First!

Futon shopping for the spare room. I feel so domestic.

dcb @920 on open thread 170 re rolling backpacks. I have no experience with the Jansport Driver (although it looks good). My daughter has been using a "deluxe rolling book bag" from LL Bean for a couple of years now, switches back and forth from wearing it to pulling it, and it's holding up quite well. But it's a bit smaller than the Jansport.

dcb at open thresd 170 #920:

I have a three year old (different brand) of rolling backpack which is about the same size as the one you mention. It works fine.

I bought it after lugging a shoulder bag containing a laptop and a bunch of paper three miles through San Francisco one day. On that trek I noticed the high number of people passing me with their roller packs, so I replaced mine. So of course I haven't back to SF on business since then. I do keep my office stuff (laptop, chargers, paperwork, computer glasses) in there and use it daily. It's wearing well. I had a day off not too long ago and hauled it around Phoenix all day on public transit. Quite comfortable.

If I were looking for a replacement, I'd consider that Jansport - it has better wheels than mine and may be more comfortable as a backpack.

Re: John Carter of Mars.

The Oregonian, not normally very friendly to genres other than horror, gave it a "B", which for them means it's a good movie. They never give more than an "A-" and that's rare. The reviewer said it's only real drawback was that it was too ambitious, that they'd stuffed it too full of pulp action which might be hard for some people to follow, but that the tone was just right.

He also said that what a lot of us have been saying since we heard the title of the movie, that the marketing campaign was run by tone-deaf morons.

Two bits of news that may affect people here:

Peter Bergman of Firesign Theater fame has died of cancer.

And AT&T has been helping spammers by allowing opt-out subscriptions via text message for (at least one) horoscope site with no real web presence. Check your bills!

to Melissa Singer, from OT 170:

re: Wrist Braces and notKnitting

Hand-Eez (spelling may be incorrect) are a brand of supportive elastic fingerless gloves sold at many craft stores. They're not bad in the early stages of RSI. I've got one around somewhere, but I don't use it often.

There are more supportive elastic wraps (basically, a rectangle of heavy, slightly stretchy fabric with some velcro at the ends) that can go around either the right or left wrist, but you effectively have to put them on one-handed, and that's difficult.

Ace makes a wrist brace that has metal more-or-less shaped to fit the curve of a human hand inside a cloth cover. It's got gel padding in the palm, and has three velcro straps to hold it in place. The cover is removable, but I've never bothered. Since it's shaped, these are sold for the left and right hands separately. I've got one for each hand. At my doctor's recommendation*, I wear them to bed when my wrists are acting up.** This is probably the best time to wear them, since what you gain in serious wrist support you lose in flexibility. (It's darn near impossible to type while wearing one, and needlework is even harder. I've tried.)

OTC anti-inflammatory drugs provide some relief from pain and soreness, but don't really treat the underlying problem. ("Don't do that any more" does work, eventually, but it's really annoying waiting for that point.) Cold packs (or alternating cold and hot, making sure to start and end with cold) may also provide some relief. It doesn't seem to have done any harm when I tried it, anyway.

The combination of the hard wrist braces plus rest seemed to work best for me when I had really bad wrist problems (both wrists) a few summers ago. This translated to about 2 months of no yarn crafts, then no more than 1/2 an hour per night (often less) for the next few months.

Melissa, would your mother be able to do finishing work (things like weaving in ends and sewing seams) for the other knitters in her group while she can't knit? For me at least, the sewing motions are sufficiently different from the knitting motions that I can often do one even when I can't do the other.

* I'm a programmer by trade. My hobbies include knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing, gardening, and auto racing. This is a recipe for RSI.

** That is, I put them on when I go to bed, and take them off in the middle of the night when they get too annoying.

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) @4:

John Carter of Mars should have sold itself: a splashy poster with JC sword fighting a Thark, with two moons in the sky. The slogan: "Before Star Wars, before Avatar, before Transformers, there was JOHN CARTER OF MARS!"

Done. Here's your hundred bajillion dollars.

Instead, they acted like it was 1976 and there was no tested market for big sci-fi action films. in an era when they make everything look the same, they have the actual forerunner to half the science fiction films of the last half century and they act as if they accidentally remade Solaris. Again.

Simon Gyrus @ #7, what's odd is the marketing suits in Hollywood are the right age to have grown up on Star Wars. Maybe that's it, though. "If we do this, it'll just look like a rehash, so maybe we should go big."

Someone told me the Really Cool Kids are hanging out here...so I almost didn't come. But it's all my friends! So I guess I can hang here too.

What? We're the cool kids now? Nahhh!

The circle's now completed that is plain
even to those who will not trust their eyes,
who weighted down by hope and by surmise

have given little thought to the campaign
and left the door quite open to the spies.
The circle's now completed that is plain

for those who come here seeking rapid gain
and always eager to hurt or despise
the slow and gentle, baffling them with lies;
the circle's now completed that is plain.

Mind you the lousy marketing isn't going to stop me form seeing John Carter, but I'm waiting until it's in the cheep, second run theater over in Beaverton. Sucks being poor. My wife and I have to choose our summer movies carefully. JC of Mars looks good but it can stand on its own. We're waiting for the Raven next month (this month's movie budget is being gobbled up by Muppets on Blu Ray), then Moonrise Kingdom in May.

Simon Gyrus @7: John Carter of Mars should have sold itself: a splashy poster with JC sword fighting a Thark, with two moons in the sky. The slogan: "Before Star Wars, before Avatar, before Transformers, there was JOHN CARTER OF MARS!"

...my goodness, but that would have turned me off right away, and I'm actually mildly interested in the movie. There's nothing quite like an advertisement emphasizing that it's based on an older property to make me assume it's going to also have the sorts of opinions, premises, and values that are gently referred as the "product of their time." I had, in fact, been rather hoping that this adaptation of an Old Book would be adapting it in many ways to make it a bit more modern in approach. Yes? No? Fnord?

A thousand men--mutants and just plain Joes!

Fade Manley@12:

By all accounts the filmmakers have updated the sensibilities from the original novel but that doesn't mean you can't tie it in to the lineage that it engendered. It's a way of saying, if you liked X, you'll like Y, without it being a crass and ridiculous comparison in this case.

(And always Fnord.)

Fade Manley, there's a lot of science fiction labeled 'classic' that I have to be in the right mood for because 'classic' often means 'great if you haven't read this decade's work'. It's easier to read if I treat it like a text rather than a story-- here are the opinions of the day, oh look, here's an idea that hadn't been seen before, I don't think, isn't it interesting that this bit's now a given rather than the plot of the book. It's like when I started reading romance novels and found they kept half my brain occupied with analysis.

In response to Patrick's recent particle: I have wondered about the "eating in public" thing as something an alien culture could find revolting about us, possibly equivalent to taking care of other natural needs. Can you imagine the horror of these Notearthians when the first thing we try to do to welcome them is stage a banquet? How would that damage relations? How would we even figure out why they find us so revolting? How would we build mutually habitable space stations?

Possibly I have too much free time, but I enjoyed the mental side-trip.

@16: There was a Jack Vance novel which had a human culture which considered public eating disgusting. He showed some interesting adaptations, such as how travelers in the same air-car dealt with a meal.

Well, I just got back from seeing John Carter. I read several of the original series when I was twelve or thirteen. I am trying to remember what parts of the movie were actually in the book and where they were flying by the seat of their scriptwriter pants.

They left out the part about Wbua Pnegre naq Qrwnu Gubevf univat n fba jub ungpurf sebz na rtt.

Melissa Singer @ 904 in thread 170: Resting a repetitive stress injury does help, but isn't enough for a severe one. I highly recommend seeing a physical therapist -- a certified hand therapist if you can find one. I am all too experienced with hand/wrist/arm RSI, because I fall back into bad habits of too much computer, and not enough other things. Physical therapy treatments reverse the damage remarkably quickly. Nerve glides, focused stretches and strength building exercises, ultrasound, and so on.

Singing Wren's recommendation @ 6 of using something to keep wrists straight while you're asleep is a good one. My doctor recommended that, too. Alas, I couldn't get to sleep with them on, but I know I wake up with my wrists in knots, and I'd do better if I could tolerate something to keep from curling up my arms. It is best to avoid using any kind of splint or brace when you're awake, though, unless it is fitted for you by a physical therapist, with instructions on how long to wear it, and what kind of activity to do. A brace keeps the wrist straight, but it also stops some muscles from working, while others work harder, and that can do damage.

As for the knitting group, can't she just hang out? When I was unemployed, I invited friends over for craft group. They were knitters and sewers and did their thing, and I fussed about with something and just enjoyed the company.

Fade Manley @ 12:

No question, Burroughs was a racist, a sexist, and probably somewhat of a Confederate revanchist (a lot of Northern whites born after the war fell for that "romance of the lost cause" bullshit). It can be hard for someone born into a more liberal time to deal with that. That's often partly offset by first reading his stories in early teens, when the sense-of-wonder and the romance of exotic places distracts you from the nasty stuff.

I came to Burroughs much later, in my late 40s in fact. My early pulp experience was the Lensman series (also racist and sexist). So when I read the John Carter books I had to tiptoe around the bigotry; I found that there was enough reward that I could do that. But I couldn't hack Tarzan, the racism there was just too rank.

Given that one of the writers of the movie is Michael Chabon, who understands sensawunda and is sensitive to bigotry, I have some faith that the script is reasonably free of Burroughs' contemporary attitudes, while retaining the tone and qualities that really do make the stories "classics".

Speaking of "John Carter of Mars"... We'll be seeing it tomorrow, I think. Melinda Snodgrass was the guest at our club's meeting tonight. She talked about many things, including her own work on Disney's first crack at Barsoom circa 1990. My favorite anecdote was that her version of the script had a 15-minute segment where Carter spends smost of his time with Martian female Sola who teaches him the local languages and customs. One executive asked if the audience might by then begin to think she was the love interest, instead of Dejah Thoris. Melinda's response? "Huh... She's 10 feet tall, green, and has tusks."

Lylassandra@16:

There was an episode of Enterprise where a first contact scenario went awry because the aliens were put off by the sight of the mess hall. They stormed off the ship, disgusted. The crew eventually figured out that this species views eating the same way we view defecating, as a private affair.

I went looking for the trailer to the John Carter film and found at the top of the search a review from a Salt Lake City TV station's reviewer. His grade? A-minus.

Huh. "How does it play in Peoria?" Pretty well in LDS-Land, apparently.

Linkmeister @ 8:

Remember, this is Disney. The last clue of their marketing people dried up and blew away in the 60s, which is why they had to turn creative control of large parts of their film production to the guys from Pixar. They still had a few people who knew how to make films (I know, "Pocahontas" is a counter-example, and there are others whose titles I don't recall because they went direct to DVD), but not a one who had any idea of how to sell them.

I'm waiting for the Skiffy Channel to try and compete with John Carter of Mars by giving us "Jack Carter of Eureka".

Lylassandra, #16: This NewTrek fanfic uses that idea as a major plot point. Don't let the term "fanfic" scare you off -- this is extremely well-written. Excerpt:

"That," she said from behind her hand, "is disgusting."

"That," Nyota said, swallowing, "is my mom's cooking." She held out the mostly-full container. "Want some?"

"You -- you -- masticator!" Gaila shrieked, backing away in revulsion.

Which was how Nyota discovered that although Orion society had absolutely no taboos about sex, it had a lot of taboos about food and eating, and she'd just broken all of them.

Saw John Carter tonight, and I was the only one of our party who said "Meh." Very nice effects, some lovely settings, and terrible dialogue and unexciting acting by the humans. Others disagreed with me. But then, I never could get through Burroughs, so I suppose this is a moderately faithful adaptation.

But I'm excited by the trailer for The Avengers!

Burroughs is a mixed bag of attitudes, and this is based on his first published novel. But, in this day and age, I would be unsurprised if John Carter himself was little changed, as a person, while Dejah Thoris were to become a piece of rather ordinary Hollywood hack work.

She is not a weak and feeble woman. She is not your typical action heroine swooning over your muscle-bound male lead. She is a Princess of Mars, and she lays eggs, darn it!

(We can be pretty sure that dinosaurs were sodomites, it seems to be a inevitable part of terrestrial egg-laying anatomy, but should we make that assumption about Martians?)

Lylassandra #16: There's a few classic stories (from Heinlein's Lucky Starr juvies, iirc) dropping the human protags into a Venusian society which views eating as very private....

In the real world, I would never expect to see that in a normal human society (eating in groups is pretty basic to us). It might, however show up in an abnormal society -- say, one marked by vicious long-term food shortages, to the point of "don't let anyone see you found a scrap to eat". I doubt such a society would be tenable for more than a generation or two, even if they didn't starve to death outright....

@26: Let me second that: that is *very* well-written.

Simon Gyrus #22: As always in SF, "the alien is the mirror to the human".

Humans can show pretty nasty streaks of xenophobia and intolerance. But imagine how bad that would be if we hadn't had so much exposure to other species on our own planet! (E.g., I'm currently living with a creature for whom defecation does have a social aspect, albeit at some distance.)

David Harmon @29, that's from the Heinlein juvenile Space Cadet (the Lucky Starr books were Asimov under the pen name of Paul French)

The heroes demonstrate to the Venusians who have taken them captive that they are indeed civilized, by complaining about their treatment - they haven't even been given privacy for eating!

Dave Bell @28: In the movie John Carter is still a Confederate veteran, though one no longer interested in any cause who mostly just wants to be left alone, but that's of no more real significance than in the books. Dejah Thoris is much changed, however. Now she's a scientist who's also very handy in a swordfight, which is a positive change. She's much more passive in the books, if memory serves.

#16 ::: Lylassandra

There's also Sturgeon's "Granny Doesn't Knit", notable for having an old woman as a major character and The Person Who Knows What's Going On.

Less annoying than some, but it's also an example of Women Get To Do Cool Stuff Because Men Are Prevented From It Because the Author Says So.

Examples: Toby Bishop's Horsemistress Saga-- women ride flying horses because the Goddess has made it so that only women can ride flying horses.

Naomi Novik's dragon books: there are some women dragon riders because a few breeds of dragons don't tolerate men.

Racial variant: In one of Russell's Men, Martians, and Machines stories, space ship doctors are black because blacks are the only people who don't get sick from teleportation(?).

Rugby for me this afternoon - first Wales beating Italy, and then France beating Scotland. And then friends coming over this evening.

Um, that's Ireland beating Scotland this afternoon. I clearly haven't woken up yet.

Continued thanks for all the input about knitting and RSI.

Mom says she's seen a hand specialist and a therapist, and "rest" was the prescription. No therapy, no braces. It's possible that this is ageism in action, so I may suggest another attempt and a different doctor.

