“I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”
C.S. Lewis - Introduction to "On the Incarnation" by St. Athanasius
12.20.06
Posted in Irritation at 5:45 pm by Adam B.
Anyone who knows me knows that I hate pirating. By pirating I am mostly referring to the practices of using illegal software and downloading illegal music, and only slightly referring to the practice of running around the world on ships looking for loot and treasure while eating eggs and pickles and saying “Aurg matey.” In one sense I am equally opposed to both, but seeing as everyone uses software illegally and only a few true pirates still exist, of which I personally know none, I tend to voice my opposition to the former piracy more than the latter.
Even though I hate using illegal software I hate, almost as much, spending a ton of money on software. It annoys me that I should buy two copies of Microsoft Office if I have two computers at home and may occasionally want to use it on each. Some software companies are more generous than Microsoft and they allow you to install your software on multiple computers if you will only be using one at a time. That makes sense to me, but in the end I still have to fork out the money for the software.
Enter Open Source. Open Source is a licensing standard built on the notion that software should be free. Why programmers buy into this idea I’ll never know, but being a non-programmer myself I like it. All Open Source code is available to anyone to download and change as long as the software they create is also Open Source. The finished product can be downloaded by anyone and used for anything (unlike Student licensed software that cannot be used for commercial purposes). Since its conception scores of programmers have jumped onto the Open Source band wagon and a lot of great software packages have been developed. Listed here are the few I use on a daily basis.
FireFox
FireFox is a web browser built on the old Netscape browser code. They tightened it up quite a bit and made it a lot faster. Since it is not made by Microsoft it is not integrated into Windows so it has fewer virus threats than Internet Explorer. In addition, FireFox has a huge user base that writes plugins for it. The two plugins I use most give me the weather report on the bottom of the browser and an icon that I can click that will use Internet Explorer to browse if a page isn’t setup for FireFox. There are plugins for everything and they work great.
ThunderBird
ThunderBird is made by the same people as FireFox. It is an e-mail client like Microsoft Outlook. I have it setup to check my three different e-mail accounts (including my yahoo and hotmail accounts – this is done through a user generated plugin) and it keeps track of all the blogs I read. As soon as I get an e-mail, or a blog I watch gets a new post, I get a message from Thunderbird (also enabled through a user created plugin) that alerts me. It works perfect.
Gimp
Gimp is designed to rival Photoshop. Since the digital photo market is developing so quickly right now I must admit that Gimp is probably about 2 years behind. Even still it can open and save Photoshop files and it has all the basic and many of the advanced tools that have made Photoshop the standard. It is a little tricky to learn, but then again so is Photoshop. It is designed to be a professional photo editor so it is high on power and speed, but low on user friendliness. It has two major shortfalls. The first is that it cannot open the RAW files from professional cameras. This has been alleviated by a programmer who made the UFRaw utility. This is like a plugin (it can also stand alone) to Gimp and it can open all the standard RAW formats. This has helped me put off Photoshop for at least another 6 months. The second problem is that it only works in 32bit color and everything now is in 64bit (I think – maybe it only works in 16 and everything is now 32). I don’t know what kinds of problems this creates, I suspect it just doesn’t have the full range of color. I have used Gimp since college and it can still do everything I need.
NVU
NVU is a web page creator. It is not as powerful as Dreamweaver, it is more like Microsoft FrontPage. It builds basic web sites intuitively without any knowledge of html. When I was writing a help file for my last job I used this program for everything. NVU and Gimp together give you everything you need to create a web site and images from scratch.
WordPress
WordPress is one of a host of Open Source web utilities. It is the program that generates and upkeeps this blog. It has a lot of features and, like everything open source, tons of great plugins. The way the comments post on my page was setup using a plugin. I think that web tools are the strongest open source category. I have seen Open Source programs successfully used (by myself or people I know) to build a web shop, a discussion forum and, as I said, this blog.
Open Office
Open Office was originally Star Office Suite by Sun Microsystems. I suspect they could not compete with Microsoft Office so they went open source. What that means for us is an entire Office Suite for free. They have been continually updating it and adding features so it can still do everything you would typically use Word, PowerPoint, Access, or Excel to do. It can open and save all the Microsoft formats so you do not lose the ability to send and receive files from the unconverted. Since this was originally a consumer product it has a great help file and it has been very stable for me. They just released Open Office 2.1 this year and it has all the features I was looking for that almost tempted me to upgrade my Office 97 to Office XP. Since it is free I have it installed on everything I own so I can easily transfer files between all my computers and work wherever I want.
If you are using pirated software give these a try, especially Open Office. They are better for your wallet and your soul.
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12.11.06
Posted in Irritation at 11:15 pm by Adam B.
When you take her order at Starbucks, don’t give her a complimentary shot of espresso. When she smiles at you in Olive Garden, don’t leave a 20 dollar tip. Don’t let her cut in line at the DMV (Secretary of State), don’t pay her toll on the highway and please, please don’t throw your coat on the ground when it rains. But you ask me, “Why not offer appreciation for the ecstasy excited by a nameless beauty?” Fool. You are making it harder on the rest of us. Beauty seems harmless from a distance, yes, but get too close and you will find a ravenous beastie. No, beauty itself is not the terror, nor the direct cause. It is the unregulated idiocy of men that is to blame. What is a girl to think when a smile will earn her more in goods than an hour’s wage? In a world where charm is more valuable than wit and garment more honored than words there is little one can do but take advantage. “The rules do not apply to me” becomes their motto.
