The Current State of Affairs

Ours has become a world of hand-helds; Americans have a portable device for everything (in some cases everything in one). Look around your public bus, or metro train. You'll see music players the size of your thumb, phones with cameras, keyboards, or on rare occasions phones that are nothing but phones, to name a few. But now what do we have to complement our devices? The OneTouch. A diabetes monitor that comes in several designer colors to match your lifestyle. This is a world where the so-called "Diseases of Civilization" have become so commonplace that testing our blood sugar levels is as convenient as checking your e-mail, or sending a text message. Let me say now that I'm glad they've made it so easy for diabetics, like my mother, to monitor their levels, as they have enough to worry about already. But things have gotten out of hand.

Is the solution throwing out everything in the refrigerator containing High Fructose Corn Syrup? Apparently last night I thought so, which is why this will be my last post for a while, as I am now grounded from using the internet. I need to work on my bouts of mania, perhaps.

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I might be lying.

My Triumphant Return... in reverse.

In the tradition of several other posts, I once again am announcing my return, but this time from the other side of the picture. In approximately one month's time I will be heading back to Boulder for a few weeks, in order to make my final farewells before I embark upon my new journey. While I'm there I hope to take a trip on the scale of last year's Southwest Canyon tour, this time northward to Yellowstone, et al. You can expect a few more posts once that happens.

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See you soon.

On second thought.

You might recall several weeks ago I complained of my annoyance with the new computerized system the Howard County Public Library had been using, in which I would have to reserve any popular books I wanted ahead of time. I of course was being whining and unwilling to use any effort whatsoever to find a free copy of Eugenides' Middlesex. I still think there current system of check-out is needlessly complex and biased towards families without computers at home, but I must give them kudos for an number of other things.

1. They have free books.

2. They're organized with a numerical system that can be deciphered with help of the automated card catalog.

-These are characteristics of any modern library. We can take them for granted, so I ought to have not even brought them up.

3. Since 2006 HoCo has used Ubuntu Linux within its servers and allows vistors use of a number of open-source programs.

If ever there was a truly practical use for open-source programming, here it is exemplified. The severely underfunded HoCo Libraries (yet one of the best funded in the country) decided they'd rather not pay out the ass for buggy and proprietary copies of Vista. They're still paying for it, but at a fraction of the previous costs for what I believe to be better resources. Read up on it if you'd like the exact numbers.

...finally 4. Despite my inablity to find two or three books I wanted back in February, they have an reasonable collection of Noam Chomsky, with whom I plan to be better acquanted with by summer's end.