The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Ulrika O'Brien:

Show all comments by Ulrika O'Brien.

Posted on entry Plays Well With Lightning ::: December 05, 2008, 06:13 PM:
Holy explosive device, Batman. Presumably Barbara is the proper bearer of the holy hand grenade of Antioch, and thus life anticipates parody. Great googly moogly. It never ceases to amaze that people actually believe this stuff.
Posted on entry The content of his character ::: November 05, 2008, 07:06 PM:
Renatus-

If you were just starting college in 2000 you were awfully young to have any idea about who Ralph Nader was beyond how he presented himself. Lots of people who were old enough to know better bought that load of crap he peddled despite having been around long enough to have noticed that he didn't have a track record accomplishing anything beyond torpedoing the American automotive industry's early venture into compact, fuel-efficient, German-style cars.
Posted on entry The content of his character ::: November 05, 2008, 06:41 PM:
Good thing I didn't have any respect for Ralph Nader left to lose. Some day, the folks who voted for that souless, sanctimonious, self-promoting, hypocritical *racist* gasbag in 2000 will have the decency to be embarrassed about it. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
Posted on entry Either a heart attack, or a Greek of the same name ::: September 14, 2008, 02:03 PM:
Thank goodness you all were together, quick to call 911, and do the aspirin thing. Responding quickly is key, and having someone else there has got to be better than flying solo, as Hal had to.

A year and a bit after Hal's heart attack his cholesterol is good, his heart shows no further blockages, and it takes him a goodly while to get his heart rate up high enough for a stress test, so with lifestyle and pharmaceutical changes, things can look very positive. I'll keep you both in my thoughts and hope for 100% recovery with no muscle damage to the heart. Godspeed.
Posted on entry You wrote what? ::: September 05, 2008, 01:35 PM:
And me with all my Jim Butcher books in my other suit.
Posted on entry Got it in one ::: July 01, 2008, 12:37 PM:
Ah. I believe I now have context for Patrick's remarks of the other day. Sympathies all around, to thems as need it. And yes, Anil Dash has got some mighty brane on.
Posted on entry Consumer notes ::: June 30, 2008, 12:32 PM:
Thanks for the warning. I, too, deeply dislike business models that make it hard to stop being a customer. I think it's a stupid business practice anyway, because it has got to decrease your chances of return customers once they get free, but I also prefer not to give my business to those who practice it in the first place.

So. No Rhapsody. Easy peasy. Also, really liking MediaMonkey for handling music on my own computer, so no need to use RealPlayer there, either.
Posted on entry Shit! ::: June 23, 2008, 06:18 PM:
Cunt. I forgot cunt. I of all people.
Posted on entry Shit! ::: June 23, 2008, 06:14 PM:
Yeah, shit. Or, more precisely: shit, piss, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker AND tits. George would want us to use all seven.
Posted on entry John Scalzi Gives You Tomorrow's Punditry--Today! ::: June 16, 2008, 03:45 PM:
I'm skeptical. Primary / election season always creates temporary auras of stardom, relative to previous national obscurity. When the contstantly recycling echo chamber moves its focus elsewhere the memory of the general public is quite short. In six months or a year, it seems quite possible that Hillary will be back to being a more-recognizable-than-most junior Senator.
Posted on entry "The truth of a matter" ::: June 16, 2008, 03:33 PM:
I dunno. I know this is a trope that bounces around Making Light periodically, but I don't know that I've observed that particular verbal tic being especially more common in trolls than non-trolls. It may shut down your willingness to listen, but I don't think it's a good marker for the authenticity of the speaker.
Posted on entry Going to need a bigger laser ::: March 20, 2008, 08:40 PM:
I keep getting Deadwood and Torchwood mixed up in my head. I
think that when I actually get around to watching either, I'll get them
unmixed.


