Dude, T Campbell posted on my blog!

Apparently he noticed my rather vitriolic post about his portrayal of President Bush. Heh, heh.

This is why blogging rules. One of the rockstars of webcomics shows up at my blog. I mean, wow.

It's probably too much to hope that he'll stick around (especially since he was responding to a criticism), but this just serves as an example of how conversations can spring up between unlikely people here on the good ol' Intarweb. I hope my blog attracts the attention of more interesting people. I hope this becomes a place of Great Dialogue.

For now, I'll just content myself with repeating gleefully to myself, "T Campbell posted on my blog!"

Story of my life

I just applied for a job. It pays about the same as what I make now, but it has more hours.

I was told that I would be considered, but that I was overqualified, and they didn't like to hire overqualified people because they tended to leave so quickly, regardless of their good intentions.

Fair enough.

But why is it that I only seem to find jobs that I'm over- or underqualified for? Where are the jobs in the middle?

New blog

I actually looked at Bloglines' recommendations for a change, and one of them stood out: rantings [b e a u t i f u l]. I like her tagline: "honesty. what a concept." Reminds me of...me! So I subscribed, and we'll see how it goes :)

There was one really cool entry I wanted to highlight here. It's called "The Morning After...", and here's the part I really liked:

One more thing, women: If you are ever upset with your significant other, go to him and tell him why. Don't wait for him to ask and then reply with "nothing" hoping he'll push for further details. Don't leave the room and hope he'll follow. Don't play the martyr for sympathy. And don't, and I emphasize DON'T refuse to tell him and then expect him to know why - that whole "If you don't know I'm not telling you" crap. You'd be amazed at how quickly so many issues can be completely resolved when you approach a guy in the straightforward, logical manner in which his brain is wired. What a concept.

It's really hard to avoid acting like, well, a girl :> I've had my problems with it in the past. But really, it does no one any good to bottle feelings up...and how can he help if he doesn't know what's wrong?

Apparently, I'm Betty Grable

You're Betty Grable!

What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

AOL integrates Buddy List information with Outlook

I guess I just feel like posting today. Here's the story, from AP, via Yahoo!.

A free tool AOL is offering beginning Monday integrates "buddy list" information from AOL Instant Messenger with Outlook.

When you receive an e-mail from an AIM member who is online, a yellow "running man" logo appears in the "from" line next to the e-mail address. If you believe a quick chat session might be more appropriate in reply than a series of further e-mails back and forth, clicking on the logo launches the AIM software for you.

Apparently the tool will eventually be able to tell you whether or not your colleague is busy, or in a bad mood.

This last bit is interesting:

AOL also announced deals to have similar buddy list information integrated with third-party Web sites. With Thomson Financial, for instance, brokers and sellers will be able to negotiate in real-time through instant messaging. At CareerBuilder.com, prospective employers can contact job seekers instantly.

Can you imagine having an IM conversation with a potential employer?

Employer123: Hello there. I saw your resume on CareerBuilder, and I think you might be a good fit for our company.
Matt6969: who r u
Employer123: My name is Peter Reynolds. I represent Company 123 here in Augusta.
Matt6969: haha aarno i no its u
Matt6969: siriusly stop jokin man
Matt6969: hello
Employer123: Thank you for your time.

New Japanese constitution in the works

Here's a story on Japan Today about some of the ways in which this new proposed constitution will differ from the existing constitution, which was written by the Allied forces in 1947. Some highlights:

According to its basic concept, a subcommittee of the LDP's constitutional drafting committee says, "It should be permissible under the law to restrict or ban publication or sale of books that have a detrimental effect on young people's upbringing' - an apparent reference to obscene books or videos.

The subcommittee, led by House of Representatives member Hajime Funada, also says in the basic policy stance, "There should be restrictions on forming associations that aim at damaging the state or social order."

Further, it emphasizes the obligations citizens have to defend the country, protect their families and the environment and respect life, even at the expense of individual freedoms.

Concerning Article 20, which guarantees freedom of religion and bans religious organizations from receiving any privileges from the state and exercising political authority, the subcommittee will propose allowing the authorities to be involved in Shinto ceremonies and fund them from the public purse, "as they belong to accepted social protocol."

I don't know enough about politics or law or Japanese history to make any comments. I have some gut reactions, but I feel that voicing them would be unfair.

God

Another suicide attack.

They're sending a message to the Iraqi people, that's for sure.

God, the street is just covered with blood.

Tony Blair responded with rhetoric. I'm sort of amazed that he's capable of that. I guess I would make a sorry politician, because there's no way I could talk about this and leave out the terrorists' side.

It's obvious why they chose this target. Here are people who are signing up for an "army" put in place by the Evil Westerners. Destroying them must seem perfectly justified.

We can talk about how vile and unconscionable the terrorists' tactics are until we're blue in the face--and don't get me wrong, they are vile--but will this accomplish anything? Won't people eventually stop caring? "Oh, the terrorists have done it again." Won't the words "vile", "horrible", "sick" start losing their meaning?

Is there some way the world leaders can approach this, without giving the terrorists any justification for their crimes, that could lead to a dialogue about better ways of stopping terror? Isn't there some way we can show the people of Arab nations that they can get what they want without the use of terror tactics?

Or are we just too different?

There are things I disagree with going on in this country, but the farthest I'd go is civil disobedience, because I believe that at its core, our system is functional and should be preserved. I guess this might not be the case elsewhere...

But we are all human beings. We are all capable of evil. What is it that drives people past the point of no return? Can't something be done about it?

Source claims BTK suspect has confessed

The DA is denying the information.

If this was Japan, the police would tell us everything about the investigation immediately. I noticed that with the Nara schoolgirl killer case...the newspapers kept reporting everything the guy said during his interrogation. I'm not really sure which approach is weirder :>

Holy shit

Okay, I so did not need to read this story.

I am totally freaked out now.

(Damn you, BoingBoing...)

Cool-ass names

Formula for success in naming your protagonist:

1) Pick a nondescript, normal first name, like "John" or "Thomas".

2) Pick a word for the last name that you have never heard used as anyone's last name, ever. This word must reek coolness, and it must also have some semantic connection with the character's purpose in the story. Pick a legendary warrior, like "Constantine", or a word with boatloads of implied meaning, like "Covenant".

1 + 2 = Badass

Interesting thing about my personality

All I have to do is state definitively that I am going to wuss out, and I am goaded into not wussing out. I guess it's my own brand of reverse psychology.

In any case, I rode my bike to work. It was a little cold, and it drizzled on me, but it was worth it!

Yawn

I guess I won't ride my bike to work today, because weather.com says it's going to start raining at noon, which means that it's either raining right now, or it'll start raining before I come home from work. I don't really feel like biking in the rain, and it's kinda chilly out right now anyway, so bleh.

The weather needs to get over itself.

In other news, the Chinese used glutinous rice porridge as mortar.

Never mind

I'm looking at the Google cache of the page that explains how to do templates and themes, and meanwhile my brains are slowly oozing out of my ears.

So I guess I won't work on a theme or anything just yet :P

Where is codex.wordpress.org?

I am bored and restless. So finally I thought, well, I'll get down to business on building a template and theme for WordPress.

But codex.wordpress.org just reroutes me back to root.

The world hates me.

I want to become fluent in Japanese.

I've purchased a lot of books about the Japanese language, and I own a handful of CD-ROMs and language CDs/tapes, but I don't seem to have the motivation to use them. Part of the reason is that it's hard to motivate yourself to do anything on your own, but another part is simply that I don't have anyone to practice with or to correct me.

So, I'm trying to figure out if there are Japanese classes anywhere near here. At all. So far, all I've come up with is the following:

First, some high schools in the area have Japanese courses (Augusta Christian, Davidson Fine Arts High School, and Glenn Hills High School). Even if I did somehow manage to get permission to attend those classes, I would feel like a moron in a high school setting.

Second, the University System of Georgia has online interactive Japanese lessons. This might help me...if I were going to a university.

Third, there's Irasshai from Georgia Public Broadcasting, which is very expensive, but might be my best bet.

Unfortunately, none of these go past a "Japanese II" level (with the possible exception of the high school courses...no idea what their curriculum is). I technically had Japanese I and II in college. I took four semesters, after all. So these courses would be more of a refresher for me--although, to be completely honest, I didn't actually learn a lot of what I was taught.

I guess my main concern is finding a way to learn that will reinforce my existing knowledge and my new knowledge, and force me to apply that knowledge. What I'd really like to do is go to some sort of immersion retreat, get completely inundated in the language for awhile, and then come back to Augusta to a group or class or something that would help me maintain what I'd learned, as well as teach me more. I feel like being immersed in language training would really help jumpstart my learning. I'm very out of practice.