Alas, my mother is not the type to go and "hang out" if she can't contribute. She's very determinate in some ways. If the "mission" is to knit, then if she can't knit, she has no mission. Couple that with her usual problems (being older than everyone else in the group by about a decade, being kind of a negative-minded person in some ways [though she doesn't think she is]), and we are, once again, stuck, social-wise.

But she's in a cheerier frame of mind these days, despite this week being the 9th anniversary of the hellish week before my father's death. Unless she's masking, but she doesn't seem to be (much).

Melissa Singer @37:

Bad doctor! Bad therapist! No biscuit!

I'm betting this was her primary care physician and his/her chosen therapist.

If your mother's insurance will cover it, have her see either a sports medicine doctor, or a chiropractor who specializes in same. An another alternative may be an occupational therapist.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is ageism in action on the doctor's part, but there's no excuse for not trying as many avenues as necessary until she gets relief.

My Mom, the RN says -- "accupuncture."

Nancy Lebovitz @34: In Novik's defense (defence?), I think it's pretty clear other breeds of dragon would ACCEPT women, it's just that the British Admiralty wouldn't even consider offering women for bonding except in the case where it's been proven the dragon really most sincerely will NOT take a man, nohow, noway.

For example, in China and Australia, several dragons (even of Western breeds, in that last case) bonded quite cheerfully to female riders with nothing much said about it.

The most poignant comment on the passing of Peter Bergman, over on the guestbook:

"Less sugar."

Thanks for the comments re. wheeled backpacks - I think I will get one.

@Serge #25:I'm waiting for the Skiffy Channel to try and compete with John Carter of Mars by giving us "Jack Carter of Eureka".

SyFy ran an utterly forgettable "Princess of Mars" adaptation a few years back:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_of_Mars

I got about ten minutes into it before giving up.

David@29 Marune, the Vance book where that shows up, does paint the human society in question as a particularly extreme one.

Dave 28: She is not a weak and feeble woman.

But does she have the heart and stomach of a king?

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) @20: Thank you! That really is a helpful explanation. All of my previous exposure to Burroughs was through his Tarzan novels, which even to my unenlightened and sheltered junior high self seemed shockingly racist at times. (I'm pretty sure that if I went back and read them now, "at times" would disappear from that assessment.) So after hearing repeatedly about the Confederate soldier aspect of the John Carter thing, I've been...hesitant. But it's sounding increasingly like it might actually be my sort of thing. Michael Chabon's involvement is an especially bright sign.

@37: Couple that with her usual problems (being older than everyone else in the group by about a decade, being kind of a negative-minded person in some ways [though she doesn't think she is]), and we are, once again, stuck, social-wise.

Being older than everyone else is a *problem*? Most of the knitting groups I've been a part of, the older women serve to anchor the group -- knitting is one of the few social activities I've seen that is *really* diverse age-wise. (Gender-wise, not so much, but age, yes.)

LMM @46: It may cause a social problem, if the stuff they all want to talk about is (a) all from earlier points in her life-tree [if they're all moms of young kids, or just starting up households, whatever] or (b) all things that people in their thirties grew up feeling are normal that older folks don't know or care about [internet-peer-group social stuff, movies and TV the older person is bored by, computer stuff].

It can lead to trouble finding topics of common interest, I mean, depending on the individuals involved. Having knitting around to talk about makes it more common-tasky.

I do know that the reason I gafiated from the SCA is that my primary social outlet in it was a sewing guild that did a lot of volunteer sewing, for royals and such (or on each other's embellished court-wear). I quit having the energy and spoons to invent new projects for myself, and simultaneously there quit being as many 'bring hands and help' projects going on, so I sat there for several weeks' meetings with nothing to do and felt awkward. The major conversational gambits were things like, "So, El, what are you researching for your next garb project?" ... and I wasn't, and so on. So I quit going.

Melissa Singer @37: WRT tendonitis: I'd was having a lot of trouble coupla months ago (compliments of my terrible computer settup at home); my doctor put me onto an ointment called "Traumeel." Rub some of that on the trouble spots every night before bed for a while, and things really did improve. Bonus: it smells nice. It's arnica plus some other stuff, including belladona. I got mine at Whole Foods.

Also, a Google search on knitting ergonomics produces a nice fat list of results. (That's always been my favored solution for these kinds of things: Stop Doin It Rong.) Don't know how amenable your mum might be to changing her knitting style, but being able to knit might be enough of an incentive. (I know how nuts I get if I can't draw.)

Actually, one of the things that struck me when I first read the Mars books was the *lack* of racism. John Carter went from Arizona, where the "red" Indians were the Bad Guys to Mars, where the "red" Martians were the Good Guys. As the series went on, he had all sorts of polychromatic Martians, all of whom were presented in very favorable terms -- except for gur Oebja Znegvnaf, jub unq cnyr fxva, terl rlrf, naq yvtug oebja unve -- Natyb-Fnkbaf. They were mean, cowardly, sneaky, treacherous, and just plain Bad.

Did the books have gur gureaf, gur gryrcbgngvba qrivpr, be gur enl gung qvfthvfrq crbcyr? I only read (I think) the first six or so out of nine or so.

Nine novels, two collections of shorter stories, in the Barsoom series: 11 books total.

I've found that if I don't have a project at Knitter's Breakfast, I do feel like something of a poser-- but I work slowly to begin with (lack of outside discipline) and like to eat while I'm there. I've found that having a notebook open on my lap helps a lot to make me look busy even if I'm not-- sketching out a cross-stitch pattern, figuring out spacing on things, 'planning', which is general enough that you don't have to have results of any kind. It might not help your mother feel like she's actually doing anything, but if some of the issue is 'they are judging me because I am empty-handed*' that might help.

*which did eventually happen to me-- someone gave me a pair of toe-up two-at-a-item magic-loop socks, explained 'knit' to me, and didn't mind that I knit damned tightly and couldn't do any of the shoving-around parts.

Melissa Singer @ 37: I agree with the reading of agism. When I was doing marathon training, the coach warned us about doctors/chiropractors/podiatrists who said "if it hurts, stop doing it". I found a podiatrist and a chiropractor who both ran marathons, and got the treatment I needed. I recall my mother, years ago, saying she told her doctor that it hurt when she lifted her arm like this, and he said "then don't lift it like that". When I had a similar issue recently, I got physical therapy that identified and treated a rotator cuff injury, and now do exercises to keep my shoulder working right.

Jacque's point about ergonomic knitting is great. I know someone who developed RSI from knitting, and her physical (or what it occupational?) therapist treated the problem and taught her changes in her knitting technique.

I just posted, and the gnomes high in the steel and glass tower held my post for review.

Erik@50:
Gureaf nccrne va gur frpbaq obbx, naq nera'g fhpu sne-ernpuvat znavchyngbef nf cerfragrq va gur svyz. Gur gryrcbegngvba qrivpr vf arj gb gur svyz, cebonoyl fvapr gur harkcynvarq nfgeny cebwrpgvba bs gur obbx jbhyqa'g ernyyl unir cynlrq jryy. Abg fher vs gurer'f n fbhepr sbe gur qvfthvfrf, gubhtu.

It's weird because mom's regular doctor is a geriatrician who literally just said my mother is a poster child for preventive medicine (i.e., incredibly healthy despite being nearly 80), so it's hard to think it might be ageism, and yet . . . having accompanied her to the dr. this past week, yeah, mom was in much better shape than most of the people in the waiting room.

LMM, Elliott Mason has it about right--there's enough of a cultural/life-stage difference, even between those in their late 60s and my mom, to make things not entirely comfortable, conversationally. Many of these women are recently retired, while mom's been retired for more tan 20 years. Most are still married, vs. my mother's widowhood (not that she's still a grieving wreck, mind you, just that it's different). Plus, she's a Depression Child and was old enough for WWII to have had a big impact on her (even living in the US). 10 years makes a huge difference.

I see it myself--I've tried very much to be friendly with the parents of my daughter's friends as she's grown up, but the families/people I had the longest and strongest connections with are fewer than 10 years younger than me. It doesn't matter that we're parenting children of the same age; we're at different stages in our lives apart from that. And I can have a lovely conversation with someone close to me in age even if their child is 10 years younger than mine.

A decade isn't necessarily a barrier to communication or to friendship--it depends on the subject, the medium, and the kind of relationship--but it can make a difference. When I was dating, I never went out with someone more than 5 years from my age in either direction, for similar reasons.

I was reading an interesting article in the Winter 2012 issue of DEPAUW MAGAZINE*, about sepsis and septic shock.

Septic shock is extraordinarily dangerous if not caught and treated fairly early on. Even if you don't die, effects can be catastrophic. One patient mentioned in the article spent four months and fifteen major surgeries in the hospital, including amputations of both lower legs, all the fingers of her left hand and part of the right-hand fingers.

But the article also reports unexpected beneficial after-effects when someone recovers from sepsis: The patient mentioned above came out of it with a better sense of smell, and a new ability with math and statistics. Hardly a fair exchange, but still one is surprised that there would be those benign changes along with the malign.

The quote that hit me between the eyes, though, was "In some patients, previous conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension and diabetes, disappears# It's all over the place in terms of what happens to people, for the good or bad, and we don't understand why#"

That hit me because back in 2009, Hilde went into septic shock twice in several months due to fast-growing UTIs# And while I can't guarantee it happened subsequent to those episodes, yeah, it was about that time that Hilde's own rheumatoid arthritis seems to have gone into remission# She hasn't had any of the painful flare-ups she used to have#

Huh#

I wonder if there's some kind of a "rebound effect" that occasionally will allow someone healing and recovering from sepsis to heal and recover some aspects of their health to better than they'd had previously# And if so, I wonder how that mechanism works, and if it could be isolated from the deadly disease that seems to trigger it#

I'd post a link, but that issue of DEPAUW MAGAZINE isn't online yet# But here's a link to Sepsis Alliance, whch promotes awareness and early treatment of sepsis.

*I'm not a DePauw alumnus, but our late friend Anne was, and the magazine continues to arrive after her death. I suppose I should notify them someday, but the issues have interesting content.

And I have no friggin' idea why some of the periods in that post got replaced with hashmarks.

On a very random note, the Amazing Girlfriend and I grabbed a 24" printer off eBay a couple weeks ago - and after several days of cursing at it, syringing the ink lines and installing new printheads, it's up and running!

Why did a couple grad students want a huge honking printer? Well, one of them (me) has a serious photography hobby... and we can print conference posters on it (in 24" strips).

New, it's a $1700 printer... used, and with all the new bits, we sunk about $400 into it, which makes it an excellent deal

Lee @ 26, Lmm @ 30, thirded! Very well done--thank you, Lee, for the recommendation. I'll be checking the author's other links.

I *so* wish my Trek library wasn't--weren't? argh--in storage. ***sigh***

59
I've met 36-inch inkjet plotters, which are good for that kind of thing also (yes, if I had room for one, I would try to get one). In fact, the really high-end printing of photos is done on inkjets - 8 or even 12 colors. At one time. (What you can learn at trade shows....)

Just wanted to share the sad news: Jean Giraud died today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17327374

Erik@50, James@55: V qba'g erpnyy gur qvfthvfrf va gur svefg guerr obbxf, juvpu ner gur bayl barf V'ir erernq erpragyl. Gb or ubarfg, gur gureaf ner gur bar cneg bs gur zbivr gung qvqa'g srry yvxr n ybtvpny hcqngr gb gur obbxf. V qb guvax gur punatrf jrer gurer ynetryl gb perngr na rkcynangvba sbe Pnegre'f gryrcbegngvba.

I like the new and improved Dejah Thoris. I can easily see book!Dejah becoming movie!Dejah given the opportunity. And Woola made me very happy.

I picked up a copy of The Scholars of Night today at the local paperback exchange, and I'm reading it now. It reminded me of Making Light.

Bruce Arthurs #57: It's likely that the mechanism would be different for different diseases.

For rheumatoid arthritis, the massive inflammation is going to result in a lot of production and death of white cells of various kinds, and it could be that the net effect is to get rid of autoimmune disease in some people. Along the same lines, bone marrow transplant also cures RA in some people (though not reliably).

In principle, you might be able to target antibodies and some nasty payload to precisely the cells causing trouble, if we knew what they were. That could give the beneficial effects without needing septic shock or bone-marrow transplant, and without even the milder collateral damage of the current anti-immune RA treatments. There's active research on better antibody-based treatments for RA.

For hypertension and (Type II) diabetes, I'd guess that weight loss is the main mechanism. :(

Xopher @ 44: Or the wingspan of an albatross?

My reply to Xopher @ 44 has been gnomed. (Contained a link to a relevant "Hark, a Vagrant" comic.)

We tried (along with our lab) to get a 42" plotter through Craigslist, but it turned out to be an impractical problem - when I came across the 24" version (knowing that other labs do exactly this for posters), we decided that it was the right size.

I've seen the 12-color monsters (things like the current-generation HPs)... they're cool, but I'd rather use a slightly older model where the cartridges are cheap to snag off eBay when I want to.

Jean Giraud (Moebius) has died, age 73. He changed the way I look at the world.

"Something so huge that it seemed unfair to men that it could move so softly stalked splendidly by them..." I just found out that I am missing the story from which the bit you headed this thread off with was taken, so I don't know if I got that quote right, but it's another part of that story, particularly exquisite.
There are some potential Dunsany fans lurking around here, I am sure. If they are stimulated into hunting down his works, that will be one of your good deeds.

Bruce Arthurs: #57: Well, my first thought was that rheumatoid arthritis and (both sorts of) diabetes are largely autoimmune problems, and a major immune battle might well shake up the system enough for recovery to require sorting things out a bit.

For hypertension, the shock might likewise trigger a general reevaluation of blood-pressure feedback. The brain effects of your first example are tougher, but could represent neurogenesis and rewiring after taking some diffuse brain damage.

Random observation: tomorrow's weather forecast indicates 28°F at 7AM, rising to 64°F by 4PM.

No wonder I'm having so much trouble picking the right coat...

It wouldn't surprise me if this is ageism in action on the doctor's part, but there's no excuse for not trying as many avenues as necessary until she gets relief.

My Mom, the RN says -- "accupuncture."

---
And/or a good chiropractor/kinesiologist, and!
turmeric. In capsules, not just a few sprinkle.
Easy, cheap, and possibly quite helpful.
Blessings,

Also, I know you guys have a secret code of strange letter substitution, but i don't have the key. I am sad. Can you whisper the secret?

Nanette: It's ROT-13. translators aplenty on the web; just copy and paste.

Oh, and thanks for the suggestion of acupuncture; 'twas already on my list, but might not have been, so the reminder's welcome.

