Tenth of the tenth of the tenth

Awake early enough to get to the Cathedral Parish Eucharist this morning. The first time in many moons. The 9.00am with lots of young families present is better attended than the Cathedral Sung Eucharist at 11.00am. I don't mind the cries of the little ones for the most part, except when they're obviously upset or in pain and parents aren't confident about deciding to take them out or not. What does bother me is a low level chatter of the adults before hand and during the Communion, which is so well organised that it's never long drawn out, but when people return to their seats they talk to each other when they could be listening to God. 

One man left his seat and moved near me to talk with a woman in a low voice. They were making arrangements about something for later on - networking I suppose we call it - for me it's an unwelcome culture shift. I think I'll stick to the 11.00am in future. The music is usually superb and the silences for savouring. I never thought that I'd find a 'family atmosphere' in church quite so disconcerting. But it's not that really, it's the ebbing away of awe and wonder from the common domestic milieu of worship that makes me feel like a stranger, an eccentric.

Today marks the public launch of the latest edition of Ubuntu Linux - at ten on the tenth of the tenth twenty ten. By lunchtime I was downloading it, by tea time I had it installed and driving my office laptop - something I promised I'd get around to eventually, not least because Linux takes 40 seconds from switch-on to internet access on the desktop, something of an improvement  on 3-4 minutes with Vista. Speed can be useful if you need to check something hurriedly. Linux on a PC may be as fast booting as a mobile phone within the year, developments are moving at such a pace. It's so easy to use, and installs with few problems. It's a matter of partitioning the hard disk beforehand to get things just right for the installation. What takes an hour to set up with Linux can take three times as long with a new Windows driven PC. Maintenance and machine minding is far less of a hassle too. Just the job to do when you're recovering from a cold.