There was an immersion program I was looking into that took place in New York City, but I can't seem to find the bookmark. Oh well.

There's also a Meetup.com group for Japanese Language in Augusta, but it seems to be really inactive. It doesn't even have an Organizer :/

So I'm not really sure what I want to do. I do know that the best motivational tool I have ever used is DietPower, and that's because the program asks me to log my weight and everything I eat every day. If I could find some software that would demand updates on my study of Japanese, and offer resources and suggestions, that might really help :> Bleh, it seems really lame that I don't think I can accomplish things without a guide/personal trainer/outside motivator...

Blah...

Sometimes there are things I think are worth commenting on, but I don't feel like posting for whatever reason, so I end up not linking them. Then, later, I want to find the thing I thought was cool, and realize that I never posted it, so I can't find it in my blog archives. Kind of annoying, given that I use this blog as the Compendium of Me.

So, even though I'm not in the mood, here are some stories.

First, teaching your child sign language may save your life.

Second, two entertainment stories: 1) CG animation is pretty costly and that's why it hasn't made a huge impact on television programming. ReBoot is mentioned, rightly so, which is why I think the article is cool. 2) Here's a piece about Terry O'Quinn, one of my favorite actors. And no, AJ, I haven't watched any Lost yet. I have started watching a new anime called Bleach, though ;P

Oh, my god.

Check out this email sent to Hanzi Smatter by a guy named Julian Grybowski:

Now that that contract has expired, these first 67 episodes [of Dragonball Z] are being released uncut with Japanese and English audio, and the trailer on the page linked above reflects that. But therein lies the rub.

All of the Japanese text is complete gibberish, except for the title logo ("Doragonbo-ru Z," which is correct). This is evident from the very first time the Japanese characters appear. Son Gokuu, whose name uses the same (unsimplified) kanji as "Sun Wukong" (孫悟空) in Chinese, is spelled out as "numahiyu" (ヌマヒユ) in Katakana (one of the two Japanese syllabaries). It only gets worse from there, to the point where the Japanese displayed behind the promotional phrases ("Original Uncut Japanese," etc.) is just long strings of absolute nonsense.

I had to watch the trailer to see it for myself. Holy shit. I am just...incredulous.

As Julian puts it:

Japanese is not English written in some "secret code," and a company that is playing up the Japanese aspect of its releases should know better than to use pretend Japanese to promote it.

Just...wow. I guess FUNimation has a pretty low opinion of its customers...

Slate: Social Security can be saved by raising the retirement age

From "The New 65":

Calculating backward, [Kenneth] Manton [of Duke's Center for Demographic Studies] deduced that at age 65, active-life expectancy--the average number of years a person could expect to live free of chronic functional impairment--was 8.8 years in 1935, 11.8 years in 1982, and 13.9 years in 1999. Based on the trend line, he projects that by 2015, active life expectancy will be 17 years. In short, if you were designing a system in 1999 for people who could expect as many active years as a 65-year-old person could expect in 1935, you'd set the retirement age at 70. And by 2015, you'd raise it to 73.

[...]

How much money would a higher retirement age save? According to the Congressional Budget Office, if the ascent to age 67 were accelerated and completed by 2016, and if the retirement age kept rising two months a year until it hit age 70 in 2037, and if the rate of increase then slowed to one month every two years, Social Security outlays in 2050 would decline by 12 percent. A fully adjusted retirement age--one that kept pace with biology instead of lagging 40 years behind it, as the CBO's scenario does--would generate an even bigger surplus. By one rule of thumb, every year of recipient eligibility consumes about 7 percent of Social Security's financial commitments. Compared to the currently assumed retirement age of 67, an increase to age 73 could cut the government's obligations by as much as 40 percent. Either way, the projected Social Security deficit would disappear--and with it, the Democratic objection to personal retirement accounts, which could be funded out of the new payroll tax surplus.

It seems like common sense, doesn't it? But I bet we'll hear a lot of objections like "I don't want to retire only when I'm unable to work, I want to retire early enough that I can go on world vacations."

Bandwidth stealers!

So, I've got two people stealing bandwidth from me currently. (This is far less than what happens to big websites with lots of visitors, but it's still annoying!) I discovered them by running a report on my server logs and then looking at the top referrers.

The first one is some dude on a forum. He direct-linked to this image I made back in 2002. I don't really care if he uses the picture, because I don't own the art by any means, but yeesh, dude, get your own server space!

The second one is a guy who, for some inexplicable reason, direct-linked to my little "XML" picture instead of saving it on his own server.

So, I've created an .htaccess file in my /journal/images directory that redirects people to this picture:

[Edit: I changed the .htaccess file to just not send out anything. That reduces the bandwidth on my end.]

It seems to load really, really slowly on the perpetrators' pages, and I'm not sure why. I hope doing this won't cause me further bandwidth problems.

There may actually be more than just these two doing the direct linking. They were the ones who showed up in the Top Referring URL list, but I've also got the following in the Top Referring Sites list:

http://teenforums.studentcenter.org
http://www.eurodltd.co.uk
http://boards.theforce.net
http://boards.ign.com
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org
http://ddkclanforums.proboards19.com
http://forum.gameitalia.net

I'm not a member of any of those forums, sooo...

There are also a few things in there that confuse me:

http://www.paulmusgrave.com
http://www.xopy.com
http://www.dvdtalk.com
http://www.netcraft.com
http://www.nutzu.com

Who are these people? Are they linking to my site? Are they stealing bandwidth?

Note that some or all of these could be outdated now...I ran a report for practically the full history of my website, from February 13, 2002 until yesterday.

In other news...

Most Active Date	Friday, May 14, 2004
Number of Hits on Most Active Date	6,619
Number of Visits on Most Active Date	220
BandWidth on Most Active Date	42.97 MB
Least Active Date	Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Number of Hits on Least Active Date	1
Number of Visits on Least Active Date	1
BandWidth on Least Active Date	252 Bytes

I don't think I'm in any great danger of exceeding any bandwidth limits ^^;;

This graph is pretty cool, though, right?

"The bottom line: BTK is arrested"

A man suspected of being the BTK serial killer in Wichita, Kansas has been arrested.

I hope they got him. This is a shame, though:

Prosecutor Nola Foulston said that while there is no statute of limitations for homicide, the death penalty would not apply to any crime committed before 1994, when the death penalty was introduced in Kansas.

They'd better at least put this guy away for the rest of his life, if he truly is the killer.

Two British students set to begin an eight week crime spree in the US

Watch out for these dangerous fellows!

"There are thousands of stupid laws in the United States, but we are limiting ourselves to breaking about 45 of them," said Richard Smith, from Portreath, Cornwall.

The journey, which appropriately enough begins in Alcatraz, will cover around 18,000 miles and take eight weeks - provided, of course, that Mr Smith and his accomplice, Luke Bateman, are not apprehended along the way.

Via BoingBoing. I wonder, would it really be prohibitively expensive to get rid of all those ridiculous laws? I mean, it's kind of embarrassing ;>

(Plus I'm annoyed that they might get a book deal out of it, and they're not even Americans! I wish I'd thought of it ;P)

I think I need to trim down my blog template

It seems like my blog loads slowly. The title graphic will appear, and then I'll wait a very long time for the rest of the page to appear. Does that happen to anyone else?

I didn't code the site by hand. I used Dreamweaver to make it look the way I wanted to, and then edited in the Blogger template tags in Notepad. Maybe there is something in my code that is bloating everything. Or maybe I use too many images. Any suggestions?

Really, I will have to turn everything into CSS anyway when I make the move to WordPress. Maybe that will solve the problem?

[Edit 12:55pm:] I just noticed that IE tries to block my images and Blogger cookies due to my current privacy settings. Is that slowing the load time down? Is this problem caused by using Blogger, IE, both?

Old friends

People from my past have been popping up lately. First there was Jazz, who I still had a line of contact with but who I'd sort of lost touch with lately. Now there's Alana, of Wes and Alana, from kung fu class. (1993, baby!) Alana sent me an email after seeing a post I made over on Jazz's website. It turns out that both of them have blogs, so I've blogrolled them.

Now what would really be crazy would be if Christy Bremer or [person who doesn't want her name anywhere on the Internet] or somebody suddenly appeared...

Hunter S. Thompson: twisted, egomaniacal piece of shit

I didn't even know who the guy was until bloggers everywhere began mourning his suicide. After finding out more about him, I'm not really sorry to be so "uncultured".

Take this, for example:

The widow of journalist Hunter S. Thompson said her husband killed himself while the two were talking on the phone.

