My computer’s hard drive crashed on me, I’m updating through the use of an Ubuntu LiveCD. I’m going to attempt to replace the drive as soon as I can, hopefully remedying the problem.

Jack
I Listen.

Update
10/01/09

Prelude to a Hanging
—-

Victor Mancini spent a very long time on the phone with Jane. He told her about synchronicity and about alacrity, about glamors, and conjuring. He told her the good and the bad. Each had a danger, now she knew them all. Well, that’s what she thought anyway.

When he talked about alacrity, he went well out of his way to implicate the dangers. Mancini said that normal people could usually never access it. He had seen Minus use it before. It was beyond his understanding how it did not tear Minus’ soul apart.

He convinced Jane that she should not learn about it yet. She was not ready. He told her that Minus might disappear without warning, even when he could be right in front of her. Mancini told her about some of the pills and powders in that strange drawer in Minus’ desk. Not all of them, but the ones she would need if she became lost, or if Minus left her alone.

The pills labeled ‘VM’ were made by Doctor Mancini. If someone took one, Mancini would feel the psychic waves and appear before them. The red pills they had taken at the bar were Disillusionment. They cleared the brain from almost all worldly attachments and allowed a person to see the truth of their surroundings. Alchemy was the first form of magic Minus had learned, and it was basically all he could still do with purpose and success.

She heard Minus waking, and told Mancini so.

Minus walked into the small office with a glass of wine and saw his old friend Victor Mancini as a ghostly figure, sitting on top of his computer monitor.

“Doc, what have I told you about sitting on the monitor? It’s gonna take me days to get all the ectoplasm out. Damn.”

He then told Mancini and Jane about his talk with Othin, and how he would leave later that day to find the world tree, Yggdrasil. Jane asked him about her friend Kotoko coming to bring fresh food and clothes, and he agreed this would be a good thing.

“Jane, Doc, I’ll be completely out of contact for about nine days. No way of reaching me at all. Jane, please stay here. I don’t like the idea that people are disappearing and it seems to involve the Mist. Don’t go outside unless you absolutely have to. Doc, will you keep an eye on her?”

Mancini and Jane both agreed to what he asked, and Mancini bid his farewell. Leaving Minus and Jane alone together

—-
(NOTE: This has us caught up with The Cost of Magic, pre-server crash. Brand new episodes start tomorrow.)

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #16
Prelude to a Hanging

Jane Takes Matters
—-

Jane awoke to find Minus sound asleep. There was a note on the table beside the sofa bed. It read:

“Jane.
I spoke with my uncle not long ago. I needed more sleep. I’m kind of crashing around inside from the time in the bar. Feel free to use the computer, or the phone. If Othin or Doctor Mancini calls, feel free to talk to them about anything. They can be trusted. If you need to sleep some more, take two of the white pills in the drawer.
Love,
Minus.”

She thought that it was sweet of him to leave a note. She got up and dressed, realizing that she did not even have a change of clothes here. Maybe she could call Kotoko and have some clothes dropped by. Kotoko was sensitive to these odd affairs. She’d have to clear it with Minus first. He’d been so adamant about not leaving until they knew more. He was probably right, but what harm could come of a friend dropping off some clothes, maybe some fresh food and cigarettes.

Jane opened the drawer that Minus had mentioned in his note. It was compartmentalized into small squares and held many pills, several powders, and a few bags that looked like dried plants. She located the white pills he had mentioned and laid two on the table next to her wine. She did not usually start the day with wine, but it was kind of all they had, as most of the food and drinks had gone bad, having no one to clean them out for three years.

Minus had said in the note to wait for a call, but Jane was exhausted. She picked up Minus’ cell phone and went through the recent calls list. Doctor Mancini. It was time she talked to him herself. She placed the call and waited for an answer.

—-

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #12
Jane Takes Matters

We had another full week, with posts every day. I’m gonna try to keep making this happen.

My friend, Pete, turned me on to this great acoustic solo act, Matt Nathanson. Check his site out. Freakin’ awesome.

The novel that I am serializing here at Loki Listens, started on Saturday. Check out the first section.

Twitter. I am apparently back in business. Check out my tweetstats.

After several recommendations, I moved from Pidgin to Digsby for my Instant Messaging client. Main thing is that digsby takes care of my email, myspace, and facebook.  It also crashes less than Pidgin.

With that said, let’s talk about Squidoo. I reached my target of 10 Lenses. With that target goal, I will not make another lens until I believe these 10 are very, very good. Check them out.