Be afraid, you who bow before the goddess and offer trinkets for her every glance. Stand in terror for one day she may work for you. She may wonder and complain that you expect the same from her as from everyone else. Through a fierce gaze she will command the world and they will turn against you, you and your unorthodox fairness. You alone, through the piercing stare, will see hollowness and condemn yourself for your former longings. May your best friend never date her, may your boss never hire her. Girls, heaven help you should she move in with you. Flee, run to the hills bags unpacked. Live in the shaft of a volcano if you must, it will be safer. She is a queen without a country, but demands loyalty and service just the same. The world is her kingdom and her solitary gift for all its labor is light reflected off her perfect form. “More than enough” she thinks. She will hate you for mere common courtesy, equality in any respect is step down for her. You will forever clean her dishes, curb her dog, pickup after her parties and still she will hate you for the audacity of sharing her air.
Pity the pretty face. Since she owns the world any kindness is taken for granted. She cannot receive love because everything is already due her. Since she is only respected for her beauty she only respects those who are beautiful. True friendship is unknown for she has not been taught to value anything in herself worth giving away, and she has not the wisdom to discern selfless affection in others. She is unteachable for she already knows the answer to everything: a sultry smile, a tight shirt and just the right perfume. In all things she is stagnant and with every passing year she slowly ages away into everything she hates. There is no life past 40 for the pretty face except to raise more pretty faces to infest the world.
“I will resist her” you think. A noble thought. Beware, she may find you intriguing. Perhaps her soul is not so dim to find reality when it walks up and says, “you’re shallow and self-centered.” If you capture her attention do not despair, you are but a passing fancy, your depth will soon wear her out. But if you dare I offer this solemn warning; she is trained in nothing else, and I mean nothing else, but the art of captivation. Few can resist captivity for long for all men are weak. While generally dim-witted she is a genius of the senses for she has studied nothing else. With a simple word, gesture, touch, she will send your senses into a comatose state making you dizzy and oh so happy. Her complete lack of general utility proves her expertise here. Had she been forced down a more difficult road to satisfy her needs for food, clothing, etc., she, like every other person, would have adapted. Not the pretty face. With beauty as her solitary tool she has crafted her entire world, she needs nothing else. Nothing, that is, as long as men like you and I venerate.
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11.16.06
Posted in Irritation at 1:01 pm by Adam B.
When I moved to Portland I knew about all the waterfalls, and the pretty mountain views. I had heard about the rain and the darkness and the fact that people get offended if you look at them funny. What I didn’t know was that people out here drive like freaks. I grew up in Milford, MI so I am familiar with driving in suburbia. I went to school in Chicago and learned to cope with crazy city drivers. But even with all my trips across the country I was totally unprepared for Portland’s madness.
I know that everyone at sometime or another has been distracted when a light turns green. In Portland, however, this is no rare occurrence. Several times on a normal day going to and from school I will hear other drivers honk to signal the man on the starting line to start his engine. But this is only the first of several peculiarities.
The most irritating thing about Portland drivers is that they always pull out in front of you. I will compare this to my Chicago experience even though the comparison might be a little unfair because I am talking about highway driving in Chicago and city driving in Portland. In Chicago I got used to getting cut off on the highway. This might sound irritating but cutting off people is a virtual necessity of switching lanes. If someone gives you enough room to squeak your car into the next lane you take it. In Portland there is no such need. I do not live in downtown Portland so the only heavy traffic is during rush hour. I could cope with someone pulling out in front of me then. Oddly enough during rush hour most drivers are strangely are courteous so you do not need to butt in to get onto an adjacent street. No, the only time someone will pull out in front of you, forcing you to slam on the breaks, is when you are the only other car in sight. And everyone here drives the same. They will inch out past their stop sign as if they’re looking both ways, and then go anyway. You might think that in such a courteous town they would at least accelerate quickly, but no. It is as though they imagined a sudden emergency that is alleviated as soon as they are in front of you.
I hate to complain about other drivers, honestly, but the consistent insanity warrants it. In a city that has a rainy season you would think that the drivers would get used to driving in the rain. Again, no. Whenever it rains everyone drives 10 under the speed limit already set low at 35. Madness. And to top it all off they frequently run red lights, not in busy traffic of course but often enough that I have seen it done several times in just three months.
So, last Friday I was driving to a friends birthday party and it was raining. Traffic was slow as usual and I was contemplating this as I pulled up to a red light. This intersection is busier than most and I knew it would be a little while before I could go. I needed to make a right turn, but there was enough traffic that I would have to wait for the light to turn green. As I watched I saw the cross traffic slow and their light change to red in the reflection on the traffic signal. I turned to look at my signal waiting for it to turn green. As soon as it did I looked to my left and and one of the cars that I watched stop decided to run the red light. “Typical,†I thought to myself. I was making a right turn into a two lane street and the violator was in the second lane so I watched him as I turned to make sure he did not drift into me. Chrissy yelled out “Adam†and I turned to acknowledge that I had seen the violator when I saw a man spinning to avoid landing on the hood of my car. Between the rain and my meditations on the driving habits of my fellow men I completely forgot to look out for pedestrian madness. We have all three forms of chaos in Portland: driving, pedestrian and biking. Needless to say when I saw the pedestrian hastily avoiding pain in the form of my car I slammed on the breaks. He spun to Chrissy window and she opened the door to make sure he was okay. He was young, like us, and nice enough considering the rain and the fact that I almost ran over him. We made it to the party and had a great time.
In the future I’ll try to complain less about how people drive in the rain.
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