insane ranting and raving

Ooo, Shiny!

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:49:09 GMT

The temptations of flight.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:11:39 GMT

I should probably not taunt myself with Airship Ventures in my syndication feed collection on LJ, or by being on their mailing list. It makes me sad when they remind me of all the awesome places they fly, or even the fact that there is an airship, a zeppelin, in the skies above my head, and I can not afford to fly.

I want it.

The temptation to just put a ticket on my credit card, and worry about paying it off later, is great. Just to taste flight in a majestic ship of that sort, even if for only a small while, calls to me. It makes me wish, hope and yern. But the reality is, my job is fucking with me, I can hardly afford day to day life, let alone the things needed to maintain my minimum operational requirements for mental balance, so to think I could get away with spending money on something so indulgent and expensive is out of the scope of reality.

I still want it.

Kitty!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:33:27 GMT

I have a new addition to my household. :) She's adorable, fuzzy and named Carmen. I apologize for links instead of embedded pictures, but I have to get ready for work, and time that would have been spent resizing the pictures for LJ friendly viewing was spent fixing upload paths in my gallery install because Dreamhost moved my server and I hadn't uploaded anything since then. Now it is after work, and I can create thumbnails to do this properly. Here are pictures:

A lack of patience with the stupid.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:19:10 GMT

I've noticed lately that I've been reading the weirdest mix of articles and blog entries to the end, but closing, or bookmarking and forgetting, many other articles that seem like they should be of use or interesting to read. This really grabbed my attention last night when I noticed that two tabs I'd left open in Firefox since Friday involving stuff I can do to make my KDE install on my laptop lighter weight were sitting there without even being skimmed first, yet I ended up opening a link from a syndication feed talking about flu vaccines and antivirals, and how they may not be as effective as common perception believes, and finished reading the whole long ass article in one sitting. (Here's the article in question: Does the Vaccine Matter?) Not only did I read the whole article, I ended up wandering wikipedia on the topic for a little bit, and checking out information on other flu pandemics that have happened in recent history.

As of last night, I couldn't have told you why I was having this weird shift in focus, I know I have the attention span for long works of writing. Heck, I've been known to sit and read whole articles on wikipedia simply because it was there for me to read. Then it occurred to me when I was attempting to read an article on the Danger/Microsoft server failure fiasco. The problem isn't the content of the articles and the blog entries, it's the absolute failure in these articles to communicate. I was actually interested in what happened with the Sidekick server failure, because at one point in time I had been interested in owning a Sidekick. The people writing the articles spend too much time wanking, take forever to get to the point and basically I get bored waiting to get to the point and give up on the article.

As a person who considers one of her favorite authors to be Neal Stephenson, I should be able to claim I have some degree of patience when it comes to getting to the point in a written piece of work. However, I do also have a high level of expectation on the quality of the writing. If the writing can't be considered prose, if there isn't enough links to outside information or information included in the article to bring me up to speed on all the names being used, or if more than three-quarters of the article is occupied by random shit that doesn't actually reference the title that brought me in to read, I don't have the patience for it.

I was laughing my ass off at this.

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:53:19 GMT

So very true.

Offered without comment.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:47:29 GMT

