The Weak in Review 


  •     "Very special episodes" are the worst.   The term usually signals that some dumbass sitcom is going to try to be dramatic and profound.  I remember a year or two ago when they were advertising a "very special episode" of Home Improvement where the parents think one of the punk kids has cancer.  I think it turned out that the kid just had a goiter, and granted goiters are pretty funny, but all in all, if you tuned in expecting a sitcom, you probably didn't get what you came for.   The Cosby Show used to do the same thing when it would preach about Theo getting caught with a joint or Vanessa coming home drunk.  I miss the days when sitcoms were sitcoms and child actors did their drugs off the air.  Gilligan used to ingest all sorts of mind-altering stuff that he found in the woods, but you never saw The Skipper sitting him down for a heartfelt talk about the perils of substance abuse.   Gilligan would go off and eat some berries that made him see everything upside down and at most The Professor would warn that "there's no telling what the side-effects could be", whereupon Gilligan would question the credibility of a guy who's always standing on his head, and that would be that.   But, these days, every jackass seems to want to try to make a point.

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  •     A recent near-death experience of sorts has caused me to consider my mortality.   I hit the power button on my computer and it never booted up.   It was old.  The hard drive just gave out.  It doesn't bother me so much that my computer is broken:  there are millions of computers and hard drives more or less just like mine on this planet.  The only shame is that there were ideas stored on that hard drive that will never realize their potential.  They  were stored there day after day on the principle that tomorrow is going to be the same as today.  And tomorrow is the same as today, day after day, until one day your hard drive just doesn't boot.  Ideas that could have been a web page or even a t-shirt come "tomorrow" suddenly cease exist.  Henry Miller wrote, "I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live- if what others do is called living- but to express myself.  What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had stifled every day in order to live.  Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no importance to me, never has been, but that today even, after years of effort, I cannot say what I think and feel-- that bothers me, that rankles."

    •         I have long said that education is for suckers, and today I understand why.  Life isn't about taking what's outside your head and putting it in, its about taking what's inside your head and getting it out.  You will never complain that your hard drive died when it was only half-full, but if it dies before the data on it has been published, printed out, or even backed-up, that will bother you-- that will rankle.
     
  • What's inside my computer?

    •   Surprisingly, lots dust and lint, even more than you'd find in that screen below the dryer door.  You might think that I'm exaggerating just to cause a stir, but its absolutely true--  if I didn't know better, I would think there were animals living in there.  I guess what they say about clams is also true of computers-- they filter all the crap out of their environment and keep it--  plus they're both really hard to pry open without breaking.
     
  • What's not inside my computer?

    •       One screw and one metal thingy, which I guess didn't do anything since they're on the kitchen table and I'm typing this (four days and $26 later, my computer now works).

    Archive:
    Weak in Review 02/07/00
    Weak in Review 01/06/00
    Weak in Review 12/20/99
    Weak in Review 12/1/99
    Weak in Review 11/4/99
    Weak in Review 10/18/99
    Weak in Review 10/05/99
    Weak in Review 9/07/99
    Weak in Review 8/03/99
    Weak in Review 7/26/99
    Weak in Review 7/12/99
    Weak in Review 7/05/99
    Weak in Review 6/20/99
    Weak in Review 6/02/99
    Weak in Review 5/19/99

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