This is for Syd, who is sometimes disguised: an article about a McGill student who is homeless by choice. It won't be directly useful, as that guy's situation is quite different, but may be obliquely so.

What I particularly noticed in the article is that, as a McGill student, he has the right to be on campus at any time of the day or night. They can't run him off, not that anyone is trying. From my experience with homelessness, that is huge. If one can find a spot from which one cannot be legally dislodged, well, but that is the crux of all displaced persons issues. "Once they gain a toehold..." The big thing of course is to get that toehold.

Grump. I'm trying to submit my Hugo nominating ballot, and I keep getting this error message:

"You must supply either your name (first and last name, or just last name), city and postal code or your membership code from one of the conventions."

I have filled out my full name, full address, AND THE GODDAMN PIN CODE THEY SENT ME. Am I going to have to go try to find something with my Renovation membership number on it, most of which has probably been thrown out by now?

Lee, check your cookie settings.

Nanette (74): Adding to what Melissa said, www.rot13.com is easy to use and easy to remember.

Well, I remembered that I could probably still find my Renovation membership number on their website, and that solved the problem. But still, that was an OR, not an AND.

Jim, check your Diffractions. You made an error in adding a new one that conflates it with two old ones....

The problems of holding conversations with groups into which one does not fit is why I like fandom, and MakingLight. After finding fandom, I realized I really was a social misfit, in mundane society. It's nice here. Thank you.

On communication: Sometimes I really sound like a geek.

For instance, on Friday, someone asked me why I was in the office after 6 PM, and I explained I was going to the Whisperado CD launch, adding that I would be leaving soon to get something to eat and that I might actually consume alcohol that evening.

Yes, I said, "consume alcohol." Not "have a drink" or "have a beer," but "consume alcohol." I say things like that all the time, and don't realize until afterwards how much slightly awkward/formal speech/word choices sound really odd and awkward to most people.

It's my nerdy nature.

My kid does it too, though she's not a nerd--she's just picked up the patterns from me.

A lot of the time I don't even realize it until I see the "huh?" look in the other person's eyes.

Should I assume the "cooking bananas" in the sidebarred Fiery Banana Soup recipe are meant to be plantains?

The cooking bananas are, indeed, platanos.

'Nother thumbs-up for John Carter of Mars. Cued by positive comments here, my buddy Brian and I went to see it yesterday. An afternoon entirely well-spent. (Although I could have lived without the 3D-fail. Did not enhance the experience.)

And a shout-out to Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little for alerting me to the new Himalayas restaurant in our neighborhood. That spot has had trouble keeping a decent restaurant since our loyal-and-true Cheers Chinese Cuisine left some while ago. We hope Himalayas sees considerable success in that location.

Via John Scalzi: http://i.imgur.com/aCMHn.jpg

Jacque @88: That's a good one - right up there with the "I hate taxes, but I like roads, schools, hospitals, bridges, a fire brigade..."

pericat @ 77, that's an interesting article. And yes, it strikes me that to be "successfully" homeless, having at least one location from which you can't be rousted (like a university campus with amenities for keeping clean, etc.) would seem to be key.

For my case, I haven't had a place to sleep since Thursday night. (Usual notification re: lengthiness of comment...)

While I was at the Women's Room that afternoon doing a load of laundry, my coffee-house benefactor went to the "Adult Center" (as opposed to the family center) run by Passageways (OT 170, March 5 comment) to see if he could score me a place to sleep, since E was back in town that day and I had to be gone again. He was told by the daytime security chief that (1) it was too late to get me in for Thursday, but (2) said chief gave him a completed homeless verification form to pass along to me with the advice that (3) I go to Passageways first thing Friday morning and indicated the form he provided my benefactor would help me get a bed for Friday.

So for Thursday, I decided I'd try to pull an all-nighter and camped out at the 24-hour Carrow's, but about 4:00 AM I gave up--left the restaurant, moved my car to a slightly darker section of the parking lot, reclined the driver's seat and tried to get at least a couple of hours' shut-eye.

I was so hyper-aware of every sound, every car driving by, every set of headlights that washed across the wall my car faced, that I gave up after half an hour and went to McDonald's for breakfast, then went to the Passageways office so that first thing upon their being open for business, I could (I hoped) secure housing for the night (and possibly Saturday as well, since E is again heading out of town today, Sunday, for a couple of days).

The first flaw in the plan was that, since I already had a case started, my case manager wouldn't be able to see me until the afternoon--mornings are for new clients and other duties, apparently. I was told to come back at 1:30. I could do that, and went to the library to hang out until time to return. Fifty minutes after I got back to Passageways, my case manager walked into the waiting room and asked me what was on my mind. I handed over my form and told her what the security chief had told my benefactor.

More flaws surfaced. It seems security guy hadn't been aware that case managers no longer have the ability to assign "walk-ins" (so to speak) for overnight housing; instead, everyone has to go through the process of case manager interview (done)/supervisor interview (nope)/waiting list/assignment. Because the case manager knew I'm trying to get into PATH/Petco, it didn't occur to either of us to discuss housing options post-cold weather shelter but pre-PATH, other than the "rolling" shelter that's a 2-gallon round trip away from here. When I mentioned I was trying to conserve gasoline as well, she apologized that they were no longer able to offer gas vouchers for such situations. Seems the city decided to stop funding them. And anyway, she said at the end of the conversation, all the beds at their facility had already been assigned for the weekend, and any available last-minute assignments would have been given to people entering the facility as residents.

I'm not ashamed to say I couldn't quite keep the tears out of my eyes, due as much to lack of sleep as to extreme disappointment. My case manager was quite obviously sorry she didn't have any alternatives to offer...but there was nothing she could do, so I left.

And then I had a bit of an idea. I killed time at the library and Starbucks and so on until I felt it was late enough, and then I drove to the police station in the area where I'd rented the room and paid $2 for an overnight parking permit--I'd bought both single-night passes and monthly passes during my tenure at the apartment, since there was no way I could leave my car in the residents' parking area. Drove back to the general area of the apartment, found a spot to park...and curled up in the back seat, my sweater-wrapped purse serving as my pillow, a trash bag holding my real pillow and comforter camouflaging my feet, and the rest of my under a purple flannel duvet cover pulled up far enough to keep my hair out of view but with enough space to breathe.

It was a tad cramped, of course, but I managed about 6 hours' sleep. Not bad.

So of course I decided to do the same thing last night--and I kept listening to my own heartbeat (something else I'm hyper-aware of since I was diagnosed with high blood pressure), and couldn't get the duvet cover properly situated, and I got overheated and felt little rivulets of sweat trickling across my hairline and down my back and again, I just gave up. Went to Carrow's, told my server I was sorry but I wasn't hungry, I just couldn't sleep, and she was very nice about the fact I only ordered water and a cup of tea.

So, 6 or so hours of sleep over three nights. Not helpful. First thing I'm going to do at E's once she's on her way is take a nap.

And tomorrow I start the county's job program, so we'll see how that goes. And first thing Tuesday, I'll be on the phone to see if the women's shelter the other homeless gal told me about has any openings yet.

I so want a job.

Re RSI: I slept with wrist braces on both hands for months. I didn't like them much, but the alternative was to wake with my hands aching and useless every morning, and spending an hour getting them functional again. I referred to them disparagingly as "the anti-Onanism devices" (and it's true -- I had to take them off).
I had "release" surgery on one hand and marvelously it turned out I didn't need to wear the braces on either hand afterward.
Next, I intend to learn actual typing, because writing a whole novel with just index fingers and right thumb is not good for my hands either.

Re John Carter: How long has it been since Thor came out? Since we saw that last night, it will probably be about that long until we see this film (we still haven't seen Green Lantern).

Simon Gyrus @14: I was interested to hear that one of the writers said, "So this guy fought for the Confederacy, and then he was adopted by one race and married into another? Hmmm."

Erik Nelson @18: I hope they are just saving that for a sequel, and didn't retcon it. It's absurd, of course, but enjoyably weird, almost more like something by William rather than Edgar.

MD2 @62, Tom Whitmore @69, re Moebius: As I have said elsewhere, he certainly left his mark on the world.

Pericat @77: A place, any place, from which you cannot be ejected is a precious thing indeed. It is called, "home". This man is not homeless at all.

Melissa Singer @84 re geekspeak: When I was in the Navy, I got into a hassle with a fellow, and an officer sat us down together. He accused me of sneering at him by going out of my way to use words he didn't know. I replied that I was just speaking my native dialect, having grown up in an academic household. The officer asked me if I thought the problem was all on the other guy's side and I said, "I suppose it's a reciprocal relationship." To the laughter that followed, I said, "See?"

Jacque @88: THANK YOU! I am so stealing this!

Syd @90: I have a home (for now), but I also SO want a job. So very much.

John M. Burt @ 91, please consider the good-job mojo on its way to you, should you desire it!

I have a baking question.

Te paper ran a recipe for Irish Soda Bread. It looks pretty easy, and I'd like to make some loaves to bring to work some morning next week.

Now, I thought it would be cool to bring them in fairly warm . . . that is, bake them in the morning.

Can dough of the Irish Soda Bread sort -- no yeast, just baking soda and baking powder -- be prepared ahead of time? The previous day, that is, and refrigerated?

93
I wouldn't want to try it. That kind of leavening doesn't hold well at all.

Stefan@93 - soda bread uses an immediate acid-base reaction for the rise, so you can't do the dough ahead of time. You really need to mix the wet and dry ingredients, make sure that they're well mixed, knead a couple times, and plop it in the oven/skillet. On the other hand, it's a fast thing, flour, soda, salt and buttermilk, so the prep really only takes a few minutes.

Fwiw, there are several different soda breads. The authentic ones are simple, peasant food. there are soda farls, which are quarter rounds cooked on a skillet. There's a wheaten loaf, which is a more free form oven loaf. Then there are the ones with 'stuff' in them, which are mostly inauthentic, as far as I can tell.

Syd @90: {{{{{HUGS}}}}} Welcome to the modern day nightmare. I'm so sorry you have to go through this.

Syd @90: {{{{{HUGS}}}}} Welcome to the modern day nightmare. I'm so sorry you have to go through this.

Syd @90: {{{{{HUGS}}}}} Welcome to the modern day nightmare. I'm so sorry you have to go through this.

Sorry. Connection fail.

Thanks for soda bread warnings!

Night-old will have to do.

Re: "Knitting fifty bees" in Particles:

"Fifty bees is too many bees even when you're not tiny." - Chris Sims

pericat @77: We had a member of the Honors program camping out in the backyard for the better part of a year after he started developing environmental allergies to the apartment buildings around campus. (Hardly surprising; if you're at all sensitive to chemicals, industrial cleaners aren't going to do you any favors. He's the person I know who is allergic to chocolate.) He got hassled by security sometimes, but he really did start looking scruffy.

I do like the idea of "home" as "the place where they can't kick you out." Puts the idea of permanent homeless camps into perspective.

Oh! That's right.

I have a new nephew! A couple of weeks early, but pretty sizable all the same. Hooray for the lucky number!

That McGill student: There are some pieces of his life that only work because he's under (say) 25, and some pieces that only work because he has access to a full college campus.

As far as youth, last time I slept on a hotel floor I was about 35. I don't know if I was sore for two days, but I was certainly sore for one. Likewise, I think, "sleeping on the ground."

Also, I was certainly a lot more frostproof 20 years ago, when I went to McGill, than I am now. And certainly less afraid, which is both a good and a bad thing.

As far as the college campus: as the story mentions, he tends to use it as a several-hundred-room house. With patrolling guards who, one could argue, work for him.

Hugs, Syd.

We had our first FaceTime video call from our first grandchild today. She's just 8 months old, and we haven't seen her since we visited in Louisiana when she was 4 months old. She spent most of the time trying to climb up on the display to see what we were and getting picked up and swung around by her parents when she got too close, and we spent most of the time waving at her and saying hello. Both of our dogs got jealous and sat down in front of us to be petted.

I love the 21st century.

Syd, more hugs and hopes for a quick resolution to the housing hurdle.

Do you have a start date for the petco option, or is that churning in paperwork uncertainty? All this uncertainty is horribly stressful, so I am hoping that they can give you a date for when things will get more stabilized. in the meantime, warm thoughts, and I hope you are at your friend Em's place tonight, getting a sound night sleep.

I saw "John Carter (of Mars)". It's over 2-hour long and I was never bored, but... Right off the bat I guessed this wasn't going to be the movie I had hoped for.

Stephan Jones @ 93
Can dough of the Irish Soda Bread sort -- no yeast, just baking soda and baking powder -- be prepared ahead of time?

No, baking powder doughs hold poorly, and baking soda doughs don't hold at all. BUT--if you mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, and grease the pan the night before, it takes less than 5 minutes to get the bread in the oven in the morning. (I do this for "puffin"--muffin batter baked in a cake pan--quite often.)

Melissa Singer @ OT 170
On the wrist pain issue, I will second the advice to at least check with a chiropractor. A few years ago I had a non-specific wrist/finger pain issue that made typing extremely painful, which ended up being a slightly dislocated elbow. A chiroprator fixed it less than minute. (As in--even touching the keys hurt when I left the office, and it was painless to type when I got back.)

Syd, continued good wishes coming your way. Thanks for keeping us posted; if you're silent too long, I worry about what's up.

Jacque: I'm not sure I'd call it a nightmare. I eventually wake up from those. :) Grossly inconvenient and damned depressing, however, would be spot on.

B. Durbin, Sandy B. and Mea, re: the McGill student, all the things you mention are what combine to make his an interesting and quite possibly unique case. I was never really exposed to the idea of camping out when I was younger--in fact, I can recall only two instances of anything like camping; one involved a "pop-up" trailer with soft beds, the other an air mattress in a tent shared with friends. Sleeping in my car is doable, but not long-term comfy unless I could find a non-roustable spot where I could just recline the front passenger seat, as curling up in the back seat might lead to circulation issues from the knees down (nowhere to stretch them out, and might blow my "cover" as a pile of laundry if my feet stuck out). :)

Re: PATH/Petco, my case manager there (who has already been reassigned, darn it--nice guy) told me the wait time for PATH overall was running, on average, 3-1/2 months. The facility with the Petco affiliation might be running longer or shorter, but he didn't know for sure. This is one of the reasons he asked me to communicate with him at least once a week. I will continue to be in touch with his replacement on that timetable unless she specifies something different.

Coffee House Guy, however, called this morning and said he'd gotten me a referral to a place in Glendale. Based on the website I found via the address, it's called Ascencia and was at one time a PATH facility, but is no longer affiliated with them. They have emergency housing--40 beds--as well as other services to help the homeless.

