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Deep Something

The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters

Month: August 2008

Featured Politics Election 

Trading Places-The Karl Rove Wager

B. John 383 Views 0 Comments , , , , ,

Back in the early ’80s, a movie was released staring Dan Akroyd and Richard Prior called Trading Places. Two characters in the movie, Mortimer and Randolph Duke (played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) are wealthy commodity brokers who argue constantly over social issues, and enjoy a small wager from time to time. The $5 wager between the Mortimer brothers is that if they put the Pryor character into the right situation, he’ll rise to his new circumstances, and behave like a well-bread, educated wealthy person. On the flip side, if Winthrope has all the trappings of wealth and influence removed from him, he’ll quickly resort to a life of crime and scamming. In the end, the joke was on the Duke brothers, as Winthrope and Valentine came together to not only financial destroy the Dukes, but become rich themselves. I think Karl Rove made a similar bet some years back.

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Culture Featured Religion 

The Will of God?

B. John 470 Views 0 Comments , , , , , , , ,

Recently, my Sunday School class has been involved in a study of the “The Will of God.” We’re using a book by Leslie Weatherhead. I don’t find I’m in complete agreement with his definitions, but he does offer a comprehensive interpretation of The Will of God. It has led me to do some deeper thinking about words I’ve heard often. The concept has mostly dumfounded theologians, and I believe is primarily a construct of people looking for some kind of logic in illogical situations.

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Software Business Economy Technology 

Upgrading to Office 2007?

B. John 449 Views 1 Comment , , ,

I seem to be doing lots of upgrading lately. I’ve been having an issue for some time now with my Outlook crashing several times each day, and often taking multiple attempts to restart it. In some cases, it will even break the connection to the pst file, and I’ll have to restart the computer. I’ve tried everything without success, so I’m now considering an upgrade to Office 2007.

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Technology Software 

A Clean Upgrade to Deep Sand

B. John 401 Views 0 Comments , , ,

If you visited Deep Sand earlier this week, you might have gotten a message saying we were temporarily unavailable. I was performing an upgrade to a new version of the software. Normally, that’s not a huge task, but this time I wanted to get as clean a database and code base as possible. Over the years, a lot of additional tables for plugins and files and folders and options settings have been left behind. I wanted to get that cleaned out.

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Places Tampa Religion 

Upcoming Administrative Council Meeting at Church

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I have previously published a resolution I intend to introduce at the next Administrative Council meeting at my church here in Tampa (Palma Ceia United Methodist). I was going to introduce it in June, but the meeting was canceled. It’s now been rescheduled for August 18, so I should be able to attend.

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Books Southern Featured Fun Stuff Places Society Culture 

Gray Court Apartments

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The most recent book I’m “listening to” from my Audible.com subscription is David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames. It’s a collection of essays on the banalities of life. I was listening to one of his essays this past week during a drive to St. Pete, and it stirred up some strong memories about one of the best places I lived for some years. In his essay, Sedaris talks about an experience he had living in a rooming house in Chapel Hill, NC when he was between attending school. This reminded me of living in Gray Court Apartments in Winston-Salem, NC.

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Crime Politics Congress Presidency War Society 

The Anthrax Questions

B. John 515 Views 0 Comments , , , , , , , , , , ,

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article up at Salon.com discussing the unresolved issues around the 2001 anthrax incident. As everyone knows Bruce Ivins committed suicide earlier this week as a Grand Jury prepared to indict him in connection with the anthrax incident. Ivins had been a top anthrax researcher at a U.S. Government research facility for 18 years. So seven years after the incident, and after having to pay a settlement to one falsely accused researcher, we’re to believe the government had an airtight case against Ivins witnessed by his apparent suicide.

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