For Kimberly

In Kimberly's recent post, "You Gotta Love Paul and His Sentences," she suggested writing out the sentence from verses 3-14 of Ephesians 1 "if you're bored someday, or want a challenge." I decided to give it a whirl. Not having done any diagramming in well over a year and a half, I'm not sure I got everything quite right; however, I don't really care. It was a fun late-morning activity, and I present it to you, my audience, now in all its black and white glory:



I'm not sure how much that will make you understand the sentence structure, KJ, but feel free to study it all you like. :)

Someone get a senator on the line, quick!

Washington ought to pass a law against poorly manufactured technology. It causes so much hassle.

On the night of Saturday, August 11, I purchased myself a brand new desktop computer: a Compaq Presario with 2GB of RAM, a DVD-RW DL drive, 250GB of hard drive space, and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ dual core processor, for those who understand such specifications. It also came with a 19-inch LCD monitor and a printer, and it runs Windows Vista Premium. I like it very much.

Don't worry: I plan to clean my desk this week!!!

As I was adding some of my music to this wonderful new piece of technological equipment Friday morning, I was surprised by the computer crashing.

"That's odd," I thought to myself. "Brand new computers with Windows Vista and such fancy specifications as this computer has are not SUPPOSED to crash, at least not before they've been purchased a full week."

I restarted and continued with my work - at least, I tried to. It was not fifteen minutes before the computer crashed again. In fact, it continued to crash every five to fifteen minutes for the next hour while I ran diagnostic tests of every variety (Compaq desktops with Vista have a LOT of diagnostic programs). Well, I was running a test on the memory in my computer when suddenly - pffft. The whole machine breathed what appeared to be its last and lay lifeless on my desk. No matter how many times I tried to resuscitate it with the power button, all my efforts could elicit were a few mournful beeps. I was sad.

I called the computer hospital (a.k.a. HP support) and explained the situation. (Oh, another law should be keeping Spanish speakers from operating English support lines. I had to ask the support guy to repeat himself so many times that it was not even laughable.) To make a fairly long story short, he figured out that one of my memory cards was bad. I took the bad one out, and voila! The computer roared back to life, and all was well.

All, that is, except for that I now have to wait for a box to arrive; then I have to send my PC's bad memory away; then I have to wait for another box to arrive; then I have to put the new memory into my PC. THEN all will be well. But all this hassle could have been avoided if it were not for POORLY MANUFACTURED TECHNOLOGY!

Judd Gregg? John Sununu? I DEMAND a change!

Oh, and while you're at it, enact a Comprehensive Rebate Reform Bill, please. Thank you.

Sincere Flattery

Have you ever thought about how easy it would be for someone to impersonate you on Blogger? I mean, the sign-in is quite secure and everything, so your blog is safe; but what about your comments? It occurred to me a while ago that anyone can easily impersonate a blogger on comment pages that allow the "other" option. Just look up the impersonatee's profile link, type it into the webpage box, type their display name in the top, and presto! You have a comment that looks completely authentic. So if your best friend comments on your blog to say they hate you, or if someone you admire calls you fat and stupid, or, for that matter, if someone who is usually vehemently nasty says something unequivocally nice, you might want to take it with a grain of salt.

This danger is not limited to Blogger. Did you hear about the lady whose house was put up on Craigslist as having a free moving sale? I think I read about it in World magazine, but it might have been online. Anyway, she came home and found her abode in complete disarray, with most of her belongings AWOL.

Stories like that, combined with good old logic and common sense, have convinced me to take all my comments with ample grains of salt.

For instance, should I receive a comment on this post from Ryan saying something like, "You stupid, fat, bucket of lard! I don't see YOU making any high school Soccer teams! I am so much better than you! Hahaha!" I would not be mad at Ryan because Ryan is too nice to say something so degrading. I would simply think, "Some weirdo is impersonating Ryan on my blog." Then I would sigh and forgive that person because of the wonderful spirit of kindness that is deeply ingrained in my personality.

Self-Analysis

Have you ever felt that your life was monotonous but at the same time not wanted to do anything about it? Have you wanted your room clean but not wanted to clean your room; wished something exciting would happen but not been especially active in bringing anything exciting about; felt that you really should be doing so much more but at the same time felt utterly apathetic? Have you sat for minutes at a time just looking at all the work that surrounds you, knowing that it must soon be accomplished, reminding yourself of the time, and making lists of what else needs to be done, but quietly refusing to apply yourself to the task?

Because that's how I feel right now.

The Wind

Today's weather has been rather too hot and humid for my taste, but as evening approaches, things are starting to cool down and a delicious breeze has picked up. There is almost no sound I prefer to that of the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. Right now especially, it reminds me of the approach of another cool, crisp, beautiful New Hampshire autumn, and that makes me very happy indeed.