The potential drawback is its location in Glendale, which is a little further away from LA/Pasadena/Alhambra than is strictly convenient for at least the next three weeks, that being the length of time I'm slated to participate in the county's GROW job program (in Alhambra, M-F starting at 1:00 PM). Yes, I still have the car, and my GROW case manager said I would receive a bus pass as part of the program; but the public transit system in LA is...not as useful as one might like, with a patchwork of county and city buses, plus the Metro Rail trains and subways. If it takes me, say, two hours each way (wait times, transit times, changes to other buses, perhaps), that cuts out a lot of time I could be on the computer looking for work.

On the other hand, not sleeping in my car!

So I will call Ascencia and see what's up there, and explain that my "ultimate" goal re: shelter housing is PATH/Petco, and that I'm also hoping to get one of the first come, first served slots at Good Shepherd (the women-only place the gal at the cold-weather shelter told me about), based on its propinquity to the PATH location where I'd meet my case manager. We'll see what happens.

And yes, Mea, I'm at E's through Tuesday night, bless her heart, and I luxuriated in going to bed early (for me, 10:45 is early!) and sleeping in a little. "Stressful" is also a good descriptor, and I'll have to call the clinic where I got my BP meds to see if I can get in one morning this week, since I'm almost at the end of the scrip and I don't know if the doctor is going to want to extend it.

Okay, just made the call to Ascencia. The man to whom Coffee House Guy referred me gave me the name and number for their intake coordinator, so I've left a message there--including that I'm okay through Tuesday night and won't be available for a conversation after 1:00 PM re: GROW. Now for some brekkie, then getting ready for said jobs program.

Also, again...I met a gal on Saturday morning in line at Passageways' adult center (called Union Station, not to be confused with the train station of the same name in downtown LA). Friday was her first night homeless, and I was the only other woman standing in line at the time, so she struck up a conversation with me. Her story is...well, I won't share it, but suffice to say I told her about Making Light in general, and about the DFD thread, and invited her to stop by. If a new Susan shows up in a regular thread, it might be her. I hope she visits--if for no other reason than being able to pass along what I'm learning about shelters, etc. I did tell her about the Women's Room and I hope she goes there, too.

Thanks, all. :)

Otter B, I guess I was in preview when you posted. Thank you also for looking out for me.

I'll admit, since most of what I'm posting these days is on what might be called the "heavy" side of the emotional spectrum, I do sometimes hesitate--I don't want to take over a thread with my stuff, but because it's "now" stuff, the DFD thread doesn't feel entirely appropriate. But if it's been several days since I last posted and I'm in a don't-want-to-spill-all-over-the-OT mood, I'll at least pop in long enough to wave. :)

Syd (111): I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm always glad to see your updates.

Syd, I'm also glad to see that you're still kicking. I can't do more than read, but I do wish you the best luck.

Add me to the list of folks who are following your "adventure" with great sympathy, Syd; your updates are appreciated.

And in good news, the Democratic Underground vs. Righthaven suit has been decided in a really positive way. Two good points: hosts aren't responsible for what commenters post, and quote-and-link of 5 sentences (or possibly more) is explicitly "fair use." Both are important! Link is to the EFF story.

Thanks for the various recommendations, all.

Syd, you are much in my thoughts, and I very much prefer hearing from you than not. :-)

Jacque @ 87: And a shout-out to Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little for alerting me to the new Himalayas restaurant in our neighborhood. That spot has had trouble keeping a decent restaurant since our loyal-and-true Cheers Chinese Cuisine left some while ago. We hope Himalayas sees considerable success in that location.

...! I would not have pegged you for that cuisine, as it's usually got non-zero levels of capsaicins in everything but the rice pudding. On the other hand, Himalayas isn't Royal Peacock. There are levels.

Our neighbors Kit & Allie & Austin were overjoyed to see it there, being huge fans, so they told us. When I went in last week, the owner said that she was pleasantly surprised to find that they'd moved into the neighborhood where, apparently, all their most loyal customers lived.

(More good thoughts winging their way toward Syd, to be put at his disposal.)

An amazing effort to explain the scale of everything from the Planck Length to the estimated size of the universe. Great for kids, with easy-to-understand explanations and a touch of humor.

I have to admit I never knew that Cesium was the largest atom; now I not only know that, I understand why.

Ditto the appreciation for Syd's reporting, and more hopes for speedy re-employment and re-homing.

Syd: I, too, appreciate the updates.

My own house hunt was going well, and my stress levels might have finally started going down... so of course my future housemate had to have a change of mind about something and things are firmly back in uncertain and stressful.

Syd: I knew generally and vaguely that navigating the "safety net" involved twisty, turny passageways, paperwork and a lot of time and fortitude. Your tales stun me with the reality, especially given your smarts and high level of organization.

Potential Gathering of Light: who else is going to WisCon? Do we want to try to arrange a dinner-gathering (or whatever) beforehand?

I shall be there with my loinspawn, so my meal runs will of necessity include her as well (for good or ill).

Syd, thank you for the updates.
Xopher@119, wow! Powers of 10 on the Web, with wonderfully snarky commentary. Thank you.

Xopher @ 119, thanks for that link--both fascinating and fun!

To all, thank you. I appreciate knowing that I have not, in fact, been overdoing it. Should I ever do so, however, please let me know. :)

Small correction, Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @ 118--I'm a girl Syd, not a boy Syd. But you aren't the first and likely will not be the last. And imagine my surprise today, while waiting to go to the iso room to visit my cats, when I heard one of the techs call for "Sydney"--and discovered he didn't mean me, but rather the similarly red-haired and overweight cocker spaniel belonging to the only other person in the waiting area!

I just sat there and giggled a while.

Tamlyn @ 121, sorry the housing situation has become bollixed up--good mojo headed your direction for quick, smooth resolution and reduction of stress!

Syd: My first pet who was really-really mine (and not my parents') was a garter snake. We named himer Sydney, because it was impracticable to actually determine hiser sex, and honestly didn't matter much. We most often used male pronouns for him, as a matter of convenience; he acquired a roommate eventually, another garter snake, whom we named 'Leslie' and generally used female pronouns for.

Because Sydney's color patterns were especially vivid, he resides in the collections at the Field Museum now, floating forever in formalin.

My mom did let me bury the gerbil in the yard, but most of my herp pets have ended up in bottles. Sometimes I think other people would think my childhood was weird. :->

Elliott Mason @126: Compared to people who have their dogs freeze-dried so they can look at them forever and ever? Not even....

My apologies, Syd -- and my thanks for your patience with my mistake.

Again with the good wishes to you!

Nicole, really--no harm done, and no worries!

Elliott Mason @ 126, re: weird, what Jacque said. As to naming the snake Sydney, I'm just going to conclude you were ahead of the game on seeing it as cool. Unlike when I was growing up, when it was so UNcommon a female name that people were forever calling me Cindy.

Perfectly good name. NOT, however, my name.

These days, people who hear my name rather than see it tend to ask if I spell it as in "Cyd Charisse". Nice to know classic films (or old movies, depending on exactly which examples we're talking about) are still getting watched.

One of the active fans in the Bay Area when I grew up was Sidonie Rogers (known as Sid), Syd. It's one of the names I've long recognized as gender-ambiguous.

And now, a change of hats to post about something that just happened on FB.

So, there's this guy I "met" via his postings on one of my friend's pages--they play the same general category of musical instrument. Said guy tended to be amusing, and we had some occasionally clever repartee going, so one of us sent the other a friend request and we commented back and forth on each other's posts. He even sent me a sympathetic FB message or two several months ago when certain other life situations were blowing up... So far, so good.

I get back this afternoon and get online to catch up with the day's events. And I see this guy has posted a cartoon showing an average-looking, or possibly dweebish-looking, man, angry/irritated look on his face and arms akimbo, and the right-hand side of the cartoon is taken up by words to the effect that women will wear wigs and fake nails and get this and that cosmetic surgery, yada yada--but then say they want a REAL man.

A couple of other people had commented on the cartoon before me, brief but displaying what appeared to be a high level of agreement with the sentiment expressed. So I commented that yes, of course women want real men, preferably ones who will think they're beautiful as they are so they don't feel the need to have all that crap done to meet some ridiculous societal standard for beauty.

One of the first posters then commented, "Angry are we??!?! lol" and the other BWAHAHAHAHAHA'd all over the place.

My next comment, addressed to the "Angry?" commenter, pointed out the approximate percentage of the population made up by women and some of the more egregiously sexist things still taking place--in general terms, no stats, but easy enough to find in the real world (or even on the Internet!), including reference to the recent talk-radio comments and not-pology by Rash Limp-baugh (sorry). I then suggested that when "Angry?" commenter had lived a lifetime in a world where a similar level of sexism, directed at men, had been extant for several thousand years, he should check back in and let us know how well he likes it. I then compounded my "error" by suggesting he would use my comment to conclude I hated men, when in fact I was just tired of the double standard. I even quoted a decades-old Elayne Boosler routine, to the effect that "men don't care if the inside of a woman's breasts is filled with a foreign substance but they'll throw a guy out of baseball for corking his bat."

While this is going on, another FB acquaintance, female, has seen my comment show up in her sidebar, so she goes over and "likes" both my comments. Then "Angry?" commenter proceeds to write a comment of similar length to mine, pointing out how he doesn't have a sexist bone in his body and he didn't know I was female because he was going by the name (!!) and I don't have a profile pic (actually, I do, but it's a head shot and I'm wearing a silly hat, so I suppose my being female might not be hugely obvious), and he's only been around since the '60s and can't help me with what happened back in the Biblical days, and maybe I should just lighten up a little and be glad there are people in the world who love me.

***sigh***

At this point, the guy who posted the cartoon shows up and says, "Yeah, what he said."

***SIGH***

So I replied that I'd be happy to lighten up when he starts posting an equivalent number of sexist-toward-men cartoons, and said that if he's already keeping parity in that way to please direct me to the previous examples of same, because it seems I'd missed them. And there was something else...was this where I quoted Elayne Boosler, maybe? I just don't recall. Oh, wait, I remember--I said that we get this kind of stuff out in the wider world all the time--so it hurts more coming from our friends.

Guy who posted the cartoon then asked whose f$cking page it was? And I replied that it was his, of course, and that I assumed the cussing meant I was no longer welcome, at least on this topic--but if it was wrong of me to "tell" him what to do (post sexist-to-men cartoons), why was it okay for him and the "Angry?" commenter to tell me what to do (lighten up).

And I waited a few minutes to see what the reply would be...and then realized that all my "updates" related to this post had disappeared from my feed. So I checked my friends list, and he's removed himself; I checked the list of our mutual friend and can't see him there, either, which I assume means he's blocked me; and for good measure, I checked that FB message exchange, and I can no longer even message this guy.

My female FB acquaintance? I checked with her, and she's apparently been banned too.

I am left wondering if my last comment contained far more inflammatory snark than I intended, and that I so offended this guy thereby that he felt banning me was his only option--and I'm willing to admit to the potential for snark, when what I intended to convey was that I was done commenting on that post regardless of whether or not it was his preference that I stop--or did I maybe hit a nerve he didn't want to have hit?

Either way, there's nothing I can do about it, barring getting in touch with our mutual friend and asking him to carry a message for me, which is (a) ever so high school and (b) disrespectful of our friend, dragging him into the middle of the situation (it's a situation?), not to mention (c) am I really interested in being friends, even electronically, with a guy who seems to just not get why that cartoon wasn't funny to me? Or gets it and doesn't care?

Well, it makes a change from my other posts! ;)

My comment that would have been around #131 has been captured. There were no links; I referred to a highly popular social networking site by its initials, which are the sixth and second letters of the alphabet; I used a substitute name for a radio host who has recently received much criticism; and I substituted a dollar sign for the second letter of an adjective/gerund formation of a word proverbially said to have originated as an initialism for "fornicating under consent (of the) king".

And it's long, but that hasn't stopped me before. :)

[The Word of Power was "HAHAHAHA," a letter-group very seldom used by Honored Guests here, but quite common in comment-spam. --JDM]

Syd, add me to the list of people interested in hearing about it, as things develop.

"Darn it. I just realized that if I bake the weasel head, his nose will melt."

Posted on Facebook by Hugo-winner Mary Robinette Kowal.
Yes, she's making anoher puppet. What did you think she was talking about?

Just because it's funny: Misnamed toys

Moi! I'm shocked! Well, mildly surprised.

Xopher #119: Not the first I've seen, but your new one is much better done (if a bit crankier on the scrollbar).

Syd: what Jacque said. I want to know how you are doing, please -- but not if it becomes a burden for you.

Potential Gathering of Light: is anyone coming to RavenCon?

Syd, #131: No, you're just obviously one of those angrymanhatingfeministbitches with no sense of humor. And he's no loss. CWAA.

Steve C., #344: That's hysterical! But not really worksafe.

Anyone within driving distance of Houston: This Saturday is

CHOCOLATE DECADENCE XXV
Time: 7 PM until we kick the last stragglers out (usually between 2 and 3 AM)
Place: Our house -- 3715 Nfpbg Ynar, near 290 & 610
Bring: Alcohol if you want it, and a chocolate or fruit goodie to share. Folding chairs are also a good idea.

Hope to see some of you here!

Paypal is at it again. This time, PayPal is freezing pre-orders of a book of memories of Doctor Who, with all profits intended for Alzheimer's research.

Re: my recent gnoming, thanks for the explanation, Jim. Not something that would otherwise have occurred to me.

The last time I checked, Paypal operations in Europe, which would include that case, were based in Luxembourg. They seem to go to where the tax rates are lowest. They are legally a bank, and that means banking regulations apply.

They're still there:

Who provides the Service?

The Service is provided by PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. (“PayPal”) to registered users in the European Union (each a “User”)

PayPal (R.C.S. Luxembourg B 118 349) is duly licensed as a Luxembourg credit institution in the sense of Article 2 of the law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector as amended (the “Law”) and is under the prudential supervision of the Luxembourg supervisory authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier.

I would be unsurprised if they can get away with this particular case, but their procedures could be defective even if their reasons are not.

This is the sort of thing which might be worth raising with an MEP, but I'm represented by several. six in all. One is an overt Fascist, one wants us out of the EU, one is a Conservative, and one is a ex-Conservative who now claims to be a Liberal Democrat. And another one quit at the end of January (what happens now?).

Paypal might be a monopoly, and the way they control such things as eBay is a possible conflict of interests.

Theft is theft.
Do you support webcomics? Take this one question survey:
1. Do you take the RSS feed of over 90 webcomics, rip the images, put them in your Android app, and then put your own advertisements next to them in order to make money?
Congratulations: If you said “Yes”, then NO, YOU DO NOT SUPPORT WEBCOMICS.