[...]

His son, daughter-in-law and 6-year-old grandson were in the house when the shooting occurred.

So, he thought that it was so important that he go out with a bang that he didn't bother to think about his family, his grandson. Or maybe he thought it would be "cool" to have his family in the house when he died. Sure, that's fine, if you die naturally. What kind of sick bastard kills himself with his wife on the phone and his child and grandchild in the next room? With a gun? Blowing his brains and blood all over the room for a six year old child to find? It's obvious that the only thing this man cared about was himself. God, just thinking about this man's utter disregard for his family disgusts me.

Of course, his wife could only react with guilt and self-judgment, like many an abused woman:

Anita Thompson, 32, said her husband had discussed killing himself in recent months and had been issuing verbal and written directives about what he wanted done with his body, his unpublished works and his assets.

His suicidal talk put a strain on their relationship, she said.

"He wanted to leave on top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision," she said. "It was a problem for us."

"I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision"?! Jesus Christ!

I want to have a Girls' Day party!

It would be so much fun!

Here's an article on JapaneseFood.About.com about Hina-Matsuri. I want to try the food!

• Chirashi-zushi - sashimi (raw fish) and colorful toppings on sushi rice.
• Ushio-jiru - clam soup
• Sakura-mochi - sweet rice cake
• Hina-arare - colorful pop rice *order or buy at Asian grocery stores near you.

I know I can get chirashi (8 or 10 pieces) at Mikoto, but I guess I would have to make the clam soup and rice cake. It could be fun, though :) (I could also make the chirashi, if I was feeling particularly daring.)

I've also been wanting to do a traditional Japanese New Year's meal, packed in a jubako. They're so pretty! Maybe next year...

And, of course, I also want to start eating bento for lunch :>

A librarian's case against Google's text digitization efforts, and my rebuttal

Via Slashdot, Revenge of the Blog People!

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.

McGoogle
I had heard of the activities of the latter and of the absurd idea of giving them press credentials (though, since the credentials were issued for political conventions, they were just absurd icing on absurd cakes). I was not truly aware of them until shortly after I published an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times ("Google and God's Mind," December 17, 2004). Then, thanks to kind friends with nothing but my welfare in mind, I rapidly learned more about the blog subcultures.

My piece had the temerity to question the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine. The Google phenomenon is a wonderfully modern manifestation of the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality. Hailed as the ultimate example of information retrieval, Google is, in fact, the device that gives you thousands of "hits" (which may or may not be relevant) in no very useful order.

On your left, you'll find a remnant of the Paleolithic era, railing against the technological advances that assail him on sides even as he continues to support the archaic filing systems that give his life meaning.

Where does the phrase "Blog People" come from? It is by far one of the stupidest terms I have ever heard.

Ah, well. As they sang in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, "We don't like / What we don't / Understand / In fact it scares us." I guess Gorman is out to kill the Beast.

His position ultimately seems to be that information in books is more valid than information rendered in pixels, that the only true way to learn is to read print materials. (That kind of makes the name of my website seem pretty sad, doesn't it?) But it shouldn't be hard to see the logical fallacy in this argument. Just because something has been published doesn't mean it is automatically worth reading. There is plenty of trash out there--yes, even in established academic literature. What Gorman may truly be afraid of is the fact that easy access to textual information would de-glorify quite a bit of the writing on which his livelihood is based. It would not only make his current job obsolete (which he claims doesn't concern him), but it would call into question the integrity of his work at the most basic level. People will start asking things like, "This study is completely unscientific. Why was it housed in this great library?" Clearly, digitizing academic texts spells doom for the legitimacy of librarians.

No text, digital, print, or whatever, should be glorified. Everything should be accessible so that merits can be judged across the board. Digital texts are accessible in libraries that have computers, but printed matter is not accessible on computers, because computers don't typically come with libraries. So, we need more computers in libraries, and we need more texts digitized. And those poor, library-less children in California could learn at their home or school computers if the texts were made available in a digital format. Wouldn't that, in the long run, be less expensive than building library sites, purchasing hundreds of thousands of books, employing librarians, and then attempting to keep an archive of print materials up to date?

A whole mess of news

I've been neglecting the news, basically due to stress, so I've had a lot of RSS feeds to plow through. I'm totally not done; I've just gone through News Aggregates, Odd/Weird, and Local News. Here are some highlights.

Via Slashdot, New Scientist: Software learns to translate by reading up:

Translation software that develops an understanding of languages by scanning through thousands of previously translated documents has been released by US researchers.

Most existing translation software uses hand-coded rules for transposing words and phrases. But the new software, developed by Kevin Knight and Daniel Marcu at the Information Sciences Institute, part of the University of Southern California, US, takes a statistical approach, building probabilistic rules about words, phrases and syntactic structures.

The pair founded a company called Language Weaver in Los Angeles, US, to sell the software as an automated translation tool. They already offer technology that can translate to or from English with four languages - Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish.

The key to their "statistical machine translation software" are the translation dictionaries, patterns and rules - translation parameters - that the program develops. It does this by creating many different possible translation parameters based on previously translated documents and then ranking them probabilistically.

It sounds...Google-esque. And pretty common-sensical, too. I wonder if using texts translated 10 or 20 or 50 years ago would affect the results of modern texts, or if languages don't significantly change in those time periods...there are oodles of studies that could be done using this software. (I haven't read Language Log in ages...maybe they've already talked about this...)

Via Slashdot, Earth Reactor Forums: LOKI TORRENT LAWSUIT :: THE FACTS

Ed Webber knowingly manipulated the p2p community into donating a large amount of funds while during the same exact time, without the knowledge or agreement of the p2p community, closed a deal that potentially puts each and everyone of his supporting bit torrent community and website visiting members at risk.

I'm not really sure what I think about this, but whenever it seems like people are defending their right to own copies of television shows and movies without paying for them or having to watch commercials, I get skeptical. I mean, I don't think it's ethically bad to download something that isn't available for purchase, but if there are DVDs available, you don't need to download rips from the DVDs. You need to buy the DVDs. (And don't give me the whole "I'm just downloading it for a preview, and if I like it, I'll buy it" argument. How many times have you actually bought something after downloading it? [Unfortunately, it would be self-incriminating to answer that question...])

Via BoingBoing,a freaky helipad tennis court that I could so not play on, for fear of running after the ball and careening off the side.

Via BoingBoing, a crazy-cool ergonomic desk solution. Also via BoingBoing, an ergonomic pen.

Well, according to Reuters (via Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough), I'm not the only one bad at geography. (They should all play these web games!)

And finally, young Japanese women see no need to get married. Well, obviously, they all want to follow their careers, and enjoy their lives, and keep themselves available to be my mistresses. Um, I mean, good for them! Obviously, they realize that Japanese men are fucked up, and want no part of that. Er, that is...uh, too bad about the possible future population decline, right?

Another picture coincidence

Back on the 19th, I mentioned a picture I'd taken in Japan that was very similar to a picture someone else had taken. It's happened again.

Here's a picture I took in Takayama:

Joanne recently went to Takayama, and took this picture.

Neat, huh? It really makes the world seem like a smaller place.

Here's to you

Yesterday at around 3, Robert told me that the go-live date has been pushed back again. So, I don't have to have all the menus done by Monday. This means I don't have to work full time today or come in on the weekends, and that next week I can just work half-time and I should still be able to get it all done just fine.

I had managed to calm down about it, so this news didn't really faze me, but I'm finding that I'm very, very tired.

Last night, Mari and Brooke and I went to see Cathie Ryan and her band perform Celtic music at the Depot in Thomson. We were all dressed up :) I did this weird thing with my Hairagami: first, because I like to have a wisp hanging down, I pulled a small clump of hair out on the left side of my face and held it in my mouth while I wrapped the rest in the Hairagami. Then, I was trying to follow the instructions to make a particular kind of bun, but I couldn't figure out what I was doing. I wrapped my hair around the thing, then curled it, then snapped the bands into place, and what ended up happening was I had a ponytail coming out the middle of a circle that had blue Hairagami showing at the top and a half-bun of hair at the bottom. I thought that it must look ridiculous, but I liked it from the front with the wisp hanging down along my face and the ponytail flipping back and forth behind my head, so I went with it.

I also wore the size 12/14 purple velvet dress that has been sitting in my closet, unwearable, for longer than I've been married. (Weight loss = teh gud.) I finished off with nylons, calf-high black boots, and a matching set of junk jewelry earrings and a necklace. It really wasn't a bad look. (Sean kept saying "you look good" and finding excuses to touch me when I got home later.)