Paul: Blah blah blah
Amy: ...you link me things Linux and Windows related, and you don't expect to get commentary?
Paul: I expect. Doesn't mean I have to like it ;^P
Amy: You don't usually like it. So it makes me wonder why you link me these things.
Paul:: Acknowledging you exist. Your daily affirmation.
Paul: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Amy: ...reality is a matter of perception. I perceive, therefore I exist. I perceive you, therefore you exist.
Paul: I perceive you are an ass....
Amy: Then in your reality, I am an ass.
Paul: Mmmmm..... ass...
Amy: I knew you wanted me!
Paul: C'mon. Who doesn't?
Amy: I could give you a list.
Amy: I'd rather not.
Paul: Those people are in denial.
Amy: My ego needs building right now, not demolition.
Paul: You send me those damned comics everyday. I wouldn't read em if you didn't. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy it.
Amy: I send you comics at random... not every day.
Amy: Do I need to start emailing you when I check my comics with the ones worth reading?
Paul: I don't mind. They are funny for the most part. Maybe i SHOULD JUST SUBSCRIBE. oops. caps lock
Amy: I thought you were yelling intentionally. :-P
Paul: Nope. Just an unskilled typist
Amy: ah
Paul: http://sf.eater.com/archives/2009/10/06/new_oakland_creperie_will_spank_you_for_25.php
Amy: How special
Amy: That seems a lot for a spanking.
Paul: Depends on the spanker and the instrument.
Amy: An entry that simple, I suspect they're overcharging.
Paul: I wonder how often it is purchased. It seems more like a novelty.
Amy: So, do we have to go raid the place one day, and have someone actually order it?
Paul: ROAD TRIP!!!!

Mark Shuttleworth's keynote at LinuxCon

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:06:14 GMT

I originally posted this on KubuntuForums.net, but I felt that I put enough long winded effort and I have little enough overlap between there and here that I would repost this here in hopes of opening dialog with some of you who read my journal.

The last few days, I've been watching things pop up on the various syndication feeds and news sites I watch about Shuttleworth's sexist comments in his keynote at LinuxCon. Reading these things, I was concerned about it, but I elected to try to reserve my judgment until I could find a transcript of the keynote, or find a video to watch it.

For those of you who missed the hubbub, I'll link you to the blog post which finally pointed me to where I could see the keynote for myself: Mark Shuttleworth's Community Has No Women.

My first impression was some annoyance. As a female, and a geeky techy one at that, I have encountered a lot of the sexism that the various articles and blog entries I've seen are complaining about, so the idea that someone who is the spearhead of the distribution I use is supporting this steaming pile of dren did concern me, to make a minor understatement. The quote that seemed particularly condemning was this one:

"How many of you guys know Till [Kamppeter]... making sure that your printer, your mom's printer, my grandma's printer just work out of the box...if we can do the same with sound, if we can do the same with wi-fi, we can do the same for various other amazing subsystems that are going to come into the kernel...if we approach this from the perspective of saying "How do we make this just awesome for end users" then we'll have less trouble explaining to girls what we actually do."

However, the other thing I've noticed a lot of commentary on is his choice of male pronouns and to use the word "guys" instead of people quite frequently. This irritated me greatly. I am not objecting to his speech ticks and I'll address those in a minute, but these complaints made me think of the women who have done such damage to the feminist cause by contorting it in the name of trying to further it. I'm sure everyone in this forum has encountered at least one of these women... the sort that instead of striving for equality, they speak down about men, they act like they're entitled to reparations for the abuses foisted upon our foremothers (as they always b*stardize "masculine" words into a more "feminine" form), and feel that equality should only apply where it is beneficial to them, not to pesky things like jail sentences, child custody, alimony payments or military service. My perspective on feminism is one of frustration because of women like this, and this mess that was sparked by Shuttleworth's keynote is only serving to bring to the forefront why I think my own gender is part of the reason I still make less than my male coworkers who I either out perform or are at least on par with. Before I go off on more of a tangent, I'll get back to my original point.

I did say I would address his speech ticks, so here's my take on them. I consider myself at least a little bit of a literary nerd. I grew up reading early and often, chewing through books like most kids would go through crayons and candy, and even dipping into my mother's extensive fantasy collection at a younger age than most people would have expected. My heroes are people like William Shakespeare, Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury, Franz Kafka, JRR Tolkien, HP Lovecraft, HG Wells, and Neil Gaiman. To say I am a little familiar with the English language, even if it is mostly the American b*stardized version of it, is probably a safe thing to say.