Especially since one of the webcomics involved is xkcd, which has a very explicit "Thou Shalt Not" about that sort of thing right there on every page.

Digger has already sent a takedown notice, which is how I found out about it -- I read Ursula's LJ. My partner has notified xkcd, User Friendly, and Penny Arcade. If you happen to follow one of the smaller comics in the list, it would be friendly to let them know this is being done to them.

How much you wanna bet that this guy thinks he's made it all okay by saying he'd remove anyone who complained? Me, I think he deserves to have the Internet dropped on his head.

I'm personally based in the States, where PayPal is not legally considered a bank. I have approximately zero knowledge of the legal treatment of PayPal UK, or the practical application of UK law thereto.

Financial best practice in the US is that PayPal is really appropriate only when your operation is too small to be taken seriously by a bank. By the time your operation is large enough for PayPal to think you're fencing enough stolen goods to be a problem, a bank will be willing to give you a real merchant account, with rates better than PayPal's, and customer service that doesn't assume you're a crook by default.

Actual practice in the US is that a whole lot of people start out with PayPal because it's convenient, and then stay with PayPal because it's easier not to change something that, on the surface, appears to work.

Awesome. My first gnoming. I've arrived.

Lee@144:

To split a hair, theft is removal of a physical object from the possession of another, without permission. Taking a copy of an object, without permission, without disturbing the possession of the original, is not theft. It is copyright violation, and should be called such.

I'm not supporting scumbaggery, but I am insisting that scumbaggery be properly described.

Feds just settled for $25 Billion over "foreclosure irregularities"

My favorite part: "A representative for Wells Fargo declined to comment. At Ally, a spokeswoman said that when managers became aware of 'procedural deficiencies,' they 'took quick and decisive action to address it.'" Where, apparently, "deficiency" means "Can't process them fast enough" and "address" means "to streamline the process regardless of legal issues."

Fifty years from now the history books will be speaking of the return of laissez faire capitalism.

pedantic@148:

Considering the US banking industry got a bailout on the order of $16 Trillion when their bad practices made the economy go pear-shaped, the $25 Billion settlement is a slap on the wrist.

FaultyMemory, #149: Worse yet, not one penny of that $25 billion will go to the people who were actually damaged by those actions -- the ones who were foreclosed on improperly and/or fraudulently. Once again, the People Who Matter get the diamonds and the ones who were hurt get the shaft.

FaultyMemory @145: Als, some merchants whose transactions are primarily online may find using PayPal a lot easier than setting up their own e-commerce site. I have a merchant account at a local bank, and have done so for years. But taking PayPal online gives me something the bank doesn't.

Not that I love PayPal. But without it, I think my business would drop off considerably. (Maybe I'm pessimistic. Dunno. Not likely to risk it at the moment.)

I wonder what got me this invitation to tea with the gnomes. Probably one of those punctuation thingies combined with a typo.

Pass the biscuits, please?

[The fatal words were "merchant account", advice on the obtaining of which has been more than occasionally offered where it was neither needed nor wanted by people whose explanation of the differentiation of asses and elbows would not be reliable. -- AS]

Faulty memory @ 149 and Lee @ 150:

Yeah, I know, for both comments. Burns me more than I can say.

I know most victims of foreclosure are without financial resources, but at this point, since the report and settlement indicate a finding of fault, I'd love to see some enterprising lawyer get all the victims of foreclosure together for a class action suit against these big five.

On a fictional note, I have a story I've been trying to write for ten years where the American people -- by amendment and acclamation -- pass a "Law of Corporate Citizenship" that says,
first, that the CEO is always liable for the company's actions, regardless of what he knew, and is always a separate but inseparable party to any lawsuits for misbehavior and malfeasance;
second, that the same is true for any lower officers, board members, and other members of the firm;
third, when a company is found guilty of a crime, it is required to close down for a length equivalent to a prison term, and any capital is sold to pay damages to its victims, and
fourth, lawsuits for damages or fines for violations are assessed on top of seizure of whatever total profits or savings the company made from its illegal policies, said figure to be determined by independent audit.

Elliot @123: I'll be at WisCon. Having a Gathering of Light there could be fun, though my schedule is always pretty fierce at that particular convention. Stop by the dealers' room and say hi, whatever gets arranged, OK? I'll be the one with all sorts of shinies (jewelry) with names.

elise @154: I did that last year, and it didn't turn into much (possibly because after the dinner break I need to sit in my room watching the kid sleep -- that may change, this year). I did enjoy seeing you, though. :->

pedantic@153:

For going on four hundred years, the whole point of incorporation has been to protect personal assets and freedoms from the consequences of bad business decisions.

The irony that the "party of personal responsibility" in the US is also the de facto "corporations can do no wrong" party is not lost on me.

Even since the personal bankruptcy "reform" of the early 2000s, which touted "personal responsibility" as a major driving force behind making several new classes of debt non-dischargeable, I have been of the opinion that a corporation's privileges and immunities are a matter of law only, and like any law, they may be revised or revoked as the legislature sees fit.

Given the abuses of law and society perpetrated under the shield of incorporation, I think in the US we are overdue for some revision to that law. While there may yet be merit to the idea that incorporation allows for the assumption of large business endeavors that cannot be undertaken by a general or limited partnership, the avoidance of legal responsibility should not be considered a business risk. Accordingly, I propose that laws governing corporations be revised such that the board of directors of a corporation are held personally liable for criminal acts perpetrated by the corporation, and for indebtedness incurred by the corporation as a consequence of criminal and civil liabilities.

It is, after all, a matter of personal responsibility to obey the law.

pedantic peasant @ 153:

For the last couple of years I've been advocating a change in the status of corporations. Instead of being legally persons, they should legally be equivalent to domestic animals. This would make some human, the legal owner, liable for damage done to other humans or to their property by the corporation. It would also remove them from political financing; if dogs and cows can't make political contributions why should any other animal?

I assume 'Sidney' is a male name and 'Sydney' is a female name. That may be because one of the girls* in The Borribles is named Sydney, and it was the first time I encountered the name with that spelling.

*Yes, she's prepubescent...permanently. Unless she gets her ear-tips cut off. You really have to read this book.

Re Jim's diffraction: Author Goes Nuts (in Germany).
The second link gave me this: Greetings, my friends and fans - but also her relentless critics and enemies. Behold pure and praise me, or me schießet Auf'n moon - may you and schätzet my work or binds me to the stake. The main thing fair! Either way, I'm inclined my head in front of you - sometimes in order to better recognize what a cobbler because that comes from her sable. Welcome! Look in and judge fine - or read and shoot!
Google Translate. Thanks ein fickender Haufen!

I just got this from one of my former choir directors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuJYs_wwjSk

(Stephen Colbert Sings A Hymn, Alle, Doo-dah.) (unless I mean "Doo-dah, Luia." Some jokes are just not meant to be transcribed.)

tykewriter@159:

The spirit of the German text might be better translated as:

Greetings, beloved friends and fans - but also our relentless critics and enemies. See me without fault and commend me, or kick me over the moon - like and value my work or bind me to burn at the stake. In the main: fair! Doesn't matter, I will bow my head before you - from time to time also, the better to understand what cobblers rap on us for and why. Welcome! See me pure and judge me fair - or read and kick!

('cobblers' is probably a reference back to 'kick over the moon'. also, the last sentence had internal rhymes that do not survive the translation.)

TexAnne @160: I am reminded again of my friend Batya's reaction when people question her 'right' to be involved in discussions of cultural appropriation ... because she's white, you see, and nobody's white culture has ever been tokenized like that. Except, as she points out, the fact that it can be extremely trippy for a Jew to stand among Christians whose hymns are all talking about Jerusalem and God's Chosen People, la la la, without any of them actually twigging to the fact that Psalms have been set to music and sung liturgically since long before the turn of the Common Era. :->

That hymn in particular is very Old-Testamentical (of the flavor that talks about the Old Testament to highlight Prophecy Achievements Unlocked, as it were), and I wouldn't put it past Colbert in future to actually sing Anglo settings of translated Hebrew stuff and pass it off in his kayfabe way as evangelical. Especially given the way he and Jon Stewart love to riff on the Jew-vs-Xtian thing.

Xopher@158: Possibly elsewhere, but here in New South Wales there seem to have been a number of males named after the state capital.

(I just put both 'Sydney' and 'Sidney' into the relevant search field of of the client database for my place of work, and all of the Sydneys seem to be as male as the Sidneys, going by their middle names.)

pedantic@153: I don't know how serious you are about your proposal, but the problems with it go really quite deep. For starters, shutting a corporation down for the length of a prison term would mean putting potentially thousands of mostly innocent people out of work. Aside from the dubious ethics of putting innocent people out of work, the political ramifications would mean that prosecutors would be very reluctant to bring such charges against large corporations, who are the very entities whose criminal behavior is likely to cause the most harm. Similarly, what ethically responsible person with anything to lose is going to want to take on the management or directorship of a company knowing that for reasons entirely out of their control they could be held criminally liable? (If an individual is personally involved in criminal activity, they are already criminally liable, whether or not they were involved in their capacity as executive or director of a corporation.) Not to mention that strict criminal liability of that sort goes against the grain of the Anglo-American common law and very possibly the U.S. Constitution. I think the Citizens United decision was very ill advised, but there are ways to rein in corporate misconduct, and even corporate political activity, without going to those lengths. Nationalizing the banks and replacing their upper management, rather than bailing them out in the manner we did, might have been a good start.

Speaking of transcription, this seems to be an afternoon for humorous typos in Closed Captioning. The best one was an attempt at spelling polkadots: "poke yeah dots".

My German's a litle rusty, but I didn't actually invite Google Translate to help♯ me out in this instance. I could probably have managed with my Collins German Dictionary.

Thanks, FaultyMemory, for a better translation than I managed.

I have no idea where the sable came from.

♯or hlep♭
♭oder hlefen?

129
One of my classmates was a Sidney (female).

Managed. Managed. Urgh. My brain is infested with an infestation. Must. Not. Post. So. Late.

And for something completely different (as some are wont to say) there's a really cool photo exhibit on line at the Smithsonian: Best Facial Hair of the Civil War.

That's the American Civil War, with both sides well represented.

Since my poor FG just came down with shingles*, I thought I'd share the information I sent her: WebMD and eMedicine.

*She thought she'd gotten poison ivy, but it was in a classic location for herpes: on her face, just above her eyebrow and to the side. In anatomical terms, supraorbital, infratemporal. I told her she should check with her doctor to rule out Shingles, and sadly, that's what the doctor agreed it was. I know I'm at risk myself, since I had chickenpox at a later age (16), but at least I'm not likely to get anything from her. Still, her doctor said rest for two weeks, and she's taking that seriously.

Ginger @ 170... My best wishes to your FG.

Argh, Syd, just arrrrgh. Your FB anecdote explains why I'm afraid to get into *any* sort of conversation on FB that goes deeper than "Yay I like that photo!" - and, when I do, why I tend to then run away and never read any responses.

I encountered a similar "stoopid womens" incident recently -- thankfully/unfortunately, not in a medium that encourages feedback. I call it "DJ Fail."

The evening DJ on one of the Denver area stations -- pretty sure it was KBPI 106.7 -- he's doing bits between songs to entertain the listenership, like you do. He tells us about this opinion poll that "Ask Men" (dot com?) ran recently, asking women between ages X and XX to answer the question, "Would you rather be very intelligent or have big boobs?" Apparently, he says, about 50% answered "Big boobs, because it would get them further in the workplace."

He then laughs and says he doesn't know whether to be all AWRITE! or C'mon, People, What's Wrong With You? In other words, he's torn between celebrating that so many women want to give him eye candy, and despairing that so many women are STOOPID.

He makes absolutely no mention, of course, of a third option: despairing of a sexist world in which so many of us women get the message that we're going to need to look sexy to get anywhere in corporate USA.

The irony, of course, is doubled when the next thing on the air is an advertisement for KBPI's Babe of the Day.

ARRRRRGHH.

That is all.

Oh, and following that link -- I was relieved to see that the PayPal issue regarding Behind the Sofa has been resolved.

From the joint statement released by Steve Barry and PayPal:

PayPal has apologised to Steve Berry for the way it handled payments for his book about Doctor Who, Behind The Sofa. It is working with Mr Berry to make sure funds are released as they are needed to pay the publisher and other suppliers.

PayPal placed restrictions on Mr Berry’s account because the payments were received months before the book was available. This is in line with PayPal’s policy of protecting buyers in case they don’t receive goods that they have pre-ordered. But we should have explained things better and worked more quickly to find a sensible compromise to ensure the success of this very good cause.

I was chagrined at the "we should have explained things better" part until I realized that "we" in that sentence was "PayPal." Joint statements can be confusing.

FaultyMemory@149 that 16trillion number includes some money many many times, as some of the programs were overnight loans that could be done many times in succession. So 10 million borrowed for a month turned into 300 million of borrowing.

Those numbers were then combined with longer term numbers to make the whole 16 trillion as close to a meaningless number as you can get.

170
Had that three years ago, just about. Same location. If she can get antivirals, so much the better. (Send her sympathy from someone who's been there, done that and doesn't want it again: thanks ever so much, H. zoster.)

Ginger: sympathies to the FG. My brother had shingles about 15-20 years ago and it was no fun at all. He had the chickenpox very early because he caught them from me. I was about 7 and he was about 2.5. I haven't had shingles, knock wood. (The teen has had the vax, which apparently reduces the risk of shingles.)

Bruce Cohen @165: I have probably said it here before, but the best closed captioning typo I've seen so far is the one Mike found. In a program about WWII, they were talking about Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Josef Gerbils.

The one on mythbusters about blowing stuff up using sheep charges wasn't bad either.

Nicole, I've heard it said that the average woman would rather be goodlooking than smart because the average man can see better than he can think.

This manages to insult women AND (to a lesser extent) men AND also put "what women want" entirely in terms of the Male Gaze. Is that what they call a trifecta?

Xopher, re: the spelling of my name, I tend to think of "Sidney" as a primarily male spelling, and "Sydney" as a primarily female one--based strictly on the fact that my name (actually my middle name) comes from my maternal grandfather: his middle name was Sidney. I assume my mom changed the first I to a Y because she, too, looked at "Sidney" as a male name.

In the world outside my head, it appears to be a toss-up, as Jo McQueen's 163 would indicate.

Ginger, sympathies to the FG re: her shingles; my aunt had a bout or two and was miserable, so please consider the fast-recovery mojo on the way.