We were all charmed by downtown Thomson and the Depot building. It is really neat down there.

The concert was great. I don't know that I am a huge fan of the more "contemporary" stuff...I would have been happy to listen to all the songs in Irish rather than English. But Ms. Ryan has a very pretty voice, and she is funny to boot. It was very entertaining.

Her backup fiddler, Hanneke Cassel, was amazing, though. I think I stared at her the most during the concert. Her long thin arms and the intense look on her face as she played reminded me poignantly of Kristanne. I wonder if Kristanne can fiddle? (For those of you not in the know, Kristanne Harden went to high school with me and Jazz, and we were all in kung fu together, along with Michael Jennings, who was a grade ahead of us. Kristanne is a violinist. She now lives in Germany with her husband, Kilian Kubala.)

The concert lasted until nearly 10, so we couldn't go to Mikoto. We headed back to Augusta and went to Denny's instead, where I doubled my caloric intake for the day o_o All in all, it was a very satisfying evening :)

The most incredible part was during a song called So Here's To You. It's a song rife with blessings and promise, and Ms. Ryan had the audience sing along. I'm not sure I can really explain why, but I cried my eyes out.

It starts like this:

When first we met, complete total strangers
We did not know if we could be friends
How soon we've come for to know each other
So now I know we will meet again

I couldn't help but think of Mari and Brooke and how we first met. How I didn't know how things were going to be with these new people, whether or not we would have anything in common or like each other at all. "How soon we've come for to know each other." It seems like we just met yesterday (actually, it was 2003), but already I have two of the best friendships of my life.

I was filled with the feeling of friendship and parting, and the certainty of meeting again. That's how I feel with Mari and Brooke. We all three live different lives. Mari's in North Augusta in a house with her husband, bellydancing and working at social security. Brooke's downtown in an apartment, working at Shepeard blood center and running with a computer gaming/party crowd. (Or something.) I'm here in western Augusta/almost Martinez, living in an apartment with my husband, working part time and spending the rest of my time reading and writing on blogs. We're not terribly disparate, but our lives don't always match up. We all have different things to do, and time passes with us apart.

But we always know that we have each other, and we always know that we will meet again.

So here's to you and our time together
I'll share with you now a parting glass
And bid adieu with a smile and laughter
Our time apart will be short and pass

I am really tired.

I stayed up until midnight. Sean didn't get off work until 10, so I wanted to make his dinner for him. After that, I was watching Friends season 4 and had to force myself to stop. This morning, I fell asleep repeatedly while sitting on the toilet. Fun.

There's a flu/fever going around that everyone at work seems to have gotten. I hope I don't run myself down so much that I catch it too. That would be a bad thing. I've heard some horror stories about pain and vomiting...I haven't thrown up in years, and I'm not really eager to do it again.

Anyway! Down to business.

Dude!

My blood pressure was 124/74 just now.

Rock!

I ended up going back to work at around 3 and staying until 7:45. I took some headphones, and with them was able to block out the rest of the office. It was great, just what I needed. So, I guess I have a solution to that sort of problem. I was able to get a full restaurant menu ported over into our new system.

Now, just 19 to go...by Monday o_o

What is wrong with me?

Somewhere along the line I got overwhelmed, and I couldn't concentrate. I needed to be able to concentrate so I could work on what I needed to work on so that the deadline can be met. But I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't tune out the background noise of the office. I couldn't stop listening to what was going on. Everything that was said made me more and more frustrated, until I snapped at my coworker for paying me a compliment. It was like I couldn't handle any outside information.

Completely unable to function, I came home. And while I'm feeling a bit better now, I know that if I go back there, to the busy office where phones ring and ring and ring and the dispatch phone beeps and wails all the time and people speak in very loud voices, I will still not be able to concentrate, and I may very well go nuts all over again.

I don't know why I'm like this. I think maybe the overemotional part has to do with the hormones I'm taking. Maybe that's feeding the overwhelming feeling of a deadline I don't know if I can meet. But why can't I concentrate? Is that an emotional thing, too, or is that part of my personality? I have trouble concentrating a lot in the office. It's too loud in there, and I can't focus. Wearing headphones and playing music to myself to block everything out might work, but it would also be rude, and I would also feel like I was missing stuff. Maybe it's not that I can't cut out background noise, but that my personality doesn't want me to, because I'm obsessive compulsive?

Gah...whatever it is, I hate the helpless feeling I have when I get to the point where I can no longer function. I hate getting to the point that anything anyone says makes me so frustrated I could cry. (Like, "You know where you're losing [weight] now? In your face." Yeah. A nice thing to say, and I got so frustrated all I could respond with was, in a choked sob, "I'm in a bad mood." WTF?)

I just want to be normal, to be capable of handling things. Why am I so emotionally unstable?

I'm going to go watch Friends season 4 for awhile, then see how I feel about going back in. Robert needs me to do that data entry, come hell or high water. I will be working on it on Saturday almost definitely, given today's delay. Ugh. I don't want to go back today, I just want to go to bed and sleep forever. But, you know, when you leave everything until a week before the go live date, there's no time for weakness like mine.

Okay, so I'm bipolar

Monday: Freaking out!
Tuesday: Feeling damn good!
Wednesday: Freaking out!

Bah.

On a natural high

I worked for nearly 12 hours, and I was so cheerful at the end that it's hard to remember how I freaked out yesterday, and how anxious I was this morning that things were going to be the same today. I got to take care of a lot of things that needed taking care of...I think that's part of why. Like I mentioned on Josh's blog, being productive really does help with depressive moods. Apparently it helps "omg I'm gonna freak out" moods, too.

Anyway, the big project should start tomorrow, and hopefully Wanda will be back to work, and I'll get to immerse myself in glorious data entry, uninhibited.

About the only thing I have to complain about at the moment is my headache, which I think came from drinking cold water way too fast after biking home. But I'm going to console myself with some Friends season 4--my DVDs arrived today :)

(By the way, the weather today was perfect for biking. If I hadn't stayed until after 6, it would have been uncomfortably hot. As it was, the sun was going down, and there was a cool breeze. It was lovely, and I got to see the lights turning on. I also spotted the first blooming tree I've noticed this spring, at the entrance to Augusta Christian School. I stopped and took a picture :)

Lots of work piled up!

I've been going nonstop for several hours now, and I'm in a much better mood :) I love this kind of work, where I have a huge pile and I can just plow through it. Audrey stayed and answered all the phones, and did the majority of the dispatch work, so I was free to do my thing with minimal interruption. It was glorious!

Still covered in a mountain of tasks, so I'll wrap up here. One final thought: I haven't even started the stuff Robert said would keep me here until 5.

The worst thing about this is that I can't just dive into my regular work, because I'm essentially out of things to do.

Oh well, at least there's the Intarweb.

Slashdot has a story about a computer that has cracked 5x5 go. This would have made an interesting plot point in Hikaru no Go. Maybe. If they hadn't freaking ended the show without a real ending!

SAI!!!!

Ahem.

I guess getting invited to Bush's ranch is a huge thing, because Reuters (via Yahoo! News) can't seem to get enough of it in this piece about Bush's recent meeting with French president Jacques Chirac. I'm glad at least to see the president trying to reconcile. And I'm glad President Chirac is so open to it!

Designer knockoffs for the homeless! This is a very cool story. I mean, if people absolutely have to be homeless, which sucks, at least they should have some dignity. And they seem to like the clothes :)

Okay, now back to taking deep, long breaths.

African snake!

I haven't calmed down, but at least I laughed. Thanks, Partially Clips!

I need to calm down.

Friday and yesterday I had to work full days, 7 to almost 4 pm without any semblance of a break. Yes, that's right friends, no 15 minute breaks, and no lunch break. It's impossible to take breaks when the phone could ring at any moment and you're the only one to answer it. My situation may be similar today, if my coworker hasn't gotten over her fever yet.

The scary thing is that she has to work like this every day. Sometimes 10 to 4, but sometimes 10 to 10.

It makes me angry to think about this. It also makes me angry to think about other things that I want to fix and don't have the authority to do anything about. It makes me angry because I feel that my ideas are ignored rather than implemented. It makes me angry because I literally see no way out of this situation.

Once again, I'm thinking about quitting.

But I just need to calm down. I'm emotional because my period started over the weekend. And I'm unhappy because I have to do work I hate right now. But things are (supposedly) going to change, and if I just hang in there...

How long have I been telling myself that?

