Why me? The Dreaded Viral Page 123 Post.

I guess Mike just likes to tag me every time he gets a blog tag. Or this time may just be karma for ignoring his last tag because I was on "vacation" -- and by "vacation" I mean "accompanying my wife to the hospital or to doctors visits on a daily basis while having zero time for real vacationing" -- although she was a real sweetie and did let me go on some nice bike rides to clear my head. Not that I haven't tagged Mike before. Because I have.

The rules state such:
1) Pick up the nearest book
2) Open it to page 123
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post in your blog the next three sentences after that fifth one you have identified(that is to say sentences 6, 7 and 8)
5) Tag five or more people, And acknowledge the person who tagged you.

And what a delightfully funny coincidence, as I sit here in my cube farm and crack open the spine of AIX 5L Administration (the closest book at hand) and flip through the pages to find those three mysterious sentences. I'm greeted with the following incarnation of one, two and three thustly:

The init process executes three phases of the boot process by invoking the rc.boot command with 1, 2, and 3 as command arguments. Each of these three phases takes on certain responsibilities. The first phase initializes the hardware to get the system booted.

This book drags on like this for the entirety of it's 689-page girth. Read cover-to-cover, it's quite possibly the most tedious reading of the entire catalog of printed work in my possession. Taken in a bit at a time as needed when used for reference, this book is a life-saver to nerds the way an instruction manual for electronics is a life-saver to people (like Mike, for example) who could potentially get themselves a little confused when dealing with these newfangled gadgets.

As luck would have it, there are some blogs I've recently taken a liking to, relative neophytes to the blogosphere if you will.

I don't think my buddy Dave has been properly introduced to the world of viral blog posts yet. He's my first victim torch-bearer.

Bryan? You might be biking to live right now, but it's time for your virtually viral vernal blogger hazing. You're next.

Clem. Buddy. You've been around for a while and have accompanied me on many on-and-offroad exploits. Your blog has existed without much exposure and as such not enough writing. We're going to change that. :) Baptism by fire, pal.

Then, of course, there are my many standby bloggers, whom have been cranking out enjoyable content for as long as I've been around these corridors and have managed to entrap my intrigue for quite a while. It's hard to pick only two, so I've let a Debian SSL-inspired pseudo-random-number-generator handle the task. That is to say the two bike blogs I've most recently read.

Warren and JDoubleP. Tag. Muwhahahahahahaaaa!