Nicole @ 172, Xopher @ 178, yeah, it's sad when people demonstrate so clearly that Getting It is not what they're doing. I have to admit, I'm wondering if the friend I share with the guy who blocked me will notice that Block Guy and I are no longer swapping quips and ask me why...

Xopher HalfTongue @158: I'm also acquainted with a woman named Sidne.

Hmm. I have a netbook (an ASUS Eee PC) which has been sitting on the closet shelf for a while. My sister wanted to take it on a three day trip to the Mainland, but we couldn't get it to access the WiFi router I have in the back room. Moreover, when we tried to type on it, half the letters jumped cases, so the "p" became a "6", the "l" a "3" and so on. I have no idea why. So she left it behind.

Anyway, I brought it back to the back room, cabled it with an extra Ethernet cable I have, and am running Windows Updates (it's running Windows 7) to see if that might clear my problems. I discovered that the last installation of updates was 11/23/2010. There are 97 "important" updates.

Well. Maybe 15 months of updates really will fix at least the wireless part of the problem. I have no clue why the keyboard has gone wonky. Even the external USB keyboard ignores some letters when I type on it.

I've tried downloading drivers for the keyboard. This is annoying. It's disconcerting to type a letter key and see a number displayed. You double-check the caps lock and the num lock, confirm neither is on, and then try the key again, thinking you've lost your mind.

I should have said, I plugged in an external keyboard just to be able to type "asus drivers" into a search box rather than "as4s dr5vers," which gets me no good results.

Linkmeister @181

My Asus eee PC got a replacement keyboard last autumn. It cleared up a few problems, rather like yours. They're pretty cheap parts. But I'd recommend a coat of varnish on the key tops before the markings wear off.

I didn't find it a hard job, but I'm maybe more adventurous than some. There are PDFs of service manuals out there on the web, covering this sort of work. But there may be model-specific aspects.

I must admit, an eee PC with Windows 7 seems a bit strange to me. Mine is an early all-solid-state model, running fine with Linux.

Wi-Fi, my first inclination would be to check just which security/encryption standard the router is set to use. The Linux wi-fi setup tool I have is a lot less untidy—everything in one place—than the way Windows does it.

In re gendering Sidney/Sydney sight-unseen; there is a baby-naming tendency in the US since at least the mid-80s that any name with excess (or, sometimes, any) Ys in it is by definition female.

This leads to things like my daughter's classmate Mykylya. (Pronounced identically to Michaela, or at least how Michaela used to be pronounced when I was in school -- mih-KAY-luh).

Her male classmate Cashmere takes me rather more aback, though it's a perfectly well-spelt common (to me; I knit) word. And her classmate Aaron Sun, who is Korean, amuses my Farscape-geek side more than I can say, because it's pronounced EXACTLY like Aeryn Sun. He's a boy, though. And in his mom's view, his 'real' name isn't Aaron, of course, that's just his American/Christian name for forms, because nobody spells anything in characters over here.

@Serge: John Carter was never going to be a movie of my vision of Barsoom, but I thought it was great. Given the look and plot they chose, it could all have been horribly grim, but they got a good deal of humour in there, too.

Elliott Mason @184:
Pronounced identically to Michaela, or at least how Michaela used to be pronounced when I was in school -- mih-KAY-luh.

One of my male Italian colleagues is named Michele, pronounced mih-KAY-luh. But then, in my last job, I worked with a man named Anne (AH-nuh).

Moving abroad has certainly scrambled my ability to guess gender based on name.

abi @ 186... I worked with a man named Anne

Ever heard of the Jayne Austen Book & Gun Club?

Last morning at E's place. Called Good Shepherd; no beds available today--"Call again tomorrow." Will call Ascencia. Hope to speak with a live person rather than a machine.

Woke up two hours before I planned. Sick. Full-on hacking-cough mode, voice mostly gone. If I have to leave a message at Ascencia, maybe the voice issue will inspire a call back?

I went for several years where I didn't get sick at all. The last few years, I could count on one bout somewhere between December and February.

This is the third time in two months.

I mean, I know my immune system is likely as effective right now as a window screen made of Swiss cheese would be at keeping out flies, but this is ridiculous. And it feels like the same damned thing over and over, so I don't know if I just keep catching variants of the same bug, or if I haven't really gotten over the first bout and keep relapsing.

I'm TIRED of it. And I don't have a place to sleep tonight. Yet, anyway. If I can't get in at Ascencia today, I'll try begging my Passageways case manager for an overnight bed at Union Station. And if that doesn't get me anywhere, then I'll call E's sister and ask if there's room in her driveway for me to park there and sleep in the car. (She did say I once I could spend a night on their sofa if needed, but she's got kids and I don't want to pass them what I have.) I'm okay with sleeping in the car, if necessary, but I don't want to have to worry about the cops finding me and asking me to move along.

I've got too much to do to be sick, especially with the jobs program requirements. Now all I want to do is cry. I hate this. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

/whine

Ah, Syd, sorry to hear it! Being sick just makes everything harder. Virtual hugs beamed your way.

Syd (188): Ugh. My sympathies.

Will you accept an Internet hug?

Syd @ !88: My sympathies! Being sick on top of everything else is not fun. Count me in for another virtual hug if you like.

I called Ascencia. The very nice woman who answered the phone told me a little more about how their process works: 4 intakes a day lasting 3 to 4 hours, Monday through Thursday between 7:00 - 11:00 AM, first come, first served. I think she said it still only gets me on a waiting list. She said they only had 3 come in so far today, but there's no guarantee that they'd still have that last space by the time I got there--and that intake time would run me late for the jobs program, and they are VERY touchy about that. Anyway, this woman suggested I be there before 7:00 AM tomorrow so I stand a chance of being one of the first 4.

Which might--might--cover me for tomorrow, doesn't doesn't help for tonight.

So I called my Passageways case manager. Fully utilized the level of "pathetic" provided by being sick and not having a place to sleep. Result:

I'm in for an emergency overnight bed at Union Station Adult Center! And I can park my car in the staff lot, and as long as I'm there by 7:00 PM, I'm good--which was worrying me a bit because if I'd had to be there during business hours, I'd have been SOL due to the jobs program ending at 4:00 PM.

Well, that's a relief.

Ginger @170: I had shingles (in my 20s, for all love). It was comparatively mild: a half-dollar sized patch on my side, near my waist. (I'm told I had one chicken pock, as a kid.) Nevertheless, I remember feeling just astonishingly run-down for, like, two months.

Syd: {{{hugs}}} It really does seem excessively unfair that you should have to deal with all this sh*t and be sick, too. Sadly, not surprising; stress is notorious for knocking one's health out the window. And you've had more than your fair share.

tykewriter@166

No prob. It was fun, dredging up high school German and distilling meaning out of isolated-word online dictionaries.

A new Simon's Cat is out.

Shelf Life

Syd @ 188: Arrrrgh. Internet hugs from me too, if you want them.

And @ 192: Hooray for a small victory!

I wish so hard I could give you more concrete help. If it helps to know someone is thinking of you -- I am. I may be on totally the wrong coast, in a whole nother industry from yours, but I'm keeping eyes and ears out just in case I do happen to hear of some opportunity or resource that could help you.

And you know, as I type that, I think of something and I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

This may be a long shot. But if you have a graduate or professional degree, and a past or present affiliation with any of the schools listed on this page (where "affiliation" means "degree, current enrollment, postdoctoral training, employment, or faculty appointment"), you can apply to American Journal Experts as a contract-basis copyeditor of academic and professional journal articles, book chapters, etc. Assignments and submissions done completely online.

I do contract copyediting for them and I can confirm that they are a reputable organization.

I have no idea of your educational background or whether you've studied or worked at any of those universities. I apologize if those conditions make this whole idea useless to you (and I really wish I knew of something like that with fewer arbitrary conditions). But just on the off-chance, I wanted to mention it.

Encyclopedia Brittanica discontinues its print edition.

244 years... That's a pretty long time.

Before I forget to mention it, the dogwoods have bloomed in Charlottesville!

OT: Surreal abandoned amusement park in Berlin.

@198 David Harmon

I wonder if that's where they filmed the movie Hanna. It looks a lot like it, and it did take place in Berlin.

Meeting of Light: Is anyone going to Lunacon?

Lin @200 I live near enough to the con hotel that I shall be commuting. I don't have any specific plans yet regarding panels and other events yet, though.

I'll be at Lunacon all weekend. Saturday will be my busy day; Friday and Sunday are currently clear. Susan is going, too, and so is Terry Karney. All three of us are on programming.

Mary Aileen, I will look you all up on programming. I'll be trailing The Wombat all weekend, who's on programming on Saturday. Hilary Hertzoff, we'll see what happens.

196: I got all excited until I saw it wanted people with a minimum of a Master's degree.

Ian @ 199:

I was wondering that too, so I did some googling. Wikipedia says that it is the same park: SpreePark in East Berlin. It's been shut down for awhile, but still has an operating website.

Lin D (203): I hope to see you there. If you catch me after a panel, we can probably talk for a bit. There's a picture of me on Serge's Making Light and Faces, so you know who to look for.

Lin D @203 and Mary Aileen @206 This is where I remember that I meant to send a photo to Serge and never got around to it. :(

I find the schedule on the web is very hard to read. However it looks like Friday will mostly be dealer's room and filking for me (so, flexible). I'll be getting to the con between 5:30pm and 6pm - I have to work until 5pm and I may or may not stop for food on the way.

I should add that I tend to be very shy about approaching people and would probably do better with a set meeting time.

Hilary Hertzoff (207): I hope to see you there, also! We may run into each other in the dealer's room Friday. Or the Art Show reception/Meet the Pros party, if you're going to that.

The web schedule is so hard to read that I haven't yet tried to figure out what panels I might like to attend (as opposed to be on). I hope the printed one comes out better.

Since we're talking about meetups, is anyone besides me going to be at PaxEast in April?

Hilary (208): A set meeting time would suit me fine, too, if we can agree on something. But do feel free to come up to me after one of my panels.

Mary Aileen @211 I'll try, but I've said that before and chickened out.

Probably the best way to recognise me is that I'll be carrying a messenger bag made of TARDIS and celestial print fabric all weekend and if I'm sitting in a panel (or in the con suite), I'll probably be knitting socks (pale blue) or fingerless gloves (multicolored yarn, mostly red, black and white) on dpns.

Syd @188 By the time you read this it will be tomorrow, so I hope you're feeling better. Even if you aren't, hang in there. I'm adding my {{{hugs}}} to the ones already on the way.

Elliott Mason @ 204: Yeah, they want graduate or professional degrees. The documents to be edited tend to be pretty field-specific, so an advanced knowledge of the relevant jargon is important. Especially because most of the documents are written by non-native English speakers, so it's important to have read enough similar literature that you can figure out what specialized word or phrase they meant to use. I've occasionally edited papers outside of my field, and found that I kept having to look up literature in that field to get the jargon right.

So I can see why they require those degrees; there would be a correlation between having an advanced degree in a field and having read lots of the literature in that field. And you really do need familiarity with the literature to edit for usage in a specialized paper.

The limited list of universities -- now that, I really don't understand.

The limited list of universities is to indicate that they're Really Serious about having people who've got legitimate credentials, not just mail-order degrees. It's much easier to point to a list than to vet every single university an applicant might have gone to. It makes winnowing out the applicants easier and it reassures the clients.

Syd, more {{{hugs}}} from me, also.

The open thread, having threaded, moves on (and waits for no poster)...

- Xopher, just so. It can be depressing.
- Syd, renewed sympathies. Get well soon.

Caroline @214: I was hopeful, because I've done jargon proofreading before. When I was in grade and high school, for example, I copyedited the Herpetological Review and the Journal of Herpetology ... my mom edited for them, and being hyperlexic, I bugged her to pass me the pages as she finished. By the third issue where I caught significant errors she'd missed, she called up the editor and told him to put me on the masthead.

That and five bucks'll get you a cup of coffee, but it was fun -- lots and LOTS of PhDs out there know all kinds of amazing things about their field, but not how NOT to write their sentences backwards and inside-out (and these were mostly English-native writers, just academic ones). Of course, I was also reading Science magazine nearly cover-to-cover every ish, so I guess jargon isn't a problem for me.

I wonder if it was punctuational or link-related.

Syd @188@ {{{{{HUG}}}}} - 'cos you need it. Sympathies for the cold, and the lack of housing, and the lack of job, and... Good thoughts heading your way, as always. Hope you feel better soon, that emergency overnight housing morphs into long-term housing, and that a good job comes your way soon.

Elliott:

Borked link. Irretrievably borked, too; all I see are the <a> and </a> tags.

abi @221, plus my 218: Aha. I was just linking to the journals; they're both put out by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, and are easily googleable, so I won't bother trying to cutpaste on no sleep again tonight. This morning. Whatever. :->

Syd: {{{HUGS}}} from me too, I haven't been weighing in much, but it's good to see you're surviving, and chipping away at your trials.

Linkmeister @181, check the netbook's keyboard for a Function button. It may have gotten accidentally pressed, and will cause that "letters replaced by numbers and symbols" issue. Pressing it again should fix the problem. It's often located in the lower left-hand corner and may say "Fn" or "FN" in blue.

Syd, I've also been lurking and listening with concern and hope that things will get better for you and I would worry if you stopped posting.

And along those lines, the information about contributing to the kitties' boarding costs came up while I was short of funds. I've now finally completed the refinance of my mortgage and am back to having spare cash. Can someone contact me with the information on how to do so? It was long enough ago that I've lost it.

Most useless and irritating call of the month: National Geographic, to thank me for being a member. Bad enough. But I'm not a member, having only bought a gift from their store catalog. Inanity ensued.

Wouldn't have gotten out of the tub to answer this except I'm expecting a delivery that is supposed to call in advance. I've gotten three robo-calls this morning--is it related to sunspots, phases of the moon, or something quantumly entangled with the Priority Bit that makes printers fail at the most inopportune times?

Hilary @225:

You have mail on the account you use to post comments here.

HLN: Woman finally emerges from two-month stint of stress and depression, thanks to new appropriate medication and new cat. Said cat rejoices in the name "Alfred Pennyworth Borden Baughman-[spouse's last name], the Ridiculous Cat", and is a roughly 6-9 month old tuxedo boy full of charm and cuddles, and has wormed his way into woman and husband's hearts in about a week. Elder cats, Circe and Bubastis, are of mixed feelings about New Cat, but transition going remarkably well.

Syd, I'm sorry I don't have any help or ideas to offer, as I don't have any contacts in the LA area. I'm thinking the best of thoughts for you, though.

abi, if you'd forward me the information, as well? I can't spare anything this week, Ridiculous Cat kind of rearranged my finances, but next paycheck I certainly can.

Jennifer @228:

Congratulations on Ridiculous Cat; he sounds lovely.