My blood pressure was in the 140s/90s this morning. I guess that's not all that high when you think about the fact that my coworker (previously mentioned) had a blood pressure of like 210/140 recently (due to stress over work). But I don't want it to be that high. I want it to be back at 120/70 or so, or 110/60, the range it was when I was recovering from cancer. (I didn't check it much after that, so I don't know how long it stayed in that range.) Cutting down sodium isn't going to help if I can't calm down. This is caused by stress. And, from what I understand, my "second stomach"--the fat in my upper belly--is caused by stress. Stress does no good whatsoever.

There are people out there who can handle stress, though, aren't there? Don't I just need to stick with it until I figure out how to cope? Isn't bailing out now the same as wussing out? What makes me think I have it worse than anyone else?

I need to calm down.

Would I spend $500 on a phone?

I dunno. Before I married Sean, I wouldn't have considered spending $1000 on a chair. And yet that's what we're getting ready to do. So...

Check this baby out.

Unfortunately, we use Sprint...this phone is for Cingular Wireless plans.

Resourceful people are awesome

From Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough:

Scott Thurner, 57, was the only person aboard the Cessna when it crashed Wednesday. He survived the accident with only scrapes and bruises.

Thurner then dug a shelter in a snow bank and used a door from the twisted wreckage of his plane for a roof. He started a fire with papers from his briefcase and donned all the ski clothes in his suitcase.

[...]

The team located Thurner by following signals from the plane's emergency beacon. Thurner pulled the device from the plane and fashioned a makeshift antenna. A military satellite picked up the signals before Thurner shut it down to conserve batteries.

This guy rules!

Creepy

A baby has just had her parasitic twin removed.

As in the case of a girl who died after similar surgery in the Dominican Republic a year ago, the second twin had developed no body. The head that was removed from Manar had been capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life, doctors said.

The 13-strong surgical team separated Manar's brain from the conjoined organ in small stages on Saturday, cutting off the blood supply to the extra head while preventing increased blood flow to Manar's heart, which would have risked cardiac arrest.

This totally freaks me out. That second baby was alive. It had a brain. It could smile.

But it didn't have a body. Because of that, it died.

We really have no way to sustain that baby's life. Not in any meaningful way. We might have been able to hook it up to machines, keep it alive. But what purpose would that have served? In a case like this, I understand why the child had to die.

But it's so unfair...so horrifying that things like this have to happen.

Secret Bush tapes shockingly do not reveal Bush to be evil, sadistic monster

Like, OMG!

While the title of MSNBC's article--Private tapes shed light on candidate Bush: Conversations on political foes, drugs recorded by old friend--makes us expect something juicy, all the article proves is that there is nothing juicy to report.

On one tape, Bush explains that he told one prominent evangelical that he would not "kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Wow, what a jerk. Following the rule of "judge not lest ye be judged"? What audacity!

And then, later:

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he said, according to the Times. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

Well, shit! You mean our president made some mistakes, and now wants to help keep other people from making the same mistakes? What a horrible guy! I know I, personally, have never made a single mistake, in the history of my life.

;P

I'm not sure what inspired Bush's "friend" to make these tapes--"He said he recorded them because he viewed Bush as a historic figure."--nor what inspired him to release them now, but ultimately, it really doesn't matter, does it?

(Maybe, you know, this is an elaborate right-wing conspiracy! Maybe Bush made these tapes last week, and had them released so people will think he's a good guy, while in reality he's trying to take over the world so he can pollute it out of existence! Of course!!!!! That must be it!!!!!)

Hormones and periods and babblings, oh my

Took my last progesterone pill for the month at around 11:30...my period started just a few hours later. It seems pretty sudden. I hope that's a good sign, that something is happening. It could just be my body getting used to the dose, or something. I took the progesterone a day early last month, because I was about to run out of estrogen, and my period didn't start until the 21st. Like my body was expecting that to be the end of the progesterone. (Typically the progesterone ends on the 20th, like today.) Who knows...I certainly don't have the knowledge to decipher whether or not this means anything.

Kooky!

As you know (maybe), I've been trying to finish uploading my Japan pictures from the 2001 trip to smugmug. Captioning the Takayama pictures made me really want to go back to that isolated mountain city, so tonight I started looking on japaneseguesthouses.com to see if there was a nice ryokan there to stay in. (Sean and I used that site to book all our hotels for our honeymoon; it was very easy and convenient, and I recommend it to anyone thinking of vacationing in Japan.)

Much to my surprise, I found a ryokan that I had taken a picture of back in 2001! I recognized it by the distinctive canopy I had just written a caption about the other day. Here's my picture, and here's the link on japaneseguesthouses.com (scroll to the bottom for the picture of the outside).

So, now I know that that building is Tanabe Ryokan. Cool!

I'm having trouble believing that I can grab a huge fistful of the ass of these pants

I mean, these are the jeans I bought because my other jeans were too big. Those other ones are the ones that are supposed to feel like they're falling off. These jeans are supposed to fit properly.

But they don't. Not anymore.

I'm going to force myself to wait until I'm down another size before I go buy yet more pants.

(This is good news, by the way. Don't think I'm knocking it or anything. I'm just really, really surprised.)

Note to junk mail authors: If you write "Please do not discard" on an envelope, I'm going to throw it away without opening it

Just so you know.

More about the brain is discovered every day.

Science Blog: Brain study points to 'sixth sense' (via Slashdot)

"Our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought," said Joshua Brown, Ph.D., a research associate in psychology in Arts & Sciences and co-author of a study on these findings in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal Science.

The findings offer rigorous scientific evidence for a new way of conceptualizing the complex executive control processes taking place in and around the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right hemispheres.

"In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision among mutually exclusive options, or after they made a mistake," Brown said. "But now we find that this brain region can actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake, even before a difficult decision has to be made. So the ACC appears to act as an early warning system -- it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to a negative outcome, so that we can be more careful and avoid making a mistake."

A little later, the article references "the "Oh S***" response", which cracked me up.

I'm so out of it :>

I decided on a complete whim to poke around the Alchemy website today. Alchemy is Mari's bellydance troupe. Glancing at their Events section, I noticed that they're going to a masked ball tonight at a nightclub in the Augusta Towers hotel.

Doesn't that sound cool? I wish I had a costume, or a beautiful dress to wear. (The only fine gown I have is my wedding dress, which probably wouldn't work ;> I do still have the dress I wore as a bridesmaid in AJ and Faye's wedding, but I don't think it's fancy enough. And I'm not sure if either that dress or my wedding dress would even fit anymore...)

Ah well. I'd need $20 to get in, anyway...

But this just proves that I need to start using a calendar! Something like what Josh does (RSS Calendar), maybe, or something else. Any calendar software suggestions? Something that would work in a WordPress theme would be ideal.

Mungo Bush

hahahaha :D

To the MAX!

Oh my god, Brian Clevinger (you know, 8-Bit Theater, Nuklear Age) posted the most hi-larious rant on the recent comic. (Scroll to the bottom of that page.)

Loonatics, man! 'Cause they're CRAZY. They make regular x-treme look, like, y'know, something so not x-treme you can't think of a word for it. You can't talk about them without excessive use of BOLD ITACLIC CAPS, MAN, TO THE MAX!

I find the philosophy behind being a television or Hollywood executive fascinating. Apparently these are people utterly devoid of taste or culture. They are completely without a sense of what is good. It's like how sociopaths are incapable of feeling empathy. They can maim and kill and torture people because they are hardwired not to understand that it's bad to do that. You can't fix these people, they are broken from the factory and need to be destroyed after studying how fucked up they are so we can identify and destroy them better in the future.

That's what these executives are like, only instead of lacking empathy -- which they may very well also lack -- they lack a sense of what good is. The rest of humanity has it. Sure, we might disagree about specifics, but there are certain instances where crap is crap and no one can deny it. I'm not saying Catwoman was one such movie, but it was.

Go read the rest, seriously. It's a hoot.

Because everything in South Carolina must have the word "Palmetto" in the name

Here's an interesting (and rather vague) story about an old building that may be used for community events.

In the early part of the 20th century the Palmetto Lodge was [sic] once had a connection to the famous Hampton Terrace Hotel but it was also the home of the infamous Buffalo Room.

So infamous, I have no idea what they're talking about! And does "Chip Creamer" (sounds like a vanity device for preparing ingredients for cookies or something) bother to go on and explain? Of course not.

Fortunately, Aiken has some reporters who actually know what they're doing.

In the late 1980s, the FBI investigated allegations that the restaurant, then known as the Buffalo Room, barred service to blacks. U.S. Treasury officials seized the property in a plea agreement in 1999 when former owner Randy Salter was convicted in a Texas federal court of conspiring to distribute marijuana.

There, was that so hard?

So, what might the city of North Augusta actually do with the Palmetto Lodge?