With these statements sitting out there as my credentials, I will say that I am not offended by Shuttleworth's use of male pronouns and frequent use of guys were the pseudo-feminists insist he should have used words like people or team instead. Talk to an English language nerd, talk to someone who does formal writing a lot, and they will tell you it is general convention to use the male pronoun when speaking of hypothetical people instead of using the casually accepted "gender neutral" them or they. If using the male pronoun offends your gender equal "sensibilities" it is then considered more correct to use the female pronouns in their place, instead of lapsing to them and they. Some of my role play books do this quite happily, White Wolf in particular uses entirely female pronouns when speaking of their hypothetical players in the character building and game play examples. So Shuttleworth using a lot of masculine pronouns didn't bother me in the least.

To address "guys" in particular, I will point out that in common casual conversation, particularly with those who are in their teens and twenties, it is normal for someone to use a word like guys or dude without care to what gender they are addressing. There are also lots of examples of other words that have both male and female forms where the male form is considered acceptable when addressing a mixed group or even when addressing the female alone. Watching the video, listening to him speaking, it sounded like Shuttleworth was simply trying to speak comfortably with a group of his peers. While one could debate the merits of that approach within a keynote speech at a conference, it is certainly a smaller crime than the attempts to use these speech patterns as evidence of his sexism. I'll even admit that these speech patterns are sexist, but they are not sufficient evidence of Shuttleworth's sexism, they are simply a symptom of long standing sexism within the English language.

I am angry about Shuttleworth's implication that women are inept enough at computer usage that they require things to be dumbed down significantly in order to just tell them about it. I am angry that everything I've heard so far tells me he does not care or does not understand what he said was so wrong. I can give him the benefit of the doubt, and guess that perhaps he's partially overwhelmed by the pseudo-feminists who are not only attacking his statements that were wrong, but are also attacking minor issues that are a symptom of the language reflecting its roots in people who were very sexist.

All that said, Shuttleworth is by far not the only sexist person within the open source community, he is probably far from the worst offender either. He just happened to have been the big money behind a project that is popular, and therefore in the focus of a large number of people. Such things get people lynched over minor things, where the raging idiot, who thinks all women should be barefoot pregnant in the kitchen, that happens to work on xyz section of the kernel, doesn't get noticed because he doesn't have any friends to start with.

I would like for Mark Shuttleworth to realize what he said was wrong, I would like for him to apologize and learn from his mistakes... but I'm not going to jump ship on my distribution of choice because of his poor choice of words in a keynote speech at a conference I didn't even attend and wouldn't have even watched if it weren't for the drama around his poor choice of words. The other things he said in the speech were actually interesting and some of them were even useful and helpful commentary on the open source community. A lot of it seemed to be pretty words to me, but sometimes it takes someone with money and pretty words to coordinate enough people to get things done.

<3 <3 <3

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:30:23 GMT

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Chiana's got a checkup!

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:45:30 GMT

I am sitting at the dealership, and they're poking away at my car right now. The problem they thought that was leading to my cooling fan not coming on turned out to be not the issue, but luckily they had the part needed to replace what really was the issue. The good news is that they have wifi, so I've been able to entertain myself while waiting... and my dad works here, so they've been extra nice to me. My dad took me out to lunch also.

There is still something else wrong with the car, but the joy of having a Kia is that the car's laid out kinda poorly under the hood and is especially hard to work with unless you have tiny tiny hands, or you pull the whole damn thing apart. Either way, not fun. I have been told they should be almost done though, so hopefully I'll be on my way soon.

I did pull a stupid this morning though... luckily my mom was able to help me out. In my rush to make it out the door, because I woke up later than I should have for the time my dad recommended I get here, I forgot to grab the original parts they thought needed replacing... and they didn't have those on hand here. Luckily my mom brought the parts out to me, so they were able to still do the work. I just have to pick her up some nice beer in return. Certainly not a bad deal, it saves me from having to come back a second time... and considering how long it took me to make it in to start with, it would have been even longer before I made it back.

