On Sacred Tradition:
Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life1. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question2 among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches? (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter IV, 1)
1Rev. 22:17
2Latin, modica quaestione
For those who opine that if it isn't in the Bible, it isn't right, I have only one question? What of the early Church, before, say, the middle of the 4th century anno domini, whose only "Bible" was the Hebrew Scriptures? What could they use but the oral traditions and stories and the epistles? There was no widely accepted "New Testament" canon until the 12th century, and Protestants tossed out of that the books that didn't comport with their notions of what constitutes a New Testament Church.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 20:42 2008-10-31 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Jus' Hanging Out (General)
Went to dinner Friday night past with Doug and Ian at the The Claim Jumper in Fremont. I had an excellent slab of rare prime rib while Doug and Ian had over-cooked (medium and medium-well) rib eye steaks. The food was terrific, the server pleasant (evidently she didn't come by often enough before I got there), and the, um, scenery was first-class.
Of course, the company was great, too. We didn't talk about anything in particular. Just random stuff. It was the first time I'd met Ian, so that was a treat because I don't often get to meet the people with whom I hang out on the #linux-users IRC channel.
I was 30 minutes late getting there. I left KurtWerks at 5:50 so I could arrive a few minutes ahead of the 6:30 p.m. reservation. Taking normal rush hour traffic into account, I was confident I could navigate the 11 miles from Japantown to Fremont in 30 minutes. Bzzt! Thanks for playing! I didn't get there until 6:59 p.m., yes, one hour and nine minutes later. 880 was parking lot from 101 to 237 in Mountain View. I was sitting in TruckWerks thinking, “Don't you people realize I have a date?!”
To make matters worse, I was unable to call Doug and let him know I was stuck in a parking lot; the number I had for him in my cell phone was one digit off, so I was texting some patient soul in British Columbia, Canada (604 area code) rather than Doug, whose area code is 614 (Ohio). Better still, Doug couldn't call me to find out "Where the hell are you, kwall?!" because the number he had for me in his cell phone was my old Verizon cell number, which went the way of the dodo when I got my iPhone (which r0x0rs, by the way). Doh!
Posted by Kurt Wall at 08:14 2008-10-19 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
FEAR (Sobriety)
AA has lots of saying and acronyms. “Live and let live.” “Let go and let God.” “One day at a time.” “HOW” do we get sober? Through “Honesty, Openness, and Willingness.” Lately, the one that has my attention is “FEAR” which can be either of “F**k everything and run” or “Face everything and recover.”
I'm sure I've done more of the former than the latter. At the least, I've been surprised to discover how fearful (or, perhaps, fear-full) I am. I'm afraid of being alone, afraid of not being accepted, afraid of conflict, afraid of losing my job, afraid of responsibility, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of not being liked, afraid of being like my father, afraid to tell the truth, afraid of being just like everyone else and afraid of not being like everyone else. I'm sure there's more.
One of the purposes of AA's 12 steps is to learn how to face reality and recover rather than run from it by drinking. What I've spent the last few weeks doing is learning just how laden with fear I am, laying that out for my sponsor, and discovering how to move forward. I haven't and won't become a saint, but I can at least become an honest, decent man, someone to whom my wife is proud to be married rather than someone she regrets marrying.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:21 2008-10-14 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
60 Days (Sobriety)
I can't remember the last time I was proud of a 60-day chip. Actually, as I write this, 65 days and change have elapsed since my last drink. Sunday past marked day 60, but I didn't get to a birthday meeting until tonight. My “normal” meeting (in AA terminology, my “home group” acknowledges sobriety milestones but doesn't celebrate them by giving chips. It seemed important to me, though, to collect some token to mark the occasion, so, I found my way tonight to the Saratoga Serenity Group, located, strangely enough, in Saratoga (on Saratoga Avenue, no less), to collect this chip. If you're curious, I've included larger images of the front and back of it. I hope to collect more of these as the days and weeks and months and years pass.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:09 2008-10-10 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Sobriety Update (Sobriety)
My friend Doug asked me today on IRC how things were going on the sobriety front, noting that I hadn't commented much about it here. For those of you keeping up, I'm still sober, going to an AA meeting almost everyday. I got a sponsor a while back and he's been taking me through the Steps. I'm just about finished with Step 4 and then will move on to Step 5. As I've remarked before, I usually attend a 6:00 a.m. meeting, but if I can't/won't drag my carcass out of bed at 4:45 a.m., I go to an evening meeting. For those of you who don't know me, getting up at 4:45 is not something I do unless my ass is on fire. Well, my ass was on fire. As my sister-in-law put it, “Kurt, when your life starts to sound like a country 'n' western song (got drunk, wife left, truck broke down,…), something needs to change.”