Also, mail: you haz it.

Mary Aileen @211: But do feel free to come up to me after one of my panels.

Hilary Hertzoff @212: I'll try, but I've said that before and chickened out.

Mary, pin a 5.5x8 sheet of paper on your lapel, on which is scrawled in big letters: "Hilary Hertzoff, where are you?"

=:o)

My beloved owner in Days of Yore was a tuxedo name of Squeaky. He was very possessive of me, especially once that nasty old dog passed away.

Abi @229 - I thanked you in email but thanks again for getting the information out so quickly.

Jacque @230 - That may well work. ;)

Jacque (230), Hilary (232): Nah, If I see a TARDIS-bag-wielding person in the audience at one of my panels, I'll just say loudly, "Hilary! Come up and see me when we're through here!" ;)

Or maybe I'll make a pre-emptive announcement at all of my panels, whether or not I see her. (Not really.)

abi: Thank you, for both the congratulations and the info. :)

We're pretty sure, from Freddie's behavior, that he was abandoned fairly recently -- he's very well-socialized, and his fur wasn't too rough the day he followed me home (after I gave him some scritches -- there's a lot of outdoor-indoor cats in our apartment complex, and Husband and I tend to keep an eye on the ones in our area so we can call the Humane Society if they look abused or abandoned or hurt, and the best way to do that is to pay a little attention to them every so often.) He wailed so piteously when I went inside that I thought he might be hungry, so I put a bowl of food out and he tore into it. IME, cats don't eat like that unless they're extremely hungry, so I consulted with the Husband and brought him inside.

Originally I planned to leave him in the guest bathroom for an hour or two, then transfer him to our computer room, but while he was perfectly happy to be in the bathroom as long as I was in there, his cries when I left him alone in there were heartbreaking. (And I'm pretty immune to cats yelling "Let me out! Let me out!")

So, now we have a third cat, and he has very obviously decided that we're HIS FAMILY. That includes the older cats, and poor Freddo is entirely confused when he walks over to cuddle and gets hissed at. They were all in the same room this weekend, though, and at one point ON THE SAME COUCH, and there has been the occasional nose-touch, so the integration is going better than I could have hoped.

The hole in our hearts where our previous younger cat (a floofy orange male we called Tiggar, who was just as flouncy and bouncy as his name implies, and who died of kidney failure due to melamine poisoning several years ago) was mostly healed, but now I think it's been filled.

We've been very lucky with our cats; with a couple exceptions, they've been good-natured, affectionate, and even-tempered, and I'm at the point where I think things turn out best when we let the universe match us up with a cat. (The exceptions were due to serious illness, in one case, and doing a favor for a friend, in the other.)

Jennifer Baughman #234: who died of kidney failure due to melamine poisoning

Was that from the big pet-food contamination incident? My sympathies!

persephone @ #224, thanks. It didn't work, but all suggestions gratefully accepted.

Mary Aileen @#233 and Lin D. If it helps, I do tend to check twitter frequently during cons. Same name as the lj link I finally remembered to put in the url box. :) I also check email, and an lj pm will catch me that way.

HLN: Went for a second job interview at the beginning of this week. Went much more smoothly than the one last month.

In fact, I nailed it; got the call this afternoon that I was the top applicant. Still have the drug screening, physical and background check to do, but I expect to start within a few days.

I'll be working for the Security department of a popular golf-club manufacturer. ("Popular" as in their facility covers nearly 50 acres.) Still graveyard shifts, 40 hours as opposed to the 32 I was working at the previous job, but over four days so I still have three days off per week.

And that extra 8 hours will come in handy, since the Unexpected Expense of the Month Club's March selection was over three thousand in auto work.

(It's the first major servicing and other work the car's had in the five years we've had it, so it's not much more than I figure on for carwork on an annual basis, but still....)

And I even start at a half-dollar more per hour than I was making previously. AND the commute will only be 8 miles, instead of 15, which should save at least a tank of gas per month. Essentially, that's an extra 25 cents per hour.

And no drunks to deal with! (At least not on a regular basis.) NO DRUNKS!!! Yee-hah!

So I'm feeling pretty good about all that.

Lest the universe let me feel too cocky, though, I discovered after getting home from that interview that someone had used my credit card number last week to order $500 worth of muscle car parts over the Internet.

Serious annoyance. After I informed the credit card company, they contacted the parts vendor, who claimed they'd been informed (supposedly by... me?) that the card had been stolen, and that they'd deleted the order before shipping the parts. (So why was that charge still sitting on the list of credit card transactions, with no sign of a reversal after an entire week?)

New card & number issued, fake charge reversed, and that one charge seems to have been the only fraudulent transaction. Still, it'd be nice to know when and where and how my card number got compromised, and to know who the [expletive] [expletive] [vulgar noun] was who used it.

Congratulations, Bruce! And boo on the card-stealing. I'm glad your group was on top of it.

Does anyone have any pointers to resources in Texas (Houston area) for protecting an elderly woman from predatory neighbors? Since my uncle's death several months ago, my aunt has been "helped" by neighbors she didn't know before, who have been suggesting to her that she should make them joint signers on her bank account, and give them joint title to her house, so that she can leave them these things without their passing through probate. My aunt in conversations with my mother (her younger sister) is affectionate one moment, then calls back an hour later to scream at her. I would have at least some inkling of what to do about this in California, but I am not at all familiar with Texas welfare agencies, elder care laws, and the like, and would welcome any suggestions.

Apparently I have unwittingly invoked a Word of Power.

Open threadiness: Some things I have to share, such as this remarkable thesis -

"The emergence of history as such gestures toward the fantasy of the nation-state. The discourse of normative value(s) is homologous with the (re)formation of power/knowledge. The illusion of civil society asks to be read as the legitimation of agency."

I had to sit down and think a bit about that one. The source is even more interesting than the sentiment.

Bruce @238

Here in the UK we're told that transactions of that sort, essentially mail order, are only delivered to the cardholder's address, and the card companies have checks in place on data submitted—"Verified by Visa" for instance—but I recently miskeyed my house number and it all went through OK. Since the delivery address is my next-door neighbour I'm not worried too much, but this is just the sort of mistake that you'd expect a computer to notice.

etv13 @ 240

List of general TX resources, from the federal Administration on Aging.

Speaking of AoA, you might try visiting the National Center on Elder Abuse, for more context/information.

Finally, HHS has an eldercare locator, which may also be of help (the list of categories includes elder abuse).

As far as elder care laws go, IANAL, but in a slightly different situation, we were looking into "elder exploitation," "financial abuse," and "undue influence."

Dave Bell @243: The only address-portion (US) retailers can get from the credit card companies is zip code. They don't have the rest, so cannot verify it.

Addendum to my 245: However, a lot of e-tailers down here won't let you enter separate shipping and billing addresses, and consider that a safety feature. We've run across that with the grandparents attempting to buy stuff for my kid -- they see no reason to ship it to Toronto when we live in Chicago.

Elliott Mason (246): How the heck is that a safety feature? I don't have anything delivered to my home address, because it just sits on my doorstep until I get home. Except for the time UPS delivered a signature-needed item of mine to a neighbor of unknown reliability without my (prior) knowledge or consent. (That neighbor did happen to be okay, but UPS should have gotten my approval first!)

etv @240:

The State of Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services:

DADS

Your aunt sounds like she may need a legal guardian if none of your mutual relatives live close enought to keep an eye on her.

Mary Aileen @247: Heck if I know. Probably the same people implemented it as made my husband's bank update its 'safety procedure' ... Last night, he was required to pick three 'security questions' from the same short list of nine, and provide text answers to them that included no numbers and were between 4 and 10 characters long. I mean, seriously, if you're going to require 'security questions' then (a) allow any input into the 'answer' field, and (b) LET PEOPLE TYPE THEIR OWN QUESTIONS. Or, at minimum, have THREE SEPARATE lists or 20+ options or something ...

Basically, for people who answer the questions 'straight' (and not facetiously/abstractly, as we do in this household), this bank is requiring all account-holders to make their accounts trivally hackable (with research into the lives and histories of the account-holders).

Very secure.

Elliott Mason (249): Yeesh! That is seriously bad.

Elliott Mason, I have my security answers written down (and on my computer) because my credit union had a list of favorites. Really, UICCU? My favorite movie, drink, and person? Way to create problems with that last one. I've also been tripped up by 'high school mascot' because I can never remember if there's a 'the' and any capitalization.

Gray Woodland @242: Nifty site there.

"The poetics of the gaze may be parsed as the invention of the image."

etv13 @240:

Here's where I'd start: About Texas Adult Protective Services

It sounds like her neighbors are working up to financially exploit her, and that's something that Adult Protective Services actively gets involved in.

Phone: 1-800-252-5400
Website: Texas Abuse Hotline

David @234: Yes, it was. He was prone to urinary tract and renal problems anyway, and though we acted as soon as we found out about it, it was too late. He went from fine one day to mildly lethargic the next, and the next day, when we came back from running a few errands, he was dead. It was traumatic; because he was still eating, drinking and socializing, we were in 'monitor and take to the vet if it gets worse', and we never got the chance. Husband blamed himself for a long time afterward.

Bruce @238: Congratulations on the new job, and glad the credit card was only an annoyance, instead of an actual loss! There's a rash of card fraud out there -- my card had to be replaced recently, as well as two of my friends'. I wish they'd do more than just tell us 'a local restaurant' or 'a banking database' -- I'd like to know who, so I can take my business elsewhere.

Diatryma @252: I'm careful to squint at the questions and answer them skew/facetiously. For example, my mother changed her legal first name after high school, so when they ask for "mother's maiden name" I give the one that only appears on her birth certificate and not any of her later docs. For 'high school' I've been known to answer "Willoughby Chase." As long as I'm careful to be consistent in my squinting and remember what facetious answer I gave them (for which I can make a hint-sheet that addresses the direction of facetiousness without giving the answer), we're golden.

I also like really weird fictional proper nouns for passwords, especially from the kinds of universes where punctuation is part of a name. Then I can leave a sheet that hints towards the universe and character/country/horse/whatever and it's reasonably secure.

Obviously people like Yoda and Gandalf are too popular, but.

Hyperlocal news...

Man discovers that it's possible to do the Walter Huston Happy Dance while sitting.
(Man's tax consultant said he'd overpaid the state AND Uncle Sam in 2011.)

For those jonesin' for a right-proper carnival ride Wheeeee!!!! ...

Also, for those with a taste for Gamelan and/or Javanese Shadow Puppet Theatre, tune in 8pm ET tonight!

Quite a ride, Jacque!

A cartoon of the times

Re: security questions (Elliott Mason @ 249, Diatryma @ 251, Elliott Mason @ 255): It drives me crazy that most "security questions" are facts that are trivially Googleable or easy to discover from public records if you've got someone's name. If you ever listed family members and talked about your high school or college on Facebook, posted photos of your pets on Flickr, or discussed your wedding on The Knot, then the entire internet already has your answers to like 80% of "security questions." Even if you're entirely pseudonymous and carefully file off all serial numbers online, a family member, friend, or lover who was maliciously motivated to mess with your bank account would easily know those answers. These things are not Top Secret Classified Knowledge, and they shouldn't be treated like things only one person could know.

I either answer security questions oddly/fictitiously, or put in gibberish "answers" (basically treating the security questions like extra passwords). (So far, I haven't run afoul of restrictions about number of characters or using alphabetical characters only.)

Either way, I write the security questions and answers for each website in a "secure note" in my password safe program, requiring my master password to access the note. That way I can have non-Googleable security answers while not having to remember what "wrong" answer I gave at each particular website -- and having at least one more layer of security than just writing them down in the clear.

Like anything else in my password safe, it's only as secure as my master password, of course. But I can't think of a better solution. At least until I become Dictator of the Internet and hire Bruce Schneier to forcibly re-engineer (with extreme prejudice) everything on the internet to use something less stupid than passwords and security questions.

(/rant)

The websites that make you use "security questions" aren't checking to see if you know the right answer. They're only checking to see if you put in the same answer.

How would they know that your first pet's name wasn't 7eDa$7uB and that your mother's maiden name isn't H73AZese?

Elliott Mason @ 218: lots and LOTS of PhDs out there know all kinds of amazing things about their field, but not how NOT to write their sentences backwards and inside-out (and these were mostly English-native writers, just academic ones). Of course, I was also reading Science magazine nearly cover-to-cover every ish, so I guess jargon isn't a problem for me.

Oh Lord have mercy, I definitely know about PhDs who can't write an intelligible sentence in their native language about a topic they basically invented. You were doing God's work there.

I find that copyediting for non-English-native writers can be a somewhat different problem. Sometimes a particular word or phrase gets translated literally, rather than getting translated into the corresponding English jargon, and you have to make the connection and know what they intended to say. Those are fun, like crosswords.

Sometimes their usage of a specialized term is (or sounds like) perfectly grammatical English, but standard usage of that term in the field is quite different, and you would be unlikely to guess that unless you'd encountered it before. It's like reading "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe" -- but in this field, "brillig" is always used in the plural, "gimble" is always a transitive verb, and "wabe" is an adjective that can't be nouned.

Often, it's more like reading "Brillig, the wabe gyred and gimbled toves slithy." Unless you already have some knowledge of each of the unfamiliar words, you'll have real trouble sorting out the grammar to construct a sentence that says what the author intended.

In short, with English-native writers, context is usually helpful. With non-English-native writers, a lot more situations arise where context is no help at all.

@262: Aw crap! Now I gotta go change my answers!

I suspect that we're approaching a card number singularity in the US, based on the length of time that I've kept a particular card number. I had the same number on my cards for years, then there was one issue 5 years ago, and now in the last year or two, I think the numbers last about a year or so. Once, someone bought a bunch of private servers, once someone booked a trip to malaysia, Once they just ran preauths on netflix and the sony psn network. (And probably more I'm forgetting).

For me, it's more of a hassle than anything else, especially changing around all those auto pay bits that make my life that much more sane.

Tangentially related, I've got a passing familiarity with the PCI data standard. One would think that they would actually follow that standard closely on their own website. One card issuerer (which starts with D) managed to send me a copy of my password which I'd been using on their site for years. From the phone conversation that preceded the email, I'd bet that the rep had access to it. At least they now have their login form totally ssl. It used to be hosted on a non-ssl page. So (potentially) totally broken, especially when they put a lock icon next to the form in the page. I strongly suspect that they're balancing the costs from customer service vs the costs from exploits, and it's more expensive to have call staff than to chargeback a merchant.

A Cape Cod clinic is offering a free pizza with a vasectomy during March Madness.

I don't know whether to think this is inspired marketing or a sexist atrocity.