In other news, I have switched my network manager on my laptop, and the new one works worlds better than the old one. The old one used the KDE wallet application to store the passwords, which delayed connection every time I logged in. I'm using Wicd now, and it saves the passwords in itself, so it'll automagically connect upon login. I'm up and running faster now. I'm also hoping that this will resolve some of the connection issues at my friend's house, as he uses some weirdo router for his network, and all his windows machines work fine... so he implies it's linux that's the issue.

I <3 weepingcock

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:31:52 GMT

I just spent a chunk of my morning giggling over this: How to be a Furry. The author of this parody linked it over in weepingcock earlier this morning, and curiosity got the better of me.

Mid Ohio Con

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:31:07 GMT

For some reason that I am completely and utterly perplexed and unable to understand, I have somehow ended up on the mailing list for Mid Ohio Con. I do not live in or near Ohio, I do not recall doing anything that would put me on the mailing list for such a convention, yet for some reason I've been receiving emails about their convention like someone thinks I want information.

I have emailed them requesting they remove me from their list. We'll see if they behave or not.

Birthday Report, part II

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:43:46 GMT

Birthday Report

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:18:42 GMT

Last Thursday marked 26 years on this planet for me. I spent the day hiding from the world at my boyfriend's house. Birthdays seem to make me more anti-social than I normally am, so I've taken to disappearing on the day of my birthday if I can. drwho4 had to work, so I was left alone to hide until he got home around five, then we went out for dinner and caught a movie. Dinner was at some local Mexican restaurant, and the movie was District 9. The former was okay, and I got free dinner on account of it being my birthday, the latter is probably one of the very small number of films I've seen that could qualify as hard Science Fiction.

My birthday party kinda had mixed results. I had more people show up for dinner than I expected to, and had a few people fail to show up for the karaoke that I had thought would. Also didn't help that we're in the middle of Back to School season at work... which leads to an excess of customers and not enough time and staffing to clean and do other administrative stuff, and where people were expecting to be out the door at 9:30, they ended up out over an hour late and missing 90% of happy fun karaoke time.

Those who did manage to join me for the karaoke and the dinner were greatly appreciated and much fun was had by all. Our waitress at the restaurant was absolutely awesome, took great care of us... and even gave me my birthday sundae without putting me through the singing stuff when I'd mentioned having a coupon for my birthday burger. :D Karaoke was at Amador Karaoke, which opened within the last half a year and they've been super friendly every time we've been in. There was Filking (awesome lyrics thanks to Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff), challenging gender roles and glow sticks. There will likely be some video evidence posted to YouTube, if you guys are lucky, I may even post a link or embed it at some point.

Here's a list of goodies I scored, vaguely in the order I received them:

Sago Palm - from my mom. I'd had one before, but it got knocked off the wall outside my front door by a neighborhood cat, and the roots got damaged which caused it to die. The new one is bigger, and Mom included a pretty pot with kokopelli on it.
Watchmen Director's Cut DVD - from drwho4, a self professed Homer Simpson gift... though one that I will most certainly enjoy. Hooray for big blue radioactive cock!
320GB internal hard drive - also from drwho4. This will be the drive on which my primary partition of my desktop machine will soon reside. Currently, the desktop's primary partition is on a 30GB drive that I've had in my machine since originally building it way back in 2001.
A Toshiba Satellite L305-S5955 - This gift I will talk more about later in this entry. It was also from drwho4.
42 and Linux Inside Case Badges - from my friends who usually host friday night game night. The Linux Inside one has already been placed upon the above mentioned Toshiba Laptop. :D
Digital Message Tape, small - from the same friends who gave me the case badges. The pen that came with it was dried out, but an ultra-fine sharpie works just as well.
Cookies from one of my other game night friends.
Peacock feather earrings and necklace - from my mother. I will likely have to take a picture wearing them in order to properly do them justice. I wore the earrings for karaoke, but will need to get used to the necklace before wearing it out.
Munchkin Expansions, numbers 4 and 5 - from another one of my game night friends. This brings my Munchkin collection up to the core set, expansions 3, 4 & 5 and a set up level counter dice.
2GB of ram for my desktop computer - from the crazy person who is my Assistant Store Manager at work.
Balloons - from the nice people at the karaoke place. One of them actually says Over the Hill on it, which amuses me so because I only turned 26.

