Day: March 31, 2003

The VPN at work is down. I rarely connect from home, since I can get my email in mobile fashion (thank you, RIM), but the people I work with need to get to the servers to make changes, and tonight, that connection just crapped out. Pointed reminder that despite thinking the network is Shirky’s permanet, at least here in the heart of San Francisco, working for an internet company… Internet Protocol (IP) isn’t a full utility yet.

I finished my mental candy last night, so it’s time to get some intellectual fiber again. I’ll see how a biography of Patrick O’Brian turns out. Author is Dean King, which means nothing to me now. I haven’t read all of the Aubrey and Maturin novels, but I’ve read enough to know they are masterpieces. O’Brian was notorious for avoiding publicity, so a tough one for the biographer. Maybe he wasn’t as invisible as Joseph Heller, but not exactly David Eggers, either.

I was drawn into O’Brian’s novels because I’d devoured (repeatedly) the Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester. I even wrote one of my college essays about Mr. Midshipman Hornblower! What does that say about me? Too late.