All entries written in June, 2008
June 30, 2008 at 11:05 am · Filed under Announcements
That’s right! Seeing as this Friday is the Fourth of July, when even if I feel like working, you probably won’t be around to do any reading, I’ve decided to post chapter 16 of A River of Darkness on Wednesday, July 2nd instead. Be here!
And yes, this will be the last formal chapter of RoD. There is a Blood and Brotherhood epilogue coming next week, though, and I think you’ll find it interesting if you’ve been following the BaB arc. After that, though, it’s intermission time again, but there’ll still be plenty going on around here, I promise. Check back after the epilogue for full details.
June 29, 2008 at 11:07 am · Filed under Cast, Guys
June 28, 2008 at 11:22 pm · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
I’ll never forget the stretch of days in the summer of 2002 when my first truly personal computer arrived in boxes, smelling new and covered in thin plastic decals that reminded me of Colorforms. It was a Dell Dimension 8200, bought for me by my parents as a graduation gift and future college workhorse. It was also the most powerful, private and productive computer I’d ever worked with. It was my companion in my room at home, my friend in all the dorms I lived in at Bard, and my dependable game player and bookmaker in my New York apartment.
So, ceasing to use it (I was going to say “giving it up” but couldn’t bear to) was a hard decision to make. But I was getting worried…although the hard drive, as far as I know, was fine, I was constantly getting “Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low” messages, and important programs like Photoshop and Nero were running interminably slow. Luckily, I’d had another plan in place for some time–in the summer of 2006, I helped my sister customize a Dell XPS 400. She decided she didn’t like it and got a laptop less than a year later, which left the big, white-and-silver tower of the XPS completely unused. I asked her if I could take it, and she said yes.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been retrofitting and customizing the XPS tower to replace my Dimension 8200, and I am proud to say that I am making this post from a fancy-looking XP Media Center Edition window, using Firefox 3. If you’re interested in hearing more about my geeky journey, then by all means, click through.
Keep reading….
June 8, 2008 at 9:53 am · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
A few weeks ago, feeling nostalgic for my old home/college, I Googled the name of Bard and came up with this series of Gawker articles. It seems to be over now, but this archive contains six entries from what would appear to be, in Bardian time, the Fall 2007 semester. The author’s voice is that of the Bard-skeptical and occasionally self-hating pseudo-hipster that I didn’t like even when I was at Bard…we tend to be a little too hard on ourselves up there. It’s not like every Bard student is secretly a rich Manhattan socialite (frankly, I was never friends with anyone like that…well, maybe one guy, but I would hardly have called him my friend), and if you can come from that sort of life and still be liberal and concerned with things like human rights, I think that says something pretty good about you as a person, regardless of your circumstances.
So I recommend these articles for their brief look at Bard, odd perspective notwithstanding. I found them better for the things they indirectly reminded me of. Oh, and also for the comments–some of the comments are hilarious, ranging from the nostalgia of other Bard grads to the vitriol of those who think of Bard as just another playground for rich kids (which, again, I don’t think it is). The best comment came from someone who referred to the whole series of articles as “Whit Stillman’s Less than Zero Gossip Girls in the Rye.” I knew that was funny even before I looked up all the parts of it I didn’t understand (try Wikipedia).
