since there's little I can add that will shed any light on the darkness that seems to lurk so close to the surface of our lives. Then this morning I read what Paige Patterson had to say about the subject. In case you don't follow the tawdry world of the current Southern Baptist Convention, you may not recognize the name. After being part of the gang of thugs that hijacked the SBC in the 1980's for the sin being too Liberal ("liberal" and "Baptist" are two words one seldom see in close proximity to each other), Paige was rewarded with the Presidency of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. After eviscerating it, he took on the Presidency of Southwestern Baptists Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, turning a once respected part of the community into a local embarrassment. In his personal site , he opines that if only a few of the students had been willing to charge the shooter...

How much longer is this farce going to continue? Last week when appearing before the Senate, Al Gonzales became the latest in a long string of sufferers of ARFS (Acquired Republican Forgetful Syndrome). One representative excerpt: "Senator, I have searched my memory. I have no recollection of the meeting." I'm surprised he could even remember his name. His performance was so embarrassingly bad that he's even lost the support of Senate Republicans , who really wanted to be able to say, "He's not so bad." But gosh-darn it, he was . Like a house-guest who's clearly overstayed his welcome, Al Gonzales doesn't have the grace or sense to know it's time to leave. And GWB, Decider in Chief, doesn't have the brains or cojones tell him. Newsweek reports an unnamed White House adviser says the President is afraid this will " embolden the Dems to go after other targets—like Karl Rove. " I got news for him...the Democrats will require no emb...

I took Friday off so I could go to a writer's conference. Other than the fact I'm Directionally Challenged (I got lost in North Richland Hills, for pete's sake) and showed up late, it was big success. The speakers were uniformly good: interesting material, well-presented. Plus several literary agents led sessions ("How to write a query letter") and did one-on-ones with folks. While I didn't actually make it in time to do a formal one-on-one, I did manage to parlay my skill for off-the-cuff tech support into a chance to talk up my nearly completed novel while helping one of the agents with their new laptop. How much this eventually helps me remains to be seen, but it certainly couldn't hurt. Novel: now in the midst of Draft 3. No longer embarrassingly amateurish. I've gone so far as to start plotting Novel Number 2.

My youngest just turned 16. We stood in the doorframe so D could mark our height and compare. The verdict? He's now as tall as me, and not just almost. After verifying, he generously pointed out I still outweigh him by forty pounds. Ouch.

I love Skype but the Powers that Be decreed that we could not install it on our company laptops. Okay, for once I'm not bitching since from an IT perspective I can understand the reasoning behind the decision. Not so much that Skype is inherently insecure but that anything that opens up the company network is a security issue. Still, it's a pain in the ass, since there are times when it would be nice to have it available. This week, for instance, when I'm on the road. I found out it is fairly easy to set up Skype to run off a USB flashdrive, using instructions from www.gruups.com/usbskype . The same instructions appear at www.von-phone.com/portable-skype.php --don't know who was the original author. Download Skype and install it on any computer. Find the Skype.exe from where it was installed. (Usually C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe ) Copy the Skype.exe file to any directory on your USB Drive In that new directory create a directory called "data...