Exhausted Capital

"Truth Should Not Be Heresy", you tell me, last words of the vampire, crafting words into a dagger, a spiteful blow from the dying. A confusion from a fading mind, falling ice phoenix, ideas that leave streaks of blood. Soothing hands reach into the memory, untie the strange knots, healing itself an instrument of destruction.

My laptop's death is accelerating -- the case is literally falling apart. Yesterday, I noticed that the left hinge plate was separated from the rest of the case and would not go back down -- when I attempted to reseat it today, some parts of the plastic and metal from the hinge fell out, broken. It appears that I literally cannot afford to not order the new laptop as soon as it is released -- with the hinge being as it is, I can no longer reliably type on my laptop and each time I open it, I worry that it will not close. The system has served me well, and hopefully will soon live tethered as a desktop.

PUSH, the skeptics/secularhumanist/atheist/agnostic group that I put a lot of effort into pulling together is failing, and may not last the end of this academic year. Despite our best efforts, it's proven fruitless to advertise to get new members, and the regulars are, as semesters and years keep passing, moving on. I'm reaching the age where I don't feel comfortable with the age difference with undergraduates -- I think I'm slowly reaching the age where I'm likely to make the next generation uncomfortable with my continued presence. Our president is asking around for advice from groups on how we can get more people, but there's a very real chance that the group will dissolve soon, and even if not, I don't think I can be a regular part of it for much longer. This makes me sad, but there are things we've done, memories we've built, conversations we've had, all of which are good things that I do not regret.

A joke..
Q:What is it called when a really vain person gets circumcised?
A: A hu-bris!
(groan)

Speaking of laptops, for work, I ordered a Dell Lattitude D610, and was disappointed to find the video on the thing, especially when the external monitor port is involved, is really crappy. Switching to mirroring mode caused the thing to flicker, blank, and do some ugly intermediate transformations for about 15 seconds before it did the right thing, and even setting *that* up was tricky and stupid -- the display control panel is mostly ignored, and the only way to configure the thing is to use a custom intel chipset control panel. I don't think I'm going to order one of those again.

MP Galloway is making news again -- he's flying back to the United States to hold a debate with a US Senator on issues relating to Iraq. I don't know if any of the corruption he's been accused of is based on anything or if it's partly/entirely political fabrication, but I respect the stands he takes and his gusto in backing them up.

The middle east continues towards peace and sanity, eh?

Actually, I'm looking at AMD's list of laptop vendors with their chips, and there are some interesting systems that, while not being 17", are still good enough deals that I may consider ordering them instead.

I asked someone I was interested in out to dinner recently, but she wasn't interested. I'm happy that I can make an effort to start friendships or relationships (hard to tell which might've happened without it having happened). Can't win them all, I suppose.

I think I've learned recently that I am a very unforgiving person -- when I make a negative judgement on someone, it takes a *lot* of things to happen for me to be able to revise that -- it's easy for me to write people off. Somehow that doesn't bother me much.