North Augusta officials are considering several possibilities for the use of the lodge that occupies the nearly two-acre site.

The city could lease the building to the Cultural Arts and Heritage councils. While these agencies support the city's acquisition of the property, Mr. [Charles] Martin[, city administrator,] said, members of both organizations have indicated that it would be difficult to retrofit the space to meet their needs.

The city also could lease the property as a restaurant to a private individual.

Ah.

This is kind of sad.

Rather than spoil it, I'll just give the link to the article.

When I got to the part about the son--you'll know which part I mean when you read it--I said, "Awwww...!"

Poor guy.

I've been sleeping too much again

I've been taking all kinds of naps. Yesterday I went to bed not long after I got home from work, and I stayed there until 4:15 am. Then I got up, but I was fully intending to go back to bed after a bit.

Sean headed to bed not long after I got up, and gave me some cash, saying, "When 9 rolls around, go grab us some hotcakes from McDonald's." Even now that we've been married over two years, sometimes I still have to ask him to repeat himself so I can understand what he said :> I don't use the "rolls around" or "grab" constructions with any frequency, but he uses them all the time. You'd think I'd get used to them...

So anyway, I guess I'm staying up. Right now I'm adding more pictures to smugmug and captioning them. Whee.

Responsibility where it counts

Josh wrote todayyesterday about what's wrong with the US. He made some great points.

Take two films, let's say Saving Private Ryan vs. oh, say Boogie Nights. Both were critically acclaimed and both are rated "R". Let's say you have children, and you are forced to let them watch one of the two movies. Which are you going to pick?

Chances are, you'll probably say Saving Private Ryan. Because, in this country, violence is far more acceptable than nudity and sexual content. For instance, my seven year old brother has a very clear concept of murder and death, while he knows nothing of sex.

This scares me. Violence leads to death, destruction, pain. What does sex, nipples, nudity, and penises lead to? Usually fun, happiness, and the creation of life.

I couldn't agree more.

However, after this he goes on to make the following argument:

Look at the conservative stance on abortion, war, and the death penalty. Don't end a life before it's born, and save the child and mother from suffering. Wait until the child has grown, is attached to life, and knows pain all too well. Then kill them, so the suffering will be greater.

I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, let me be nitpicky and point out the flaw in this argument. The baby who was not aborted 30 years ago is not necessarily going to be the same person who is executed for murdering someone else. Making the argument in this way dehumanizes both.

But now let me respond to the heart of this argument.

I have honestly thought it strange that religious people don't favor abortion. If there's a heaven, and the child is going to come into a troubled world, then why not send it right to paradise? The answer to that question, of course, is that everyone is assumed in Christianity to have a soul...and so while the child would go to heaven, the person(s) responsible for killing it would go to hell. (Unless, of course, Jesus forgave them later.) This is, therefore, a selfish desire not to go to hell.

However, it also confuses me that atheists, people who believe there is nothing more to our life than what we have now, would so easily take from someone else the chance to experience life at all. The reason for this is that atheists don't believe in souls. So, simplistically, we're not killing a human with a soul, we're sucking out some living cells and disposing of them.

This is the disconnect I fail to comprehend. Those cells are going to grow into a human being. Even if that human being doesn't have a soul, you can hardly argue that people don't have different personalities and abilities, and that every individual has the potential to affect the world in great ways. And while you can never truly know another person's feelings, you can imagine that other people feel in ways that are similar to the way you feel. It's nice to be able to feel. It's what makes us human. Abortion means not giving another human being the chance to feel.

I'm not going to say that abortion should be outlawed, because as AJ has said, it's a necessary evil. But I do feel strongly that all other options must be completely exhausted before abortion is even considered. And abortion should absolutely not be used as a form of birth control.

When a person gets an abortion, it is typically the decision of one or a handful of people. When a person is executed for committing a crime, however, it is the decision of a jury. I think this is a significant difference. If it can be shown that a person cannot be rehabilitated, that they will go back out into society and perpetuate the same crimes again, then I see the death penalty as a viable option. I also think lifetime incarceration is fine. I'm not going to complain about the cost of keeping someone in prison. The fact is, there are ways we could cut those costs. I don't mean by changing the prisons into fortresses with no material comforts whatsoever, but instead by not throwing so many people charged with lesser crimes into jail. I think we should work harder to rehabilitate people who shoplift, for example. Take privileges away, fine them out the wazoo. Don't automatically throw them into our already overcrowded prisons.

(I'm kind of with the libertarians when it comes to the drug issue. I think marijuana should probably be legalized for private, in-home use. That would knock out a significant portion of taxpayer expense towards the drug war. Driving while under the influence of marijuana should be an offense just like DUI, but I don't believe it's been shown that habitual marijuana use is going to kill you. I do think it affects your social life and your behavior, but so does alcohol, and Prohibition didn't do us a damn bit of good.)

Josh didn't really get into the "war" part of his argument. I heard an interesting idea on that once. I can't for the life of me remember who said it. [I found it! Eric Burns, 2004.] Basically, it went like this: when the nation was considering going to war, a vote would be taken that would include only the people who would actually fight in the war. If the vote was for war, those people who voted yes would go first. People who didn't vote would go second. People who voted no would be called last.

I remember that whoever posted it thought the results would be "interesting". I think they'd be interesting, too, but not in the same way as the original poster, I'm sure. I think we have a lot of brave men and women in our armed forces who would vote yes in many situations.

Of course, if this were to go into effect then we would also need a structure that would keep the United States from causing future wars. Something that would let those same voters determine whether or not an economic policy or a trade deal or whatever might cause trouble down the road. In effect, we'd be letting the people who would go to war for the country determine the country's path, because otherwise it wouldn't be fair. It's an interesting thought, but where does that leave the rest of us?

Josh leaves us with an important reminder.

Of course, the idea is that we suffer here on Earth, avoiding earthly pleasures so that when we're dead and gone, we might have a chance to enter a magical fantasy land where all our dreams will come true.

Meanwhile, the Earth, and what we truly know to exist, the here and now, falls in ruin and decays.

Everyone should take this warning to heart, and start working towards ways to take better care of our planet and our people.

[Edit 2005/02/20 7:40 pm: According to this interesting editorial in the NYT:

Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity.

This kind of destroys my "that makes no sense" argument concerning why Christians are against abortion. I guess that argument sounds familiar now, but I didn't think of it before. I don't think I was taught about "limbo" at all. Is that a Catholic thing?]

More news.

I can't escape all this news.

post-gazette.com: WB seeks revitalized cartoon franchise with new look for Bugs Bunny and friends

Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough: Nudists dine in New York style

Have you ever wanted to try going to a nudist resort? I have. I've taken nude baths in public before, and it didn't really bother me. I think it would be liberating to go to a nude resort. I'm not sure how it would be to be naked in a restaurant, though. Probably really thrilling :>

IGN: Sith Opening Cannes: Final Star Wars film set for festival debut. (via Slashdot)

Because, you know, Star Wars is high cinema.

What is with all these fires in Nicholasville?

Okay, this is very good news. From Mainichi: Number of crimes committed by US servicemen in Okinawa halves

Good, good. Keep it in your pants, gentlemen :P

"Humans are causing global warming"

...is the Slashdot headline. Here's the article they link to. I'm still at work, so I'll read it later ;P

The history of Louis Vuitton's monogram

It would seem that the "Japonisme" art trend influenced the creation of the monogram which now peppers the handbags carried by all Japanese women. From Asahi:

"It started with a question: Why do the Japanese like Louis Vuitton so much?" says exhibition curator Kaori Ikeda.

"Then, after learning that Japan's kamon family crests had an influence on Monogram, I wanted to let people know about it, so they could be proud of Japanese culture," she said.

[...]

"The research group believes that Monogram derives from a balanced, global integration of Japonisme, Art Nouveau and the Gothic style," Ikeda said.

A unique and interesting history for what has to be the ugliest monogram pattern in the universe.

Political underhandedness, or simple savvy?

There's been something of a controversy over Jason Whinghter, a Republican candidate for North Augusta City Councilman. From AikenOnline:

In the eyes of some Aiken County Republicans, the 27-year-old North Augusta City Council candidate may be a little too quick and keen.

They point to Mr. Whinghter's deft footwork on the last filing day for the April 26 race, a day when eight-year incumbent Phil Mottel forgot to file his papers with the North Augusta Republican Party.

Instead of dialing up Mr. Mottel, a fellow Republican, with a reminder that Jan. 10 was the deadline, Mr. Whinghter stepped down as the city's party chairman and declared his own candidacy.

With Mr. Mottel out of the picture, Mr. Whinghter is a prohibitive favorite to win one of the three at-large seats up for grabs in this bastion of Republican politics.