So, as promised, on to the topic of the laptop. First and foremost, I named her Serenity, and she was freed of her Windows shackles pretty quickly. drwho4 handed her over after he got home on my birthday, and we decided to let her charge while we went out for dinner & movie, and I downloaded the kubuntu 9.04 install disc using his Apple laptop. Upon arrival home, an install disc was burned and install progressed quite happily. Wireless worked straight out of the install, and I installed updates and started adjusting settings pretty quickly.

Upon my getting home with her Friday night, I did start copying over files from my desktop computer. My custom purple KDE colors, my settings and config files for Firefox, search engine plugins and all those lovely goodies that make a computer happier. At work on Friday night, I picked up a pretty little Logitech V220 mouse with a blue scroll design on it. I've had the solid blue version on my desktop computer for almost two-thirds to three-quarters of a year now, so I knew it would be a happy fit.

I also attached stickers to Serenity to make her prettier. I have a nice Babyland sticker on her, the Linux Inside case badge and a Jinx horny skull. I will have to take pictures and show both Jinx and Babyland they are loved enough to decorate my laptop. :D I am also considering if there are other stickers that need to be attached to the laptop, but for now she's probably pretty good.

I am so proud of myself though, I have successfully both doing a remote desktop share and an ssh connection through the terminal to have my laptop remotely control my desktop. This bodes well for my being able to copy over files and use the desktop as a file server for my media and crap. I just need to keep playing around with it and learn how to make use of the video and audio streaming through VLC. :D

I do have a little bit more to go through on the topic of birthday... my dad's insisting on having a birthday-ish BBQ thing at his house next weekend... to celebrate mine, his and his parents birthdays (his is a couple days later than the BBQ, and theirs were back in July). I need to come up with birthday presents for all three of them... and I am still pondering solutions. Hopefully will be able to figure something out before Saturday. Have a couple ideas... just gotta see if I can make them work out.

Das Keyboard

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:02:59 GMT

I am in lust.

I remember the first version of Das Keyboard that was $80. Mechanical switches and no markings to eventually wear off, a computer geek's wet dream. I wanted that version of Das Keyboard, even though I knew $80 was more than one really should be paying for a keyboard. Now the price is $129, and they offer a pansy version with markings on it for those who can't type or share their computer with people who can't. If I give in and spend more money than I can really justify on a keyboard, you can bet your ass that I will be getting the nice version without the markings. ^_^ At least they don't charge more for the version without the markings.

My last keyboard, a purple thing that gave me like six or seven years of service before it died from a bad wash job on my part, had easily half the keys worn enough that they no longer had any sort of marking on them, and another third worn to the point it was hard to read. After only a year or two of use, and only a small number of the letter keys worn to the hard to read point, I was intimidating people against using my computer simply because they couldn't read the keyboard and didn't know how to type correctly. Ha.

The keyboard I'm using now, an old IBM thing I'm technically borrowing from my mom's boyfriend...but he's not likely to need/want back since it's for an old Windows machine that was long ago retired and replaces by Apple machines, is starting to show the signs of a year or two of my use. There are keys that are all but completely worn of their marking, and more that are worn just enough to concern some people. The thing that is awesome about this keyboard, and probably the thing that will sell me on Das Keyboard whenever I do finally kill the IBM off, is that it has the mechanical switches in it. The extra depth of the key depressions is nice, the extra click behind each key stroke is a delight, even if it is coming at me through the sounds of Babyland, David Bowie, Heart, Led Zeppeling and whatever the frell else I'm listening to currently. The only thing I dislike about the IBM keyboard is that it's that horrible horrible beige that all computers were in the 90s. Das Keyboard is a nice sexy black.