So, in short, I'm okay. I'm getting what I need, but not necessarily what I want. Nonetheless, I'm finding that what I need is what I wanted all along. I'm going to keep attending meetings and working with my sponsor. While I might have drinking problem in the short term, what I really have is a living problem. As I told my friend, drunks are permanent passengers on the short bus when it comes to living skills. The things which are obvious to some people seem to elude me. Like, “Kurt, if you don't take the first drink, you won't get drunk.” :-\ Well, duh, but that had never occurred to me.
All I want is the magic pill that will allow me to drink without destroying my life. I don't think that's too much to ask. Really. Failing that, I'll keep going to meetings and working with my sponsor.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 15:16 2008-10-09 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Holy Cross Parish (Religion)
Although I'm attending RCIA at Our Lady of Peace, I've been visiting other parishes, hoping to find one that feels comfortable enough to make my church home. Sunday I went to Holy Cross Parish.
There's nothing wrong with Our Lady of Peace, but their strong emphasis and focus on strengthening the family leaves singles, nominally single people like me, and childless couples (D.I.N.K.S. — Double Income, No Kids) feeling left out. No one is marginalized at Our Lady, but the personality of the place appeals to families more than others. There are lots of parishes here, so I have lots of options from which to choose.
After the service, I took a few pictures of the place. The stained glass windows are especially pretty and I really like the cross above and behind the altar.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 19:25 2008-10-07 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Steve Ballmer… (It's Funny, Laugh)
…is full of poop. Microsoft's CEO, asked by the San Jose Mercury News to identify his company's "unqualified successes" said the following (among other things I won't bother to ridicule here):
I'd call [Windows Vista] an unqualified success, over the last six months or so. Our Media Room software for set-top boxes, IP-connected set-top boxes, is certainly an unqualified success amongst those people who have it.
WTF? Windows Vista is "an unqualified success" but only if the evaluation is limited to, qualified by, the last six months? Never mind that Windows Vista is a fresh, soft, and warm turd of an operating system that makes Windows XP look robust and nimble.
Calling Media Room software an "unqualified success amongst those people who have it" blows my mind. Wait a minute. Microsoft has software for set-top boxes? I had no idea. I'm sure all three people who use it are delighted with it. Yep, that's an unqualified success!
Not.
I wonder if Ballmer smashed any furniture during the interview?
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:16 2008-10-06 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
The State of the Economy (It's Funny, Laugh)
Evidently, the economy is bad enough that the Treasury Department issued a new one dollar bill. If you work on Wall Street, you're probably looking like George just now.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 09:15 2008-10-06 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Convert FLACs to MP3s (Linux)
I whined last night that TruckWerks' nifty neato new MP3 player only understands ID3v1 tags. Naturally, all of my MP3s, FLACs, and OGGs use ID3v2 tags (in the case of MP3s) or FLAC- and OGG-specific tags (in, duh, the case of FLACs and OGGs, respectively). So, I needed to convert those uncooperative tags to ID3v1. After some Googling and some research, I came up with the following flac2mp3 script to do the deed for me. You'll need flac and lame installed.