There's too much news in the world

I don't want to be here, and I've got to be here until around 2 (maybe 4) today. So you'll excuse me for doing a little websurfing.

(Or maybe you won't; I really don't care.)

GlobeandMail.com: British plant missing 30 kilograms of plutonium (via Slashdot)

Well, that's great news. However:

The amount of material listed as missing at the Sellafield plant in northwestern England was "within international standards of expected measurement accuracies for closing a nuclear material balance at the type of facility concerned," the authority said.

"There is no evidence to suggest that any of the apparent losses reported were real losses of nuclear material," the authority added.

When in doubt, apply statistics.

Guardian Unlimited Online: Second sight (Via Slashdot)

Slashdot was mostly interested in how Britain is ahead of Australia is ahead of the US in TV piracy, but there are other interesting points in this article.

TV moguls are not as worried about this sort of piracy as music and film companies because they have already been pre-paid by advertising and, if they want to stop it, all they need do is take a leaf out of Hollywood's book and do simultaneous releasing, cutting the problem off at source.

The interesting thing is whether the likes of BitTorrent will fast-forward the forces making television a database rather than serial experience. Even the fixture of television - the news bulletins - could be replaced by, say, Google TV gathering TV news clips from around the world just as it does printed news today.

I like that notion of television as a database experience.

Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference Pages: Dry Cleaning

So yeah, Snopes has all kinds of interesting facts about the household dryer for us today.

In a standard (gas) dryer, a fan pulls fresh air into the dryer and sends it flowing over a gas burner. The burner heats the air, which is then channeled into a tumbling drum where the wet clothes are held. The heat, air flow, and tumbling motion all contribute to evaporating the moisture held in the fabrics, and that moisture is absorbed by the gas-warmed air. (Warm air is capable of holding more moisture than cold air.) The warm air - and the moisture it now holds - passes through a filter to trap lint and other particulate matter stirred up by its movement and is vented to the outside so that it can be replaced with new, less-moist air. This process repeats until enough moisture has been evaporated and carried away for the clothes to be considered sufficiently "dry."

In the same vein as the title of my previous post, "Your jacket is now dry."

(I think I'd better clean that lint filter...)

And finally...SUVs are dangerous! From Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough:

A man barely escaped serious injury Thursday after a lit cigarette he tried to toss out the window while driving across the Bay Bridge blew back in and ignited the vehicle, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The unidentified man was driving westbound at about 10:40 a.m. when he tossed the cigarette out the window of his Ford Expedition, said CHP Officer Shawn Chase.

Carried by the wind, the cigarette landed in his back seat and almost immediately burst into flames. The man quickly pulled to the side of the road, and leapt from the flame-filled SUV, which continued rolling into a guard rail, Chase said.

That's what you get for driving a vehicle with flammable seats!

;P

He said the man will likely face a misdemeanor charge for littering.

"We see people throwing cigarettes out the window all the time but never a situation like this where it comes back in," Chase said. "This guy was lucky."

Um...how exactly was he lucky? His SUV has been incinerated, plus he's going to be charged with littering...

"I'm not very good with...confrontation..."

Someone was wrong yesterday.

She doesn't read my blog, but I'm not going to say who it was anyway. Just know that she is someone I interact with on a regular basis, and that her being wrong affected not only herself, but her colleagues and two other groups of people.

In trying to get to the root of the matter, I discovered her fault. But she had been hurt by what had happened, so hurt that she didn't hear what I was saying. I only said it once. Then I backed off.

The whole thing has bothered me on and off ever since. I ended up eating some Chinese food Sean brought home after work (thanks, honey), and then taking a nap until around 9:30. At that point I got up and prepared all my stuff for today, and got online a little, then finally went back to bed. I woke up thinking about it this morning.

I don't know, what do you do when someone you care about is wrong? How do you fix the situation without betraying them? Do you just take their side and not worry about fixing it?

And on a completely different note...what do you do when you come to the point in a debate where you realize the other person isn't going to see things your way, and you aren't going to see things their way? How do you end the debate without making the other person's opinion seem trivial? I've tried saying "It's time to agree to disagree," but that doesn't seem to work.

Expectations

Emily Mann blogged today about other people's expectations, and how they affected her outlook on life.

Her post prompted the following comment from me:

I have felt the same way--that everyone expected great things from me, and that nothing I accomplished mattered because it wasn't the Big Thing.

This unfortunately has caused me to hit several stumbling blocks. I basically have felt many times that I can't get anywhere near meeting people's expectations, so I've given up. This happened when I went for my mechanical engineering degree (I dropped out after one year), and it happened in many classes in which I should have made As. It hasn't really happened at work--typically I exceed expectations there--but I feel too "big" for the job I have now, like I'm overqualified for the work I do and that I'm not getting the responsibilities that would help me grow. But I'm having trouble pursuing something different; only recently was I really able to try and sell myself to a prospective employer. In that case, I'd found a challenge that I was desperate to work to meet.

People still expect great things of me, whenever I meet them. I don't know why. It makes me scared, like I'm going to let them all down. I feel like I haven't done much with my life, and that right now I'm spinning my wheels. I don't feel like I know how to achieve what everyone assumes I will achieve.

The fact that you were able to ride people's expectations into true greatness is something to be applauded. It's not easy to be a lawyer. I imagine I would have dropped out of pre-law.

Kind of depressing. But I really feel like I have never learned how to try.

When I was little, Mom used to take us to the Living Arts and Science Center in Lexington, Kentucky. One time, we were supposed to make an octopus. I chose to draw Olive Oyl (from Popeye) instead, because I didn't feel like counting all the way to eight. Another time, when I was older, everyone was making paper airplanes. Instead of trying the new things we were learning about aerodynamics, I just made the same airplane I'd learned how to make years before. Could those have been caused by a subconscious fear of failure...or am I just inherently lazy?

I suppose it's a good sign that I'm working to correct these flaws. But thinking about all the things I want to accomplish just makes me tired. I've been so tired lately.

It would be so easy to just give up.

Subscribing to Josh Centers = good thing ;D

From today:

See, Dr. Murphy is British. I don't know why, but whenever I'm around a Brit, I feel like I'm around some sort of parental figure. And in a sense, I guess they are our parents. So when I fall asleep in the guy's class, I feel like even more of an ass than when I fall asleep in my other classes.

I can hear him thinking, "Tsk, tsk. What sort of lads have we spawned here? No attentiveness nor common courtesy. Pish posh! I say Belvedere, we should ask for our colonies back."

Ahahaha! :D

Yet another place to visit when I return to Japan

Asahi is reporting that the National Museum of Art in Osaka has new digs. Sounds like a neat place.

Thanks to its new venue, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, is now as much of a work of art as the Japanese and foreign contemporary masterpieces it houses.

[...]

Visitors enter the museum through a huge, sculpturelike entrance of steel and glass. Although the rest of the museum is located underground, a glass ceiling and open space that let in abundant natural light give the exhibition halls a warm and airy feel.

I haven't been to Osaka yet, but this is just more impetus to go.

Newsbits

Like Timbits, but with half the calories.

Here's a blog about people going into retirement with no savings, and what they are trying to do about it. (Via BoingBoing)

Yahoo News - Oddly Enough: Amazon blames muggles for Harry Potter mixup

"We assure you that howlers have been sent to the muggles responsible for this action and we are investigating the possibility that You-Know-Who may have been involved," the company said in a subsequent apology email to customers on Thursday.

You've gotta watch out for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Fortunately, the Ministry of Magic at least will acknowledge the existence of...Thingy...now.

;>

Japan Today: Rules revised to let foreign students teach languages in Japan

I hate Japan Today's flash ads.

Japan Today: Resident certificates to be issued via convenience stores

No, I really hate them.

The new service will become possible if convenience stores adopt measures to protect personal information and connect their copiers with certificate issuing machines at government offices via the Internet.

Do you think the U.S. would ever put that much faith in convenience stores? (You never know; Costco sells coffins, after all.)

Japan Today: Court accepts priest's touching of girl's breasts as 'religious activity'

Yes, I'm sure it was a very religious experience. (This reminds me of what happened to one of the characters in the novel Christy by Catherine Marshall. I always loved that book, but I always wondered exactly how Christy figured out what was happening to that character...did she have experience? ;P)

And finally, Mainichi's WaiWai: Close-minded tourists slam Japan!

Common complaints about Japan's most repulsive tourist lurks were that they attracted huge crowds, involved enormous expense and never lived up to expectations. Nowhere was this better exemplified than Kyoto, the most plugged place in a country where crass and class are pronounced the same and a city that proves such annunciation an actuality.