I did enter a contest on Think Geek to celebrate their being around for 10 years, and if I do win one of the prize levels that include shopping sprees of various dollar amounts, I will have to get myself Das Keyboard. So sexy.

She's as Beautiful as a Foot

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:38:27 GMT

Hooray, I have Deepest Sender back. Apparently while the developer has posted it to the extension's homepage of MozDev, it hasn't been added to the "official" Firefox Extension site, so it didn't automagically update itself when I started using Firefox 3.5. Luckily I haven't had anything that really required posting while I was waiting for this to happen, but I got annoyed today and finally installed it directly from the developer's page. All better now.

Last night, drwho4 and I went and saw Blue Öyster Cult at Slim's. So awesome... though not as much Cowbell as I expected. That's okay though, they were awesome. About the only real negative about the show were the jackasses in the crowd who felt that pot smoking in a crowed enclosed space was cool, and the fact that the venue did nothing to discourage or stop them. Yeah, I support legalizing the stuff, but the shit makes it hard for me to breathe, so I get pissed when forcefully subjected to its smoke. Go smoke your shit at home, or somewhere open air where I can easily move so I'm upwind from it.

In other news, I think I've found use for my unused flat sheets from my sheet sets for my bed. I hate flat sheets, never use them when making my bed, so I've got a collection of them brand new from the package that have never ever been used. Recently in steamfashion I was reintroduced to a tutorial on how to make a skirt that looks kinda Victorian, and seems pretty easy to make... and looks like it would be even easier to modify and tweak depending on the intended context. Check out the "Victorian" skirt how to, if you're curious. Not only will this be helpful on giving me a project for some of my unused flat sheets, but it'll help me reintroduce myself to the sewing machine so that I might start doing other things on it too. I still have a collection of t-shirts I need to modify, and hand stitching all the altered seams takes too gorram long.

On Heroes.

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:13:43 GMT

Some memes need to be revisited from time to time. Go check out all the awesome artwork that came up when Dean Tripp convinced everyone to draw Stephanie Brown.

I have to admit that I haven't actually had the chance to read any of the Batman comics with Stephanie in 'em, but I want to. Everything I've heard about her makes her sound awesome, and it was pretty shitty the way she was treated by the writers involved at the time. I have heard that they've brought her back somehow, but I get the impression that this hasn't been enough to compensate for the injustices done to her. Having now found an awesome comic shop, with very awesome people running it, and it not being located off somewhere way out of my way, I may start working on acquiring back issues involving Stephanie.

The comic shop thing has been annoying. There's the comic shop in my old stomping grounds, Castro Valley, by the name of Crush. I've had problems again and again in their shop. On free comicbook day, they limit each person to three comics each where almost everyone else will let you take as many as you want, as long as you only take one of each title. Add in that they'll not order enough comics to cover walk in customers, only their regulars with boxes set up, and it continues to go down hill. I had found that The Comic Shop in San Leandro was much better, much friendlier and much better about taking care of all their customers, not just their regulars, the problem is I have absolutely no other reason to go out to San Leandro, so it made it difficult to make it over to their shop with the way I keep my schedule and "normal business hours".

On free comic book day this year, drwho4 and I started wandering around to check out what shops were offering, and hit both Crush (just to grab freebies, and ended up having to pay for a single bag and board for a comic they'd brought in an artist to do signings for the day) and The Comic Shop (things went much better here, and drwho4 was able to reminisce about previous locations of the shop, and buying comics from them when walking home from school), then decided we should go wandering to see who else was in the area. This is how we found Comic Ink in Dublin. The couple who own this shop are nice, the place is clean and open, and I've successfully been able to acquire comics important to me, as well as get advice on what I should be checking out next multiple times now. About the only thing I might be able to knock them for is the plethora of Star Wars toys/action figures, and that is entirely a matter of preference on my part and they have lots of other goodies that are not Star Wars in nature.

