Recent dealings (old LiveJournal post)

No update in a while, so ...

1) If you say that Clinton's My Life has 1000 pages (pretty close to that), then I'm 28.6% of the way through right now.  I'm about to shut off the computer and read for the rest of the night, which means that I may even be over 30% of the way (35%?) done by the night's end.

What this means is that I'll finally give Gavin a real idea of what I think about the book.  Right now, I'm still going towards good - the beginning was uncomfortable (the voice he used) but when he gets into politics it's quite good.  I've marked a number of passages that I've found to be noteworthy, so if this continues, I might just bump it up to great.  Both 'ratings' assume that you like Clinton.  If you don't, you might find his <em>experience X taught me to do Y when I was in Z office/president</em> to be a bit much (?).

2) I won a date with hottygothgirl, although I would have lost if Gavin would have shown for the second part (I only won the first part because I got the answers I didn't know from him).  Unfortunately, that's another reason I have to get my butt up there (unfortunate because long distance trips have ended horribly for me this summer, and because it's going to be difficult with me moving both my mom and myself - luckily ...)

3) I should be able to move into my new place on the 1st, which isn't as early as I would have hoped, but is nonetheless two weeks earlier then I/we need to be out of our current place.

4) I picked up a copy of The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler.  It's an out of print hardcover that I picked up for $10, plus .55¢ tax.  Wikipedia linked it to Ghost in the Shell as a reference, and there's a good deal of how it appears to argue a structuralism point of view.  Since I'm sick of the excessive Descartian notion being the fore-front philosophical perspective in movies, I figured it would be a good read.  I'm planning on doing with this book what I've done partially with other books - do a chapter by chapter analysis.  Since it's OP, since 1990, that either means that it's going to be reprinted soon or it won't be reprinted in a while.  Either way, I should definitely take a careful look at this tome.

My sister actually found it in Paul's Books (off State St in Madison), so that was good.  It was over in psychology, which makes sense reading the publishers perspective and the various cover texts (as in the text on the actual book's cover), but I initially thought philosophy.  Ah well.

Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_in_the_Machine

You'll note that if I was able to create a chapter by chapter look, I would be the only link on this page ...  Hmm ...  I still have to Google the necessary phrases to verify that this topic is indeed fairly rare (which would be great if it were).

Anywho, I'll be reading this starting right after I finish My Life. I've been reading at a good clip, so if I limit my Internet usage, I should be able to start on Koestler before August (boy, would that be great).

5) I've been quite sick these past couple of days.  In about a day and a half I went through a box of Kleenex (sp?).  Anywho, I think it's just a bad summer cold.  I was almost at flu level yesterday, until I went to my mom's to sleep in A/C (or is it AC?).  I'm not over it yet, but, I'm at least feeling better.  Luckily I had asked off for today a number of weeks ago, just because.  Unfortunately, I was planning on doing some cleaning/packing at my mom's.  Ah well.

 

I'm sure there's more, but at this point I'm giving up and turning off the comp.  I'll be using it limitedly over the next couple of days, as I've got two eBay auctions I've won / am probably going to win (one of each obviously - the one is sitting at about $2.50 and I've got a max bid of a good deal about that - solid win for me, and I won't have to wait too long for it to ship if it stays below $11 total ($5 shipping which is what everyone charges for small items these days ...)).

That's it, or all that's fit for print.  I'll be checking on the LJs I check on, and then off goes the comp.

~Jk