Uh...yeah.

A thought about blog frontpage design

Will and I were discussing blog frontpages yesterday. He was saying he was thinking of changing one of his blogs to a one post-a-day, one post on the front page format. That way there would be no "context" that might detract from whatever post was made on that day.

I, on the other hand, am worried about posts that were made a day or two ago that I still consider interesting, and that I was hoping people would comment on. I post so much that my stuff keeps getting bumped off the main page, and casual readers, who might not visit frequently or subscribe to the RSS feed/email, might not see everything. I think I have changed my mind about using a clip blog, simply because I want to treat all of my posts equally on the site.

Today I thought of a solution that would be great, if I could get it to work in WordPress.

Many blogs have a "recent entries" section in their sidebar--it's built into Blogger's templates now. I never had a use for such a thing, but I've been thinking that something similar might be effective. Basically, what I would like to do is have all of today's posts show on the front page, either the full post or an excerpt, plus the number of comments. (Ideally it would show when the latest comment was posted, and by whom, but I haven't seen anyone doing that so I don't know if it's possible.) After the posts of the day, there would then be the titles of yesterday's posts (and maybe the day before yesterday's? the whole week's?), along with the comment information I just mentioned.

This would let people know if they'd missed posts, plus inform people of any commenting activity, plus not take up too awful much room on the page.

("Too awful much"...I love that!)

So, that's my idea. If I can make it work, I think it would be a good choice for my site. Any suggestions would be appreciated, of course.

Blessings

I'm not normally a huge fan of the "rants" of webcomic authors. The two main exceptions are Penny Arcade, whose rants I devour, and PvP, which occasionally has something that strikes me as brilliant. Otherwise, I'll only read the rant if it's right below the comic and I'm bored, or if I'm trying to figure out why in hell the comic hasn't updated yet ;>

But as I read Chris Baldwin's reasons for not updating Bruno today, I was touched.

Good lord, i am not batting a thousand lately.

Short story, I got the flu, started on Saturday, and it's kept up. I've missed the last two days of work, lying about in a general usueless state. Somehow I managed to keep Bruno up since then, but not today. Instead, enjoy a picture of a bus.

And dream of travels, to places that remind you of spring, of love, of desire, of happiness. And you may also dream that you dont have to take the bus to get there.

It's rough, and unrevised, and there are typos. But somehow...it's beautiful. That last paragraph, that blessing, it's just poetic. And the added jibe about buses at the end is comforting in its simple mirth.

It made me realize that we don't bless each other enough.

So to all of you, I'd like to extend Chris' blessing, and one of my own: May you find comfort, and family, and home, in unexpected and delightful places.

Biking makes me feel better

Yesterday I didn't want to come to work. I'd felt that way since the previous night. Stayed up too late, in fact; I probably subconsciously was hoping I'd be too tired to make it in. But I had to be here, because Robert's in Boston for the rest of the week, and no one else is available this early in the morning. So...I rode my bike.

Biking gave me the energy to stay at work and even to be cheerful.

This morning, while my feeling of not wanting to come to work wasn't as great, I still would rather have stayed in bed. When I started to ride, it was cold, and the wind seemed to cut right through my jacket. I wondered if I should turn around, take my bike back upstairs, change, and just drive.

But I didn't.

I rode, and as I rode my body warmed itself. I had the bike in 2nd and 3rd gear for most of the ride...which means my legs are getting stronger. I felt comfortable, and I was never really winded, and the cool morning air sharpened my senses. Right now my earlobes are so stiff it feels like I'm wearing heavy earrings ;>

But I feel good. I'm glad I biked, yesterday and today. I hope the weather permits me to do so tomorrow, too...and next week, and the week after that....

I seem to have fallen into depression of late.

I'm avoiding things I feel like I should be doing, like grocery shopping, making meals, and working on my WordPress theme. This really only adds to my feelings of depression, but I can't seem to muster the will to do any of those things. Maybe today I'll finally get some groceries so I can cook for my husband again.

Instead, yesterday I started a new project, and that is to add all my pictures from my Japan trip in 2001 to smugmug. Now, if any of you have spent any time over there you'll know that I already had many of them up (through Takayama). But I'd been selective about which to upload, and I'd resized them all to 800x600/600x800. Since smugmug gives me unlimited storage, this seems silly, in retrospect. So yesterday I started going back and replacing the smaller files with the full-sized ones (including some pictures that I hadn't uploaded before), copying the captions over, adding to the captions, and adding "tags" to each photo. This is a big project, but I'm already through Yamagata. Only two galleries to go until I get to uncharted territory: Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, Hiroshima, and Yatsushiro. Then I'll have to figure out how to organize the homestay pictures.

After that's done, of course, I'll want to upload the pictures from our honeymoon to Japan in 2003. And I'll also want to go back and add tags to all my galleries...

You can see how this is a project that could wait until after I was done with my blog move, but for some reason I am really interested in finishing it all right now. I even thought that I would like to copy my notes from the Japan 2001 trip into my blog, because the pencil I wrote them with is starting to smear away. (Why would I write in pencil? Gah.)

Maybe I would rather do these things because they're easier than building a theme for WordPress. :P I'm tempted to just use a pre-made theme, but to be honest I don't like any of the ones that are available. Not that much, anyway. I want my own unique style.

So I'll just suffer through with Blogger for awhile. (I think all the server problems are irritating me more and more lately because I know I can do something about it, and because I am the only cause of delay.) I just hope when I'm ready to export my posts, Blogger is able to republish my journal in the proper format without freezing :P

I had the majority of my calories yesterday at dinner. Over 1000 calories for a meatball sub and some baked Lay's. I felt like I was starving all day, so I guess that was my "reward". Fortunately, the three pound artificial weight gain from yesterday has gone down 1.5 pounds today. (Does that mean I actually gained 1.5 pounds? :P) For some reason, I'm finding my diet harder and harder each day. Maybe because I don't have any groceries...

Naruto has finally been licensed

I was wondering when the other shoe would drop (the manga's been licensed for awhile now).

No more free episodes for me...;_; I hope they hurry up and come out with DVDs.

See ShoPro Entertainment's Press page for more info.

(Blogger Sucks Note: I originally wrote this yesterday, at 6:15 pm. Yes, that's right. I couldn't get it to publish until now. :P)

Free food

McDonald's is having a nationwide free sampling event of their Chicken Selects. I wonder if either of the McDonald's restaurants within five minutes of my apartment (;P) are participating?

Blogger sucks

I hate that I lose posts, can't even start writing posts, can't edit posts, can't get to the comments, etc. because their servers are so busy. I mean, it's great that they're popular and all, but I like to blog, and I like to blog frequently, and these server issues just don't do it for me.

I was unable to make the two previous posts when I wanted to. The first one kept timing out over and over. When I finally got it to go through just a few minutes ago, I discovered that it had posted six times, so I had to go back and delete the duplicates. The second post I didn't even bother trying...I just emailed it and the first one to myself in a file called bloggersucks.txt.

:>

Dag, yo

(As What's-Her-Face might say.)

From Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough:

Carol Birmingham almost had a heart attack when she realized her Mac Attack had cost $8,700.

The 62-year-old British tourist didn't notice until Sunday morning that she had left her cash-stuffed purse on a McDonald's counter when she bought lunch the previous day.

Here's the best part of the story:

Ilona Barattin, 23, said she found cash, mostly hundred-dollar bills, but no ID. On returning the cash, she said: "It was the right thing to do."

You see, people don't have to suck. So stop sucking, people! :)

New Blog

One of the nice things about Bloglines is that it tells me when other Bloglines users have subscribed to my blog (yes, I'm subscribed to my own blog, shut up). Today I noticed a new name in the list of 6 subscribers (of which only three are public), Josh Centers. (Actually, it said "jcenters", and I had to scour his Bloglines feeds until I found a post with a link back to his main blog. That's the one drawback of the subscribers thing.)

His blog looks interesting. I have to be honest here, I am intrigued by the fact that he appears to be in a nontraditional relationship with two girls. But I also think he's good at expressing himself through writing, and if nothing else he lives in Kentucky ;> So I'm going to blogroll him, I think.

(Side note: I tried to post this at like, 8:00. Blogger sucks.)

Save Enterprise?

The fan-organized attempt to resurrect Enterprise by paying for a new season now has a spiffy new website, and a lawyer.

This is pretty unprecedented. Do you think it stands a chance of actually working? I personally think it's pretty cool. I never really watched Enterprise (except the pilot and that one episode where Duncan was "featured"), so I don't know if it's worth spending $12 on, but I applaud the die-hard fans' unique attempt to save their show.