Also on the topic of Stephanie, weekly game night involves the occasional game of Battlestations. I play an Avianoid, I think they call it, basically a humanoid bird. I decided to name her Stephanie Brown, and whenever I get around to making/finding a miniature for use in the game, I have every intention of giving her the coloration of a robin.

Of Heroes and Books

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:52:08 GMT

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors, and this quote from him, which I read in an article in the NY Times (A Literary Ledgent Fights for a Local Library), has just endeared him to me that much more:

“Libraries raised me, I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

While I don't actually make much use of the library, instead electing to borrow books from friends, or spend what little spare cash I have on acquiring books to keep for my own, in a way building my own library, I understand the importance the library plays in the lives of people who either can't budget to buy their own books, or aren't privileged enough to be surrounded by people who also enjoy reading. Also, while my reasoning for lack of faith in the colleges and universities, I can agree with both his reasoning for lack of faith in them, as well as identify with the sentiment due to my own experiences.

Also mentioned in this article is his dislike of the internet. This makes me sad, as to some degree the internet serves the same role that libraries do, making information much more available to the masses. I can understand that it's sometimes hard to sort the signal from the noise, but the same problem can arise in the library too. I used to spend time in the Castro Valley library, when I was growing up, but it didn't take me long to get frustrated there as once I started looking for good science fiction, all of it was only available by transfer from other libraries, and most of what I was looking for was usually checked out from the other branches anyways. I didn't have the patience to wait for these books to come in, so I sought other sources for my reading material.

They're currently building a new library for Castro Valley, and so far the building looks pretty cool, so I may actually go check it out when it opens. Who knows, I may even start spending more time in the library again if their book selection has improved and expanded since I last gave them a chance. However, I am a lover of books. I don't like reading them and letting them go. I like collecting them. I like being able to go back and pick them up at random to find quotes, or to be able to hand them over to a friend to share the love, knowing that I'll get my book back having introduced it to someone new, and to have shared its knowledge.

I hope to one day eventually have a proper library room in whatever house I settle into long term. A comfortable room with big plush chairs, a nice window to let just the right amount of afternoon light in to read by, and floor to ceiling bookcases. Being the dork I am, there will likely be a library room computer, with a way to catalog all my books in it, possibly using a :cuecat as a barcode scanner.

Because Paul is weird.

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:16:39 GMT

Hi!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:13:07 GMT

I <3 The Winslow.

Do you know that girl?

Wed, 27 May 2009 20:09:01 GMT

me: They made a Fruity Oaty Bar shirt! http://www.makeusmiletees.com/froawojrtee.html
Paul Puri: That commercial freaked me out. Made me want to go to a bar and hurt people
me: That was its point. :)
me: Remind me, if I get the shirt, to wear it when we go out in public some time, and to bring a video camera.
Paul Puri: ok
me: ^_^

Shooting Stars

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:26:08 GMT

I suspect that part of the way I manage to be so emotionally divested in life, and don't mistake this for a lack of anger and passion, just a lack of attachment, is that I throw so much of my emotion into my writing when I can corner the muse and get her to sing for me. Right now I'm working through a difficult part in Diziara's life, what ultimately amounts to her turning point that lead her to the path that landed her in starfleet and as a stone cold lunatic bitch. This character, I've been working with since high school, and as I have mentioned many times in this journal, came to realize she represents my id. My id could have manifested in any universe, in any form, but I suspect part of what lead me to having her manifest in the trek universe was that when I started working with her, I didn't feel secure enough in my writing skills to work outside of a universe that had not been established before I started to play there.

