Blink! (M. Gladwell)

The Tipping Point was already a real pleasure, and (I won’t make you wait for the verdict) Blink! is even more coherent. Malcom Gladwell, well respected author for the New Yorker, decides to go out and explore the power of intuitive thinking. Unlike his first big success, this book talks about one thing only, and succeeds in captivating with concrete examples. Of course, this captivation is entirely of desire: we want to be dazzled by our own ability to understand things we can’t possibly understand, and now we have a logical reason to do so. Continue reading

2006-05-29 Kalani Lava Hike

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Loser

See, it wasn’t too bad that I didn’t get to take a lot of pictures last time: nothing happened at Hau`Oli in the past two weeks. Brad must have forgotten to show up, must have given up on the house, and now I have to figure out who is going to do the remaining little pieces. There is a bunch to do. To get through final, I suppose: One or all of the bathrooms have to be tiled The door handles have to be put on The doors to the lanai have to be lockable To get the house through a clean appraisal: Continue reading

Running with Scissors (A. Burroughs)

Renowned because of the shocking content, this book was an excellent follow up on Frey’s {moscontentlink:A Million Little Pieces}. Another crazy autobiography, this time of the kid of a psychotic mother who is brought up by the crazy family of the mother’s shrink. Now, the premise sounds interesting, and there are lots of sound bites and stories that are captivating and novel. The mother will formally hand over guardianship over her only son to the psychologist; the psychologist’s family is as crazy as any of the patients; and the little kid discovers at 13 that gay sex is not all what he thought it to be. Continue reading

The difference between cats and dogs

Stolen from one of them funny sites… DOGS DIARY… 7 am – Oh boy! A walk! My favourite! 8 am – Oh boy! Dog food! My favourite! 9 am – Oh boy! The kids! My favourite! Noon – Oh boy! The yard! My favourite! 2 pm – Oh boy! A car ride! My favourite! 3 pm – Oh boy! The kids! My favourite! 4 pm – Oh boy! Playing ball! My favourite! Continue reading

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

There is this entire new world of movies from star novels that is happening these days. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and now The Da Vinci Code. What do they have in common? Well, in all cases there was a huge fan base of the novel that needed to be satisfied, and hence the movies are a lot like the books, without the wanton changes that are so typical of movies in the past. Continue reading

A Million Little Pieces (J. Frey)

James Frey is an addict. A multiple addict, doing anything from alcohol, crack, PCP, and a dozen other illegal drugs. He seriously screws up his life, almost dying from an overdose, and is sent to a treatment camp. Here he will do well. All in all, the book is a champion of the ability to get better. It reads like one way of getting rid of addiction: by confronting it. I wonder how many of the readers that actually face addictions actually have followed the advice in the book – regardless, the history is well told and eminently readable. Continue reading

Almost Done

Let’s abandon the bullet points… Despite missing his deadline again, and for the third time, Brad actually did a heck of a job and is completing the house. I was pleasantly surprised when I came in, and everything looked in place. Doors are hung, Lights are in place. The plumbing works (although it needs the generator to run, and I haven’t figured out yet how to run that stupid engine). Continue reading

Setting the CUPS admin password

You can get to the CUPS admin page by connecting to http://localhost:631. But if you want to do anything useful, you have to present your administrator password. Who’s the administrator? root of course.What’s the password? Well, you have to set it to whatever you want. To do so, go to a root shell and type: lppasswd -a root Enter a password, and that’s what you use in the CUPS screens.

2006-05-12 Visit

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