The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands

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(These 3 images are not exactly the images on my books — I bought mine all when they were published way back when…)

I had read the 1st four books in this series as they came out back in the 80’s and 90’s, and then stopped reading, deciding I’d wait until King completed the work and read them all together.

With my travel schedule the past few weeks (NYC, Chicago, SFO), I’ve had time to read the 1st 3 books in the series and have started the fourth…

Not many quotes from the 1st three — these are just “fun reads,” but there is this one:

“The prosaic fact of the universe’s existence single-handely defeats the pragmatist and the cynic…”

All in all, good reads, lots of action and excitement, etc.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Robert Heinlein.

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It felt good to read fiction again. It has been too long. 🙂 And it felt good to read Heinlein again. I went through a stage where I read a ton of his stuff, but his is one (I think) I missed.

This story has been mentioned as a classic for libetarian politics. Not much to say beyond that, and only a couple of quotes:

  • I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free becuase I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
  • Where do you start explaining when a man’s words show there isn’t anything he understands about a subject, instead is loaded with preconceptions that don’t fit facts and doesn’teven know he has?

For the 1st quote, I have been comparing that to “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” (Janis Joplin)

Love Quote By Heinlein

I can’t believe this is nowhere in my old reading notebooks or in the blog — I just searched around and could not find it, but here is one of my all time favorite quotes:

“Love” is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
-Jubal Harshaw, Stranger in a Strange Land

I was at a wedding last weekend in which the best man’s toast included this quote. The toast was probably the best I’ve ever heard, and of course I love the reference to this quote, as I always use it in my definition of love…

On a side note that made me chuckle, one of the guys on a table next to us said “Robert who??”

Sigh… Only the grandfather of SciFi…

The Well-Trained Mind (A Guide to Classical Education at Home)

Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise

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This is another book for the school, but also for personal use. It is geared towards home-schooling using the classical method, but I got it to help me better understand the curriculum our school will have, but also for some ideas we can do at home both now and in the future to supplement the school. I only read K-4 but will read the other sections more later when our kids are older and the school adds additional grades beyond K-4.

Recently Read Books

‘ve been really bad about posting anything on the books I’ve read recently, so I’m going to do a very quick mass post to catch up, which means I won’t be writing much about any of them at this point…

We are working on opening a Classical Christian School, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading in tht area. Wilson is one of the founders of Logos, and that is the real 1st school that started off this style of educaiton… Harsh Truth is a bit sensationalist and goes on and on in some areas where just a little info would have been plenty:

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We have looked at various real estate for investment purposes. The following is a good beginners book, to at least get an overview. But depending on what you want to do, you will likely want to read more in depth books on specific areas.wall.GIF

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Yes, I did read this again… After reading the Guidebook a few months back, I really wanted to read it again. Always a classic! 🙂

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New Windows XP install

A couple of months ago I decided to re-build the Windows XP Pro OS my Shuttle PC, as had been a long time, and I was having trouble sync-ing with my AppleTV. I kept a list of the things I had to do, especially the s/w that I use on an almost daily basis. I thought this list would come in handy the next time I install… I recently ordered an iMac, and I plan on installing Parallels with XP Home, mainly so I can run Quicken natively, but it’s also nice to have a windows box around to tinker with. So much of what is in the following list won’t be needed in that install, since I’ll have most of it native on OS X….
New XP SP2 build
—————-

1) Install all current drivers for the hardware that XP
did not have

Shuttle specific:
– graphics card (on MB)
– usb 2.0 host controller
– sound card

Other hardware
– Canon Scanner
– Logitech video cam
– Epson Printer

2) AVG Free anti-virus

3) Firefox for web browsing

a) Extensions

Fasterfox
Forecastfox Enhanced
TabMixPlus

b) PlugIns
flash

4) Thunderbird for email

a) Extensions

QuickQuote

5) Apple Software

a) AirPort utility for AirPort Extreme Base Station
b) Bonjour for printing to network printer
c) AirPort Disk Agent for access to network Air disk
d) iTunes for music
+ ilike sidebar to keep my stats up to date on ilike

6) Sharpcast for unlimited (paid) photo backup and cross
PC/platform photo sync’ing and sharing

7) Mozy Free for up to 2GB of free backup

8 ) EfaxPlus for fax viewing

9) trillian for instant messenging (aol, yahoo, msn, google, irc)

10) synergy for virtual keyboard and mouse sharing between two or
more computers

11) quicken for finances

12) Password Safe (pws.exe) for safe storage of all my passwords

13) skype

14) adobe reader

15) WinSCP
– and set up script to sync my internet server ( just
certain directories)

16) folderclone pro for backups

17) MS Office — tried to use google apps, but the track changes of
MS is a requirement… Maybe one of the open office packages
is compatible, but I did not have time to test…

18) GIMP — a free photoshop replacement that does all I need
and more

19) CutePDF, a free print to pdf driver

20 ) Picassa, for those things Sharpcast is not as good at… Such as direct email from the app.

Update: Forgot PUTTY and WinRAR…