Oh. Yeah. Hell, if you just get around to *listening* to them, you should be able to tell them apart. The language on Deadwood is blue enough to make a drunken longshoreman blush. Torchwood just sounds Welsh.
Posted on entry I wondered where Michael Bérubé had got to! ::: February 20, 2008, 06:01 PM:
Yes, Michael Bérubé, he's no Mike Gunderloy.
Posted on entry Sympathy for the Clintons ::: February 12, 2008, 08:02 PM:
Yes, it's a fair point that Democrats want fighters, and pols who won't fight are not what the party, or the country need right now. But being a fighter isn't enough. Picking your fights and conducting them well is at least as important.

And I don't agree that it's not Senator Clinton's job to spot what's in front of her, however unprecedented. The difference between a Chamberlain and a Churchill is just the ability to see what exactly is going on around you, precisely when it is unprecedented.

In 2002 I knew with better than 80% certainty that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction in any meaningful sense, that Iraq was not a threat to US national security, and that George Bush would rush to war given the tiniest glimmer of opportunity. The facts were available, even to a private citizen, with no staff. Hillary Clinton had staff, better tools to sift information, better sources of information, and far better and more personal reasons to fact-check the hell out of any claim coming from a Republican, yet still claims not to have known that Iraq was not a threat to the US, or that George Bush would take the authorization of force as a functional declaration of war. I see that as a failure of due diligence, a failure of clarity, and a failure of vision. This woman wants to be President of the United States. It damn well is her job to see and evaluate the facts on the ground and make good choices based on them. It certainly is her job to do due diligence.

Instead, she has a pattern of not doing it when it matters crucially.

Also, I don't notice Obama or Edwards getting a buy on graceless behavior under pressure. Why Clinton?
Posted on entry Clear your clutter ::: January 28, 2008, 06:02 PM:
cajun -

Unintentional creepy hilarity ensues if one accidently omits reading the word "sling" in your second paragraph:

"Where's the baby?" "Try the couch." (to self: 'Oh yeah, where we put it after the Ren Fest 4+ months ago.') "Found it."

Fortunately, I found the "sling" on the second read-through.

This somehow reminds me of a friend's recent post of her pediatrician dad's rules for child-rearing: "Rule 1: Don't drop the baby. Rule 2: If you drop the baby, for God's sake don't step on it."

Quakers are funnier than you think.
Posted on entry Clear your clutter ::: January 25, 2008, 02:00 PM:
Brooks - All moves expand to take up the available time +20%. We were still moving stuff out of our last apartment a week after the movers came. (Poor choice of movers, but still.)

Arguably, we're *still* completing that move, since we haven't yet emptied the storage space that some of the last ditch clean-out went into.
Posted on entry Clear your clutter ::: January 25, 2008, 01:56 PM:
Ayse- I am not quite following the placement and purpose of the cafe curtain rod. Do you attach the rod in such a way as to prevent rolled-up plans from rolling off the shelf?

While trying to figure this out, I started envisioning ways in which you could attach multiple cafe curtain rods underneath the shelves of a bookcase, or across the front edge of each shelf, in order to keep the rolled up plans hanging on individual rods while still, possibly, using the bookcase for books...
Posted on entry Open thread C ::: January 24, 2008, 06:13 PM:
Ne obliviscaris: don't be oblivious.

et

En robore, virtu: Robbery is good, trees are swell
Posted on entry Clear your clutter ::: January 24, 2008, 06:07 PM:
B. Durbin @ #137 - The bookcases I built in Redmond were constructed on the living room floor. As I recall, I did get pretty stiff from all the bending and squatting to work on them, but there wasn't any point in getting saw-horses, since I wouldn't have room to store them, after. (I now realize I might have been able to rent some from Home Despot.) But using the cordless drill and having everything pre-cut to length at the lumber yard made for fairly quick work and I don't think I was cluttering up the entry for more than a couple of days.

On the other hand, I confess I decided to skip painting the shelves. That would have involved tarps and saw-horses and drying time, and I wasn't willing to sacrifice the living room for that long.

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