Here's the script, which is loosely based on Converting flac to mp3:
#!/bin/bash
# flac2mp3
# Convert FLACs to MP3s, downgrading ID3v2 tags to ID3v1 tags
for _fin in $@
do
_fout=${_fin%.flac}.mp3
metaflac --export-tags-to=tag.tmp "$_fin"
sed -i '{s/[a-z]/\u&/g
s/=\(.*\)/="\1"/}' tag.tmp
source tag.tmp
rm tag.tmp
echo -n "Recoding $_fin to $_fout..."
flac -scd "$_fin" | lame -q 2 -V 2 \
--ta "$ARTIST" \
--tl "$ALBUM" \
--tn "$TRACKNUMBER" \
--tt "$TITLE" \
--ty "$DATE" \
--id3v1-only \
--nohist \
-S \
- "$_fout"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo "done"
else
echo "ERROR"
fi
done
To use it, pass the file names of one or more FLAC files, thus:
$ flac2mp3 bring_me_to_life.flac Recoding bring_me_to_life.flac to bring_me_to_life.mp3...done $
Or:
$ flac2mp3 *.flac Recoding bring_me_to_life.flac to bring_me_to_life.mp3...done Recoding everybody's_fool.flac to everybody's_fool.mp3...done Recoding going_under.flac to going_under.mp3...done Recoding haunted.flac to haunted.mp3...done Recoding hello.flac to hello.mp3...done Recoding imaginary.flac to imaginary.mp3...done Recoding my_immortal.flac to my_immortal.mp3...done Recoding my_last_breath.flac to my_last_breath.mp3...done Recoding taking_over_me.flac to taking_over_me.mp3...done Recoding tourniquet.flac to tourniquet.mp3...done Recoding whisper.flac to whisper.mp3...done
It's not fancy, but It Works For Me©.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 09:53 2008-10-05 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Mother of Steel (Religion)
I've been taking RCIA classes at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church, as I've commented before. Our Lady has a lot to recommend it, not the least of which is its vitality.
As you might imagine, given its name, the Virgin Mary is a big deal at Our Lady. In fact, it's 32 feet worth of stainless steel big deal. This Mother of Steel sits in a shrine between the church grounds proper and Highway 101 in Santa Clara. They liked the 32-foot tall version so much, they got a smaller one (about 8 feet, I'd say) to put in a courtyard immediately outside the sanctuary.
What I find remarkable, as one in the process of becoming Roman Catholic, is the strength and depth of people's devotion to Mary. I'm not entirely Protestant in my view of Mary, but I'm also far from being Marian. That is, 90% of the Protestant Christian world trots the Virgin Mary out at Christmas to participate in Jesus' nativity, and then puts her away again. I think she deserves more than a mere two weeks' attention. That said, I'm not yet persuaded or comfortable with the level of attention lavished on her by Catholics.
To be sure, without Mary, there would be no Jesus. My friend Tim says, "Sure, but if it hadn't been Mary, it would have been someone else." Two problems with that argument are 0) It was Mary, and 1) If it had been another woman, she'd still be unique in the world and deserve to occupy an equally unique and special place of honor.
But that's enough fuel on sectarian fires for one post.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 00:36 2008-10-05 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
TruckWerks Upgrade (Music)
I upgraded TruckWerks today. Rather, I paid someone else to upgrade TruckWerks. The stock tunes sucked — AM/FM radio only, no CD player, poor reception, and the sound quality blew goats. So, I replaced the old radio with an after-market model that has an AM/FM radio, a CD player, a USB slot for MP3s (<cough>and WMAs<cough> and an HD radio. It's also Bluetooth-ready, but I don't see me using that immediately. Schweet! TruckWerks has some trés decent tunage now.
The unit is a Dual XHD6425 and cost just north of $220 after a dash insert, an antennae, and installation. The $100 BCM (Body Control Module) that I had to buy to ensure that panel lights and door chimes and the like continued to work was a pisser; I just finished replacing that in early August after the original one failed. You can read all the gory details about the radio if you're interested. It might mean more to you than it does to me.
What matters to me is that I can pick up more than the two strongest radio stations in the valley and that I don't have to listen to the radio at all. The big plus is the ability to play MP3s from a USB stick or a CD. The only downside is that the MP3 player can only deal with ID3v1 tags. This isn't a big problem because it is easy enough to convert between ID3v1 and ID3v2, but the limitation does surprise me.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 23:15 2008-10-04 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)