Mood: Really grumpy.
Music: The Battle of Who Should Care Less, Ben Folds Five.
Game: World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Wipeout Pure, Lumines
Book: High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
Muffin: Blueberry-Mango.
Punchline: Nothing.
OK...so I got in, walked over to the server room to change the backup tapes, and as I got closer, I started hearing an alarm beep. This is NEVER a good sound. Opened the door, did a quick check of servers, UPSs...coming from the Webserver.
Yup. Webserver lost a drive in the RAID array. Of course, given our architecture, we lost our webserver...but also lost our DNS Server, which resides on the same box. Lovely. No mail, no internet access. I'm jury-rigged right now as I write this, and as my machine attempts to rebuild the failed drive. If it works, it buys me time to replace the drives on my own schedule. If it fails, we have a more complicated problem.
Not the way I like to start my day. Pretty much guarantees that instead of all the things I had planned for the day, I'll be working on this crap instead. Did I mention that I loved my job? No? There's a reason for it. I don't.
And my cousin Chris broke up with his girlfriend last night. Kinda sucks for him. I know he's really serious about her...although they seemed to have been together and broken up several times at this point. I'm no expert on the whole relationship thing, as proven by my track record...but I know what he's going through, so I definitely feel for him. Normally, this wouldn't impact my life all that much...save for the fact that Chris is the guy who maintains my servers. I can only imagine his mindstate.
On the way to work, I was thinking about the nomination of the new Pope. Last night, I was pretty unhappy about it, and made a comment about it on Ventrilo while I was playing CoD with the fellas. One of 'em said "Why do you care? You're not catholic."
I responded "Because he's anti-gay, anti-women's rights, anti-birth control, anti-women in the church...and he now speaks for a quarter of the world's population, including a nice big chunk of the US." The more I thought about it, the more I realized that he doesn't speak for those people...but he does define their morality "by the book" I guess...and many catholics in NY are kind of disappointed by the selection of this guy. They were hoping for a more liberal pope, one who would bring the church into the new century with more tolerance and less conservative views.
I wonder if the selection of this Pope is an indication of the world morality. I wonder if, in a world in crisis, a very real feeling of needing to get back to conservative views is needed for comfort. That people feel like they're losing control of the world, and want to start tying things down.
The election in the US showed that the views espoused by the new Pope are certainly more prevalent than one might be led to believe. Truthfully, living in New York gives you the inability to understand intolerance in others. I honestly just don't GET racism. Someone's a different color so they're inherently bad? Homosexuals love people of the same sex, so God doesn't approve of them? I am utterly baffled by that viewpoint.
Often, I can put myself in an opposing view's shoes...but not here. I just don't understand it at all. Upbringing, environment...who knows. But I don't get it at all....
Which is why I don't understand why this new Pope was selected, with the Cardinals all knowing full well that this guy was a hardline conservative. There was no way that this guy was going to allow discussion on women priests, birth control, homosexuality...why choose him? Because the church believes that those are the values that need to come back to the world? Hard message...especially since you've got priests and senior church officials getting popped for abusing young boys...don't see any mention of that by the Pope.
Curiously, the fact that the guy served with the German Army in the late 40s doesn't really bother me that much. You'd think, with my vehement anti-Nazi beliefs, that that would make me furious. Frankly, I think the guy was 14 or so, had no choice, and was forced to work, or he'd have been killed. I DO differentiate between people forced to fight for Germany in WWII and Nazis.
Anyway, the guy is plenty old...and perhaps he won't be around long enough to make any sort of serious decrees or statements. I would imagine that we'll feel some of his impact here...but I'm not at all sure that the guy isn't a result of world beliefs, a reflection, rather than someone to bring about change in that direction. A reinforcing force towards conservatism...sorta like our President.
The pendulum always swings back. Right now, it just feels like it's still headed in the wrong direction.
Posted by Glenn at April 20, 2005 10:53 AMYour response to, "Why should you care," comment was the same as mine; I just wasn't as fast as picking my jaw up off the ground.
I do not know if the Catholic church is capable of selecting a more progressive pope. To be sure, this is a transitional pope who is going to essentially tow JPII's line of conservatism.
I simply think that a wedge is unintentionally being driven by the (relatively) conservative stance JPII and now BenedictXVI are taking. I do not believe they are necessarily alienating people with their views but I don't think they're drawing people in to The Flock either.
Posted by: Paul at April 20, 2005 08:04 PM