Those of you who play in the game with me where I'm currently running Dizi, or those of you who keep a spare eye on it when you can, I am not talking about the current plot line we're working through... that's fluff, it's giving us excuses to abuse the Andorian Bastard of a chief tactical officer, a way to pull in a new character that's not native to the 24th century, and a chance for Diziara to justify her 20th Century Earth History minor from the Academy. I have a whole folder on my computer with a collection of vignettes of history for Diziara, most of it isn't likely to be seen by much of anyone else other than me, as some of the scenes are ones that I was either hashing out before making a post to a game, or before writing an entry in her journal, and others represent views of events in her life that she doesn't even remember herself, but none the less impact the rest of her life, the rumors spoken about her, and what information may eventually surface from her subconscious.

This important bit, it's the death of the man she loved. She was about a month and a half away from marrying him, she was on cloud nine, and something that is as normal as breathing to her manages to take him away from her. From the creation of the character, Travis has always been a looming figure in her past, unrealized potential, happiness snatched away, and a snapping point for her. However, the fact that I'd never actually written out the events that took him away from her always left the pain their nebulous, intangible, and almost trivial to think about. Sure, certain aspects of her personality, certain motives behind her actions sprung forth from this point in her life, but it still felt intangible. Well, now the muse has seen fit to give me a clearer vision of this event, to allow me to attempt to capture this scene in words, and now it feels painfully real.

A part of me knows that I should not care this much about characters who amount to little more than fiction, but another part knows that it was my choice to do this to them, and it's almost like a double blow, that detail. It makes me wonder what sort of person I am that I have to torture my id with such abuse. What sort of person I am that in order for my id to represent me, I have to justify some aspect of my personality with such a tragic event, something that I have never been through myself.

The music is in my head.

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:40:06 GMT

Well, that is annoying. I hadn't realized that since I'd upgraded to Kubuntu 9.04 that Amarok hadn't been submititng my recently listened tracks. Amarok was already annoying me because certain functionality I depended upon in it wasn't there in this version two development, but they'd decided to stop including the old version one-something when they did the last release. Annoying.

I did find a recommendation on how to fix it, and I'm attempting it right now. We'll see if it works or not.

Remind me to keep a squirt gun under my bed.

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:35:06 GMT

As I know I've mentioned in the past, dreams and I are infrequent bed fellows, and when I do tend to dream it gets weird and drifts away very quickly. Last night I actually remember some of my dreams. Most of it slipped away pretty quickly, but I do know it involved volcanoes. Not sure why this particular detail is actually choosing to stick around, nor why it would have popped up. I don't recall anything being said or done within the recent past involving volcanoes around me.

I do remember there suddenly being an earthquake, my mother was there with me. We ducked down and sought shelter under what seemed to be a solid enough part of the structure we were in... but when the quake didn't stop, I got up and looked around. The nearby mountain was smoking, and when I observed this, everyone in the room made for the door. Mom and I got into a vehicle, might have been a van, and started driving away. There were other people driving also, but as we were all headed into the hills out of town (opposite side of town from the volcano) there was a fork in the road. Everyone else went one way, and Mom and I drove the other.

I know there was more to the dream than this, in fact I remember it getting weird, but I can't remember anything else.

Cut and Burn

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:54:04 GMT

I've had my pretty firesteel knife for a few months now... and I'm still yet to pick a name for her. I know it's a she, but I still haven't figured out a good name for her. I am inclined towards a goddess involving Fire or a feminine name that means fire in some way, but I have no been able to find something that I like the sound of. Anyone have any suggestions?

I lost the game.

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:40:36 GMT

So, since I started going to game night on Fridays regularly, I have come to know a guy named Chris who is a rules lawyer, likes to do things like make people lose The Game, and other such things that usually requires tribbles thrown at his head. All that said, he is usually an amusing guy to game with, even if occasionally he tests our patience, and he's known some of the group for years.

Last night, I was feeling like a little shit, so I sent him the following email:

Subject: Damn it.

I lost the game.

ps. You will likely receive this email after the 30 minute grace period from my declaration. So you're welcome. Enjoy.

This morning, awaiting me in my inbox was his reply:

Bad form, old sport.

ps- I read this, began writing a reply, then got distracted, so when I came back to it to send it, I lost the game a second time!