• Seth Godin’s Tribes
• Loki Listens to You
• Who is Jack Lhasa
• Jack Lhasa’s Lensography
• Richard Bach’s Illusions
• Fable 2 Review
• Saint’s Row Review
• Xbox 360 Review and Hub
• Herbal Remedies: Echinacea
• Herbal Remedies: Ginkgo Biloba

And lastly, I’d like to talk about Daily Mugshot. Come and join in on this fun.  I have set a goal to wear a different hat every day.  Or atleast wear it in a way that I have not before.  Check it out below.

Jack.
I Listen.
Monday Updates
December 8, 2008

-Loki.
Poetry(Ugh)

(Left side note here that my good friend Binary Cheshire has started a blog, The Entropy Report. Check it out. NOW)

Blogged with Flock

Tags: tlaloc, aztec, mayan, rain, poetry

1. NetHack. – Crashes on start up. All interpreters do this: GNOME NetHack, Qt-NetHack, and X NetHack. I’m having to play NetHack on a public server via Java. UGH.

2. zsnes. – I adjusted the screen size to make things readable, but apparently that was too much and now this crashes on start. I can find no way to edit the configuration files to fix this(most likely because the files system used by Ubuntu is a lot like looking at an interstate pile up.)

3. Pidgin. – Pidgin started off by giving me errors any time I wanted to add a new buddy. This got worse until it began to crash on start up.

4. Kopete. – Kopete is brilliant, except that it makes no sound, and crashes completely if I try to get it to connect to my MSN.

5. SIM. – Yes, I have tried every messenger to get one that works as well as Trillian, but no luck yet. SIM crashes if I try to get it to sign onto my Yahoo.

6. AWN. – Avant Window Manager. AWN crashes on start up. I’ve never been able to get this to work.

7. Azureus. – Azureus crashes on start up. It has also never worked. I’m using kTorrent now, which is great, but all these programs that won’t even start really pis me off.

8. MythTV. – MythTV goes straight into not being able to find the database. I’ve set up the MySQL for it, BUT I cannot get the database to populate. I’ve followed the instructions for this from the MythTV Wiki, but it still shoots back the error on start up. This has also never worked correctly, in fact, it has never worked at all.

9. GnomeBaker. – Everytime it says that the burn speed needs to be adjusted, but guess what, I can’t adjust it! I’ve switched to using k3b, which works well, but is not integrated into my GNOME desktop, making it a slightly annoying work around. [edit 11.06.07 - After Gutsy upgrade, Gnome Baker seems to work fine]

10. Not really a program problem, but super annoying. I can find no program that will allow me to burn .m4a files to audio. I can play them just fine.

———————-

Linux users! If you have any idea of what could be happening with these programs, let me know!

-Loki.
ubuntu, phase 8
Digg This
[edit - 10.22.07, 23:05 - Just cleaned up some typos.]

—————–

Jack was a mean old blacksmith in this small town, in the Smokie Mountains. This was a different time, mind you, when people still rode horses mostly, and blacksmiths were really important.

Jack was the meanest man anyone had every met. He hated the men, women, and children of the town. And they were scared of him. The only time anyone ever talked to Jack, it was to buy horse shoes, or plows, or the like.

Jack was so mean, if children ran into his shop, he’d throw hot coals at them. Yeah, he was that mean.

So one day Jack was hammering away at a horse shoe, or a plow, he really wasn’t that sure, and he up and died.

So mean-old Jack floating up, towards Heaven. And there he saw the pearly gates of Heaven, and Saint Peter holding a book.

“Hmmmm…. Jack! Oh, my no!” says Saint Peter. “You were much too mean. Just wait here.”

So Saint Peter calls his old buddy Lucifer, and tells him he’s got the meanest, baddest man that ever lived just waiting right here at the Gates.

Lucifer gets very excited. He calls up his two eldest, strongest, meanest sons, and tells them they have to go to the Gates of Heaven and get old Jack for him.

A few days later, Lucifer has not seen his sons or Jack. There’s a knocking at the Gates of Hell. Lucifer hears all kinds of crazy noise outside, I mean all of Hell was breaking loose!

So he runs outside, and about that time, Jack is walking up the steps to his castle.

Jack had beaten the devil’s sons and then crashed down the Gates, madder and meaner than ever.

No one much knows what happened after that, there’s a few different endings, some say Jack beat the devil and left. Other’s say that Lucifer had to chase Jack out of Hell with a hickory switch!

All we really know is that Jack was hammering horse shoes in that village again in just a day or two. Some say Jack is still in that place, hammering away, and since he’s so mean, and no one talks to him, and they all know Heaven wouldn’t take him, no one knows how long it’s been.

———-

- Loki

(Jack and the Devil, a Folk Tale, as told by me, in the tradition of Jack Tales)