Entries in Life

had a wireless card, but it didn’t work to well. She’d go up to our room (not more than 40 feet from the access point) and signal would die out. I had been playing with the idea of running conduit and wiring up the house with cat6. Then I came to my senses and bought a new router (the Linksys WRT54G which runs Linux) and some wireless cards. So, now the kids have my brother’s old desktop to play on and has a laptop that she can use to post to her openweblog account from our room. Usually when I buy something for the computer, complains that I’m wasting money. Not this time! She’s been writing up a storm and has posted some really good stuff including one post titled The Oldest Profession.

Joseph loved the the idea of reliquaries, the elaborate casing for the proof of corruption: bone, tooth, sliver of nail, scrap of bloody cloth. Jewels, gold, silver, then the window: peekaboo, the proof — all flesh is grass. No, worse, the saint is nothing but a bone, a tooth, a nail, a scrap of cloth. The embellishment is all. (From Pearl, by Mary Gordon.)

Pope John Paul has died and, in his effort to do “real reporting” and make enemies, Dave Weiner is trying to rip the Pope a new one. Dave goes through this every so often: See how real I am? I can’t spell and I piss you off! But these are breaks from the times that Dave spends wondering why he doesn’t get credit for RSS. Wake up and smell the roses! If you your goals include making enemies, you’re not going to get credit for everything you do. Conversely, if people respect you and admire you, they’ll embellish your accomplishments rather than detract from them. Soon enough, your minor contribution will become legendary. You’ll go from being just another accomplished person in the big story of history to a story all by yourself. That’s whats going on right now with John Paul. He did so many things for peace and freedom that they outweigh anyplace where you might disagree with his action. Since he focused on making peace instead of making enemies, they’ve already begun to embellish his legacy.