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Love Is A Battlefield...
...and I really love going to war.
The urge to get up on a soapbox has been pretty strong for the past couple of days. I've seen religious people go "This is auto-erotic spirituality and people who do this ARE NOT CHRISTIANS." I've seen people go "We're friends with hated people, so let's be martyrs about it!" I've seen people go, "All religion is stupid bullshit and people who practice it are stupid bullshiters." And so forth and so on. I keep thinking, "There has GOT to be something better in your life to do than to go around screaming about how everyone but you is wrong. Really. So why don't you go and do some of that stuff? Preferrably far away from me so I won't have to hear any lapses back into mindless, petty hate that you might have."
So of course, what do I do first? I bitch about it in my LiveJournal. Way to bring the cycle around, Dave-O.
I would also like to discuss hypocrisy, and how really, we're all hypocritical about some things in some way. Almost always. The trick to not being so pissed off when you see hypocrisy in other people (because you'll always see it in other people) is to first recognize it and accept it when you're going that way. I mean, not carte blanche "Let's be hypocrite assholes!" permission, but just being able to realize when you hate something in others you have in yourself. We're all capable of double standards, and recognizing them is a very big step towards not taking yourself quite so seriously.
So yes, stuff like that.
The Linux box is doing a few odd things, and I'm not sure what it's all about. The other night GAIM pushed me off and wouldn't let me back on (it could've been the network) and now all the icons on my desktop seem to have disappeared. I think it's actually just the computer being tired (running out of RAM and cache and stuff?), so I'll turn it off before work today.
Work is going surprisingly well! I'm mostly caught up on books by now, and I can actually start the little projects that just might make life easier. We've gotten a ton of new shelf space, mostly in the duplicate area, so I can start moving sections around to give others room to breathe. This'll give me a chance to straighten and check to make sure all the dupes we have in back are also on the shelves, which'll give me even *more* room and a chance to straighten the actual section. So, I'm happy. I also get to re-install Windows on the work computer, which should be more fun than I can handle on Sunday. :P I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the book inventory program we use in 98 will work in 2000. So far, there's no reason to believe it won't.
Went to see Robert Redford speak for free at the University last night. You would think that a guy who's best friends with a guy who saves the world through salad dressing would be more interesting, but alas, he was not. He showed up 30 minutes late (we grumbled, but hey, it was free) and the faculty they got to interview him, while probably a nice guy, asked him really soft questions, let him ramble about the answer for say, 10 minutes at a time, then closed it off with some of the lamest comments ever. The gem of the night: "There are global warming deniers, you know, just like there are Holocaust deniers." Way to help the left-leaning dispel the notion that we're a bunch of melodramatic sensationalists, Mr. James Lipton. I really hope you don't teach physics that way. :P
Overall, everyone seemed a little bit too star-struck to actually make things interesting and meaningful; the question and answer period was full of questions like, "What would you say to local artists who want to use the power of art to transform the world?" and "What can we do as individuals to save the environment?" and "Help us give our local leaders what for!" Maybe it was that Mr. Redford was exceptionally uninspired to be there, but he gave the common stock answers that *every* activist celebrity gives when they're asked the same exact questions. After ten minutes of this, we decided to leave, glad we didn't pay to see it. I think it was the fact that he was a half-hour late to an hour-long lecture that made me irreconcilably snarky about the whole thing.
The urge to get up on a soapbox has been pretty strong for the past couple of days. I've seen religious people go "This is auto-erotic spirituality and people who do this ARE NOT CHRISTIANS." I've seen people go "We're friends with hated people, so let's be martyrs about it!" I've seen people go, "All religion is stupid bullshit and people who practice it are stupid bullshiters." And so forth and so on. I keep thinking, "There has GOT to be something better in your life to do than to go around screaming about how everyone but you is wrong. Really. So why don't you go and do some of that stuff? Preferrably far away from me so I won't have to hear any lapses back into mindless, petty hate that you might have."
So of course, what do I do first? I bitch about it in my LiveJournal. Way to bring the cycle around, Dave-O.
I would also like to discuss hypocrisy, and how really, we're all hypocritical about some things in some way. Almost always. The trick to not being so pissed off when you see hypocrisy in other people (because you'll always see it in other people) is to first recognize it and accept it when you're going that way. I mean, not carte blanche "Let's be hypocrite assholes!" permission, but just being able to realize when you hate something in others you have in yourself. We're all capable of double standards, and recognizing them is a very big step towards not taking yourself quite so seriously.
So yes, stuff like that.
The Linux box is doing a few odd things, and I'm not sure what it's all about. The other night GAIM pushed me off and wouldn't let me back on (it could've been the network) and now all the icons on my desktop seem to have disappeared. I think it's actually just the computer being tired (running out of RAM and cache and stuff?), so I'll turn it off before work today.
Work is going surprisingly well! I'm mostly caught up on books by now, and I can actually start the little projects that just might make life easier. We've gotten a ton of new shelf space, mostly in the duplicate area, so I can start moving sections around to give others room to breathe. This'll give me a chance to straighten and check to make sure all the dupes we have in back are also on the shelves, which'll give me even *more* room and a chance to straighten the actual section. So, I'm happy. I also get to re-install Windows on the work computer, which should be more fun than I can handle on Sunday. :P I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the book inventory program we use in 98 will work in 2000. So far, there's no reason to believe it won't.
Went to see Robert Redford speak for free at the University last night. You would think that a guy who's best friends with a guy who saves the world through salad dressing would be more interesting, but alas, he was not. He showed up 30 minutes late (we grumbled, but hey, it was free) and the faculty they got to interview him, while probably a nice guy, asked him really soft questions, let him ramble about the answer for say, 10 minutes at a time, then closed it off with some of the lamest comments ever. The gem of the night: "There are global warming deniers, you know, just like there are Holocaust deniers." Way to help the left-leaning dispel the notion that we're a bunch of melodramatic sensationalists, Mr. James Lipton. I really hope you don't teach physics that way. :P
Overall, everyone seemed a little bit too star-struck to actually make things interesting and meaningful; the question and answer period was full of questions like, "What would you say to local artists who want to use the power of art to transform the world?" and "What can we do as individuals to save the environment?" and "Help us give our local leaders what for!" Maybe it was that Mr. Redford was exceptionally uninspired to be there, but he gave the common stock answers that *every* activist celebrity gives when they're asked the same exact questions. After ten minutes of this, we decided to leave, glad we didn't pay to see it. I think it was the fact that he was a half-hour late to an hour-long lecture that made me irreconcilably snarky about the whole thing.