Friday I went to Dupont for work. It was a beautiful, beautiful day. On the way back on the plane I could see Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood all at once. It was amazing and awe-inspiring.

Saturday Marie had a booth at the Medievel Faire at Pacific University. PU is in Forest Grove, a little town about 20 miles east of Beaverton. Forest Grove is a really charming little town, and PU is one of those stereotypical small liberal arts schools. It really looks like a dreamy place.

Today was an absolutely beyoooootiful day! It was so uplifting to be out in some sunshine. I took a trip up to Vancouver to skate, and I was blown away by the views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, still snowcapped. Vancouver is also a hot destination for me since it's the home of the nearest Wienerschnitzel! I'd not been to a Wienerschnitzel since I left Tucson, and I was really jonesing for a chili-cheese dog. Ahhhh, it was soooo good!

Happy 80th birthday Queen Elizabeth!

When I read stuff like this, the 1/4 of me that's English feels a distinct twinge. I'm proud to be an American (where at least I know I'm free), but England (really, more, the idea of England) is a grand and glorious thing.

Happy Easter!

I just got home from the Easter Vigil at my new parish, St. Cecilia's. It was a glorious celebration -- 2.5 hours long, 11 baptisms, 23 confirmations... the music was wonderful.

It was the first time since... 1993? that I was "just" a member of the congregation. It felt strange, and made me very homesick for SSPP. To hear the Litany of Saints and not be the one singing it... to not have a role to play, and to not be surrounded by the people I'd come to know so well at SSPP... it made me very sad. Perhaps, though, it's good for me to be humbled in this way, and to remind myself what it's really all about.

I had to go up to Dupont, WA yesterday for work (up and back), then got home just in time to barely make it to Holy Thursday Mass at St. Cecilia's.

It was a beautiful Mass. The church was jam-packed; the music was beautiful; it was good to be there. After Mass the Eucharist was removed to the altar of repose, across the street in the parish center. I stayed for a few minutes to contemplate my life and thank God for the many ways He's blessed me, and to ask for His help and guidance.

Here's a cool article about Condi Rice, amateur pianist. It's always encouraging to see people of importance who value and love music.

Thanks to Catholic Light for the link.

Help For We Crafts-Challenged

Just in the nick of time, help for those of us who are just plain bad at arts n' crafts. Fish Eaters has a handy diagram (scroll down) explaining how to make your palm into a cross. I'll have to give this a go as soon as I get home.

"All New"

Just a brief rant -- why do TV show previews say "all new"??!! Why not just "new"? Are there some airings that are not "all new" but are "partly old"? C'mon, really!

Ed Peters has a really good post about the current brou-ha-ha that I'd missed with the SF City Council's anti-Catholic resolution. Check it out. It's ironic and rather amusing that a group that undoubtedly prides themselves on their "tolerance" are so intolerant of others' religious beliefs.

Eeep! My car is in the shop today. My clutch has been acting very alarming -- very squishy. If I'm lucky it's just in need of a good bleeding of the clutch master cylinder. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if my master cylinder is leaking. I just pray I don't need a whole new clutch. This one only has 50K miles on it and I wouldn't have thought it would need work. This stuff makes my stomach churn -- it's really hard to wait for the phone call letting me know just how much it's going to cost when I'm sure it's likely to be a lot more than I really can afford right now. *sigh*

Random techie/geek stuff --

• An interesting article on the Ph.D. glut. A lot of what North says is definitely true in my experience. I have a number of friends who went through grad school; most of them were frightfully smart but maybe 50% are actually in tenure-track positions at universities. An acquaintance got her Ph.D. in astronomy and is now in aerospace; another took 12 (!) years to get his Ph.D. in physics and is now working at Raytheon. The list goes on...
• From Slashdot, a cool discussion about this article on Intel's new Core architecture. I work at Intel but I don't work on this stuff and I don't have any inside info (couldn't share it if I did, anyway). I just find it fascinating how much CPU architecture has advanced. I took an architecture class in 1984 or whenever, and a year's worth of parallel processing architecture in 1994ish. This stuff is just... out there. Sheesh.
• Also from Slashdot, more discussion on Apple's boot loader that lets you load and run Windows on Intel Macs. There are a lot of interesting ramifications of this... will Apple sell more hardware from people who want cool, stylish, well-built Apple hardware to run Windows? Will people make use of this cool technology to use virtualization to run Windows AND Mac OS at the same time?
  

Java 1.5 for FreeBSD!

Wooohooo! The FreeBSD Foundation has finally managed to make a certified compatible Java implementation available, running on FreeBSD 5.4 and 6.0. This is going to do great things for FreeBSD.

I've been watching the CNN special on the last days of John Paul II. It's very moving. I was especially struck by the interview with Francis Cardinal George, where he describes how the cardinals accompanied the body of the pope down into the crypt where it would be buried. Here is a prince of the Church, an accomplished man, and yet when he describes that moment, he tears up and almost can't go one for a moment. It made me tear up, too, as I remembered that time, and how blessed we all were to have lived in the time of John Paul the Great.

Here's the text once again of then-Cardinal Ratzinger's homily.

Happy April Fools Day!

On Thursday we Intel-ites were greeted with a wonderful early April Fools joke on the company intranet -- A match made (only) in cyberspace. I have to admit it took me about 3 minutes into the video before I figured it out. It was good! I really like that even a big company like Intel can have fun in this way.

I guess I'm still asleep at the switch -- apparently Pope Benedict has renounced the papal title "Patriarch of the West". See Edward Peters's excellent commentary.

I was reading an article about persistence in prayer, and I recalled that tomorrow is the anniversary of Terri Schiavo's deathmurder.

I, like many at St. Blog's, prayed and supported Terri's fight. Nevertheless, despite the prayers of so many, she died. It's easy to be discouraged at such a horrific outcome, and to wonder whether God is listening, whether God heard our prayers or not. After all, so many worked so hard, and her family and friends suffered so much, seemingly to no avail.

I became convinced, though, that it wasn't for nothing. Terri's suffering and that of her family and friends will make a difference, I think. The extraordinary (and truly unprecedented) lengths that so many went to to try to save her life would not have happened were it not for prayer. The public visibility and the questions and discussion that were sparked will, I'm convinced, be used by God for His means in the long run. It's up to us who remain to be faithful, to continue to pray and to work.

I was in a bookstore on Tuesday night and saw, on the same table, the Schindler's book about Terri and Michael Schiavo's book. What a strange juxtaposition! Fr. Frank Pavone has written a very moving open letter to Michael Schiavo. May God have mercy on Michael Schiavo; I pray that he will repent of his actions.

Happy Birthday Jeanetta!

A happy birthday to the lovely Jeanetta, who turns the big 2-4 today! Sheesh J, yer gettin' old! :-)

I got to see "V for Vendetta" on Friday with Marie ... it was fun, albeit a bit too reminiscent of "1984". Check out the Wildcat's review -- 'Vendetta' brings summer fun in spring.

Bwahahaha! Check out this series of emails between an incompetent city manager and CentOS tech support. I found this particularly amusing since I just installed CentOS 4.3 (which rocks, btw) over the weekend and enabled Apache so I saw the test page myself.

Thanks to Slashdot for the link (see the Slashdot discussion as the geeks rip this guy a new one).

A nice article on Yahoo on Pope Benedict's first consistory.