CurtBlog

I was watching the 10 year special for Inside the Actor's Studio the other night. At the end of each show, there is a series of questions that James Lipton asks each actor, such as “What is your favorite word?” and “What turns you on?”  They closed out the show with a compilation of answers to the various questions.  One of the most interesting is “If God exists and you get to heaven and you are at the pearly gates, what would you like to hear him say?”

Anthony Quinn gave an answer that struck me as quite profound and I found myself getting a bit teary eyed considering it.  His answer for what he wants to hear God say: “Tony, I understand.”  I think that's what many of us hope to hear, as He is the only one who can say that to us and really truly mean it.

if you enjoy fantasy or historical fiction at all, you need to check him out.  simply some of the best fiction writing i've read in a long time.  reminds me of the first time I read Tad Williams Otherland series.  i just can't put these books down.

just finished the The Sarantine Mosaic, which is a series of 2 books based on the time of the Byzantine empire. so this isn't fantasy in the mainstream tradition of Tolkein, but there are some magical elements.  it's just great plot-driven writing, with really memorable characters.  the kind of characters you actually get really sad to leave when you finish the book.  the dialog sparkles with intelligence, nuance and subtlety, lots of cool court intrigue, adult characters in the best sense of that word.

Lord of Emperors (Book 2)

Sailing To Sarantium (Book 1)

http://techdirt.com/articles/20040614/1559205.shtml

This doesn't surprise me, it's stupid moves like this that prompted me to get rid of Bellsouth DSL in the first place when I lived in Nashville.  oh well, they are only a viable entity for about another 5-10 years anyway, at least as anything resembling a profitable business model.

Really cool show and I like the venue (it was my first visit).  Sam was in excellent humor and the little anecdotes between songs were great.  Very dry sense of humor.  Cool musicians as well.  Just a drummer/percussionist, a classical violinist who also played some guitar and a keyboardist.  As much as I like electronic music, there is something to be said for really great musicians playing in a nice acoustic space.  Very sparse, but creative arrangements.  Mostly like the record, with a few extra touches. 

Sam did a lot of stuff off the new album, A Boot and a Shoe, as well as some stuff from the last couple records.  Started the show with an acappella number and then her encore was another acappella, an old gospel song.  She asked us if we were ready for an evening of torch music, then explained the dual meaning of “carrying a torch for someone” and being tortured by unrequited love.  To coin a bad pun, these torch songs were anything but torture.  Really fantastic to see her again.

Come home this weekend and my new Dell Axim was at the office.  So far I'm fairly impressed.  It doesn't seem to be terribly bulky as I was afraid it would be.  And Dell forgot to ship me the sync cable, along with a bunch of other orders apparently.  Should be coming next week.  At least when I went into a chat with the Dell CSR, she immediately confirmed it was missing (even though the packing list on their site showed it being shipped) and told me it would be here by Tuesday.  it would help if I wasn't in San Diego on Tuesday, but oh well.

took me forever to get the built-in wireless to surf the web.  it found my router just fine and had a good signal, but just wouldn't connect to anything.  it does work with WEP which my old CF card for my IPAQ had trouble with.  turns out a couple of the dns addresses that RCN is handing out via my cable modem are just bad or old or down or something.  you would think it would take me less than 2 hrs to figure this out.  repeat after me, always check the simple stuff first. so now that seems to be working fine and the download is actually fairly snappy.  of course I can't install anything that isn't a PocketPC cab file until I get the sync working.

couple initial observations: the volume on this thing seems a bit low and putting the screen in landscape mode takes way too many clicks.  plus it hides certain menu features in certain applications.  cool idea though.  it seems pretty snappy compared to my IPAQ.  we'll see once I get some software installed.