Something New Has Been Added

12:00PM - I've thought many times about  beginning a blog, but each time, ambivalence about its subject matter and what possible value it would to me or others held me back.  I can't say I'm  feeling much differently now as I write these words in celebration of nothing in particular, but, perhaps, that will change--if I decide to continue setting aside time for similar musings in the future.


As I begin, it's a little after noon on Saturday, January 8th, 2011.  I spent much of the morning online, reading my personal email, briefly checking out Facebook for responses to an item I posted yesterday regarding a trip to the ER, and checking out "Today's Deal" at Amazon.  I also read the introduction to "Focus on The Horror Film" and added a related item or two to my Netflix queue.  After that, I took a trip to the library where I checked out two CD sets on the life of Dante and a recorded rendition of "The Inferno." My interest in Dante stems from time spent during winter break watching quite a few horror films directed by Dario Argento, at least one of which included a shot of a statue of Beatrice.  Though I must have read "The Divine Comedy"--or at least parts of it--at some point long ago, I remember hardly anything about it, and I know nothing of Dante's personal life nor of the times during which he lived. That a glimpse of a statue of Beatrice in an Italian horror film should trigger a budding interest in Dante is simply another one of life's little serendipitous wonders.


5:00PM - For no particular reason, I downloaded Dell's latest Support Center software on my Studio1525 laptop earlier this afternoon and ran the diagnostic utility.  It claimed that my computer's hard disk is going bad and that its memory is also suspect.  The laptop has not exhibited any problems that I've been able to detect, but it turns out that ATAPI errors have been appearing in the Windows Event Log since July.  So, I spent 20 minute or thereabouts in a chat session explaining the situation to a Dell support representative, Manpreet_172802, who promised to send me a box in which to ship the laptop off to a nearby support center.  I don't look forward to the prospect upon its return of reinstalling the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate--it came with Vista Home) and all of my applications, nor to copying my data elsewhere and removing it from the system in advance of sending it off, especially as this will be the second time that I've shipped it to Dell to be repaired.


11:00PM - We ate a relatively early dinner at Ruan Thai in Wheaton with Allison & Chris, enjoying a hefty tureen of lemon grass soup with chicken and coconut milk, a tuna salad appetizer, and Panang chicken.  We brought about half of the latter home with us.  After dropping Chris off at home, Allison, Evelyn and I sat down to the movie, "Kick-Ass," courtesy of Netflix, and enjoyed the ensuing mayhem on our new big-screen TV.  The movie is basically the story of a teenager, a young girl, and her father, all of whom dress up as a costumed super heroes (sans super powers) and ultimately combine in an attempt to topple the corporate empire of an over-the-top, kung-fu mobster.  After that, Evelyn and Allison went upstairs, and I finished watching "New York, I Love You," a Netflix download, which cleverly interweaves several unrelated stories in an homage to life in the Big Apple.  I'd watched the bulk of it earlier in several short stints over the course of the past few days.  After that, I, too, headed upstairs for my last video-viewing activity of the day: watching on the bedroom TV about half hour's worth of a National Geographic "documentary" on the discovery of the Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic codex dating back to the third or fourth century.  The piece would have been much more interesting without all of the pseudo-reenactments led by an extremely Aryan, extremely attractive Judas betraying/not betraying an equally handsome, distinctly non-Jewish-looking Jesus.  So much for verisimilitude.  At an elongated fadeout inserted to accommodate a commercial break, off went the TV. Then, off we went to bed.


And it was morning and it was evening, the first day of my foray into the blogosphere.