Someone is doing a project on Wikipedia griefers, a video called The Encyclopedia Game. There's a Kickstarter project.

Hilary, Jennifer...thank you, on behalf of my furballs. :)

Speaking of the furballs, Garbo actually came all the way out of her carrier when I visited yesterday! Of course, she soon went back in, and seems to have decided that the amount of in-carrier petting I was giving her is now too much, because she's taken a couple of swipes at me when I reach inside it. But--she came all the way out while I was in the same room!

Wednesday night at Union Station was...ever so appreciated. I was running some kind of fever--actually had to go to my car at the break during the jobs program that day and get my sweater, which is almost unheard of for me. Sleeping in my car would have been miserable. And I was able to overnight there again last night--and my case manager set me up with a bed for the weekend as well. :D

I just wish someone had mentioned that showers are only permitted in the evenings; I got up this morning, got my hair just wet enough to make for a really bad hair day, and got the word from one of the staff about the evening schedule. I didn't think, under the circumstances, that trying to get an exception was politic, but my hair looks like hell.

Still sick. Mostly coughing with a little sneezing, which is more than enough. Coffee House Guy, who if I haven't mentioned it before is a chiropractor, got some antibiotics for me from one of his MD friends. On his advice, I took two while we sat in Starbucks working.

I guess they weren't meant to be taken on an empty stomach, because about ten minutes later, my stomach was even more empty. Urgh. But that's the only time it's happened, hurrah!, and I think the coughing is getting a tiny bit better.

Monday morning I meet with my new case manager at PATH. She said she was going to check on the wait time at the PATH/Petco facility, so I may have a little more clarity about the future.

Thanks again, everyone. Knowing you care, helps. :)

Randolph @267: shared elsewhere. Very good production on their shorter pieces!

Caroline @267: Right-o. Sorry, I just got excited at the thought someone might pay me to do technical copyediting ... 7 years unemployed and counting, and back when I was actively sending out resumes, I applied for over 100 positions (most office-work or actual wordsmithing) and got not a single (*&^%&* callback. Not one. Disheartening. So I gave up, went back to school (I now have an AA), and took parenting leave.

It's just about hitting the point where I'm going to have to suck it up and try to dive back into the job market again, and it terrifies me. My resume is all over the place (I was DOING editing and document production at most of them, but nobody HIRED me for it and my job titles don't match).

Several of the positions I applied for Back When (and I live in a metro area containing several textbook publishers, which seemed promising) said there was a proofreading test they'd give you, which I salivate at the thought of ... but none of them called me in to take it.

Syd @268, thanks for the update. Hope you have a good weekend and get well.

Bruce Arthurs @238: Sounds like the stars are aligning usefully for you. Yay! 'S wonderful to hear some good news.

I keep finding stuff these days: if it's too much, let me know.

Mike Daisey lied to Ira Glass, and all of us who saw "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", because he thought it made better theater. I like my people who write fiction to actually admit that's what they're doing. They often give better information that way. The play was very effective, but pretending there was more truth in in than there was -- that makes me distrust what was true and useful.

Tom:

The combination there is just so jarring--get a vasectomy and we'll throw in a free pizza? It's like something from The Simpsons...,

James McDonald @262: The websites that make you use "security questions" aren't checking to see if you know the right answer.

Ross Anderson (Cambridge computer security guy) points out that some banking websites, for example, have as part of their terms & conditions that all the information you give them is accurate to the best of your knowledge. He speculates that saying your mother's maiden name was "7asdf234ra!!!sd" could violate this^* and make it easier for them to avoid any liability for problems.

^* unless, of course, it really was

#273: Foxconn is celebrating the retraction of the story by hanging colorful bunting on their anti-suicide nets.

* * *
This is a strange news day. The co-founder / star of the Kony 2012 video was arrested for, um, public pleasuring and vandalizing cars.

Syd, I trust that others here with actual medical training would chime in as appropriate, but I would be very wary of antibiotics issued through non-official channels. Problems with drug resistence and so on....

Otherwise, continued good wishes. It's frustrating to me that we haven't been able to do better by you.

Elliott Mason @270: You have my sympathies. If it's not too hlepy, once you start getting into resume-building, I'd suggest a functional resume, rather than a chronological resume. The functional resume highlights what you can do, and downplays any employment gaps (like parenting leave). Also, don't worry about job titles not matching with what you actually did; employers will be looking at the things you accomplished, rather than the job titles. (Especially these days of layoff survivors frantically trying to cover downsized teammates.)

Congratulations, Mike Daisey! You've just taken ammunition away from every whistleblower, every left-winger, every person who might take a risk to stand up in front of a corporate tank...

apparently I'm too mad to get a coherent metaphor going.

Old-timey gamer folk: M.A.R. Barker, creator of the Tekumel setting, has passed away at age 83.

Woo! Troupe of Indian Fancy Dancers just started up outside.

Sometimes, it's very cool, working on the Boulder Pearl Street Mall. (Sometimes, like when the guy does drum solos on his buckets for hours on end, well, not so much.)

Stefan Jones @280: Barker also wrote a few well-received novels, published by DAW in the US.

#282: Read them, loved them.

Barker wrote at least two more novels, but I understand that they aren't up to the standard of the first two. More travelogue-ish.

Re: Map of Ikea Particle

I have consulted with my husband. We've taken the invisible shortcut to kitchenware at least once.

Jim:

There are security questions you enter, but then there are also "knowledge based authentication" questions, where some service looks up stuff about you in public and commercial databases and then asks you about it. ("Which of the following addresses have you ever lived at.") This is fundamentally wrongheaded (an attacker could presumably have the same public/commercial databases at hand), but it solves a practical problem--lots of people want to verify the identity of the person they're talking to, but don't have much prior interaction to build that verification on.

Stefan @280: Well, dang. Rest well, Professor Barker. I will always remember hearing tales from friends who gamed regularly at the Hall of Ancient Splendor, sometimes called other affectionate names.

Excuse me. I have to go hang up my wind chimes and then throw some cinnamon around.

(Hello, Victor, Michael, Jeanne, and anybody else who's reading this.)

Jennifer Baughman @278: I wouldn't know where to start. I completely retooled my resume in 2004-ish (when I got Very Serious about the job search and signed up for a quarter's membership in a local jobseeker's community resource thing), sent it out a lot lot lot, got nothing, got depressed, talked to a counselor there, and when I said "I bet they're making a 'college' pile and a 'no college' pile, and never getting around to call my pile," he said, "So go back to school." I said, "I have no time and no money," and he said, "Time, you got. And HWC is $75/credit hour, get to it."

So I did … now I have my 2-year degree.

I've looked at 'rewrite your resume' websites, and not only do they seem to be trying to convince me to make the resume version of the stuff Websites That Suck used to make fun of (Strange paper! Headshot photos! Funny typefaces! Blinking scrolling marquees! None of these are a good idea, according to the jobseeker-resource community I was once in …)

I have not actually sent out my resume since getting my Associate's. The plan was to fit in the second kid quickly and go right on to finish my 4-year degree, none of which (for financial reasons) now seem likely to happen before I re-hit the job market, and I'm freaking out over here.

If any experienced and helpful (or hlepful, I'll take hlep at this point) Fluorospherian is willing to run an eyeball over my resume and give me their opinion of what needs machete-ing, I'm happy to send it under separate cover for such consultation.

KayTei, Lori Coulson, Jennifer Baughman: Many thanks to each of you. That's very helpful.

I've spent many happy hours in the worlds that MAR Barker created. He will be missed.

Singing Wren @284: I recognize that map, too, which is funny, because 'my' IKEA (by which I mean the one in Schaumburg) is different than any other non-Swedish IKEA. The Bolingbrook one, also somewhat near to me, is identical to the one in Stockton, CA -- it might well have been delivered flat-pack and assembled on site with myriad Allen wrenches, but the Schaumburg one is special.

It's the biggest non-Swedish IKEA in the world☘. It's three very high-ceilinged floors, with a central moat-like ring atrium surrounding an island middle-bit on each floor; the 'go find your stuff in the racks and put it on your huge cart' section is the ENTIRE FIRST FLOOR. The Medish Sweetballs are in the center island-section on the top floor, diabolically tempting you to go eat first.

There are also meatballs, sweet rolls, and a reduced-selection menu right near the checkouts, where it is very convenient to send half your party to eat while the other pays ... because in my experience it is very easy to eat upstairs before shopping and SPEND SO LONG SHOPPING you need to eat again at the checkouts. Also, it makes the entire checkout-line area reek of tasty, tasty cinnamon. The bastards.

Also, it looks like it's made of LEGO, which is double-awesome. You can see it from the highway.

☘ It was going to be the biggest anywhere, bigger than their Swedish flagship, but late in the planning process Schaumburg decided 5 floors was faaaaar too tall and nixed it.

Jacque @ 258:

Thanks for putting up that notice; unfortunately I didn't see it until 10:30 PDT, so I missed the video. I'm going to have to check the open thread more often, I see. Damn, I love gamelan music, and I'm fascinated by Wayang Kulit. I have pages of notes that I took a few years ago while playing around with the idea of making a computer animation of a shadow play, and decided I just didn't have enough free time to do it justice. In the process I think I found every book written in English about the subject, and managed to buy copies of several of them.

Elliott Mason @287: If any experienced and helpful Fluorospherian is willing to run an eyeball over my resume and give me their opinion

I'll take a look. I can claim reasonably good resume-fu. (While I don't tend to send resumes out unless I'm ghoddamned sure I fit the qualifications—which means rarely, I tend to get a hit-rate on the order of 1 in 3, which is apparently high.) My email is at the bottom of the page linked to my name here.

Also, please describe to me your ideal job, if you would.

Also, go have a Google at Liz Ryan. She came on the scene after I got my current job, so I haven't really had a chance to road-test her theories, but they make a hell of a lot of sense to me.

Bruce Cohen @291: Yeah, sorry. I got short notice because Jon Singer got short notice. One hopes they will put up a video at some point.

Bruce, again; I presume you know Jon Singer? If not, you will want to make his acquaintance. Introductions can be arranged if desired.

tl;dr: Jobhunt trigger warning.

Jacque @292: My ideal job would pay at least $400/wk (minimum in IL is $8.25/hr, excluding tipped positions, so that's not that hard if it's full-time), include only the kinds of job stress that don't flatten me and make me feel inadequate, and provide enough variety and challenge to keep me engaged on a daily basis. It doesn't have to offer bennies, because I get them through John.

To unpack that a little, I do very well in customer-service sorts of jobs (either helping people figure out what they want and buy it, or tech support/tutoring), I have exceptional verbal skills, and a minor superpower related to finding typos. I am very good at finding the frame or metaphor that makes (insert arcane thing here) intelligible to someone who was having trouble with it, as long as I understand {arcane thing). I even enjoy certain amounts of repetitive data-entry, alphabetization/filing, and organizing.

I do BADLY in jobs that involve outbound cold-calls or any kind of daily rejection/you-suck. I can handle stressed customers spewing at me because I'm closest, as long as it's not most of my job. I do very, very badly where there are ill-defined areas of wild uncertainty, or where (as in the computer game Myst) I am turned loose in a complicated environment with very little guidance from superiors as to exactly what my priorities ought to be.

I did really, really badly at the job where they wouldn't let me tell them two months ahead of time that a given weekend was impossible for me to take a shift, because I would be IN ANOTHER CITY those three days ... because they drew up the schedule every week and told you the preceding Friday what your shifts were starting Sunday. I flew out Friday at 7, and found out when I flew back in Monday at 9 that I was marked 'absent with no excuse' for my Sunday shift. I had requested it off, I was in the book, but they decided to ignore it AND NOT CALL ME. Very very unsettling jobstress for me, that kind of uncertainty/lack of respect for boundaries. A shame, as it worked very well for me in most other ways. I've been considering reapplying there and seeing if they're still INSANE. Only problem: my name was different the last time they hired me ...

I'm ok with nights and weekends; I have worked jobs where I had to be there at 5AM.

Jobs I have really enjoyed:
- Pushing wheelchairs/assisting travelers inside O'Hare airport
- Cashiering/clerking at a B. Dalton bookstore
- Serving (volunteer) as copy editor and general Quark-monkey for my community college's student newspaper
- Helping run/inaugurate a new restaurant downtown (cashiered, policed steam trays, sparkled up the room for diners, inventory, office work, light cleaning)
- Editing (volunteer) for those scientific journals and as a beta reader for Seanan McGuire
- On-site tech support consultant in my college's computer labs (aka "Hey, the printer's broken ...? / I can't get into my email!")
- Collating, editing, laying out, and preparing for publication one booklet of the ChiCon 2000 pocket program.

Now I need to find the hard drive my most recent resume drafts are on ...

Elliott, I think you're wise to disregard the advice about making your resume blingy if you're not applying for some kind of creative design position. I'd be happy to take a look at it - not a professional resume writer, but I have done hiring and was support for my husband through several rounds of unemployment.

I will say that I think I'm fairly good at resumes that will be read by actual human beings, but my track record is lousy for ones where some automated system will be identifying keywords.

Elliott @294 Might be hlepy & please disregard if you already thought of this :-)

What you say in @294 reads to me like someone who might do well as an agency contract temp, something I did off and on for around 10 years in two different states. It may or may not be an option given the labor market in your area, but it could be worth investigating.

One of the things I liked about temp work was that it gave me an easy out if a job situation wasn't a good fit: work out the contract (anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months) then let the agency know it wasn't working (and why) and no harm no foul. The agency could find the client a new chew toy if they wanted one; I'd be on the list when another situation that matched my skill set came up.

Another thing in a weak labor market is that some employers will hire temporary labor when workload starts to increase rather than making permanent hires too soon, or in the case of government/institutional employers, due to the length and complexity of their hiring process. It's also a way to get some recent work experience on a resume if one has been out of the workforce awhile.

Cons include some degree of instability and usually no benefits, and a fickle labor market. Child care arrangements may also be an issue since temp jobs can sometimes be short notice. The agencies I've worked for have generally asked how much notice a worker needs to be ready to show up for a job - I've had the privilege of reliable transportation and no dependents so I can usually be available next business day, but that's not a hard and fast requirement for every job: the people working temp at my current workplace (government sector) usually get a few days notice of the "Hi, it's Thursday. We have a spot for data entry in Augusta starting on Monday, are you available?" variety.

Apologies if this is hlepy and TMI - I share because it has worked well enough for me that it might be of use to someone else. Admittedly it took four years of jumping from temp agency to temp agency and applying for every vacancy that came open for me to get my most recent client to hire me permanently, but I've been hired by clients a few times before. (And laid off repeatedly, but that's just modern employment for you.)

@Singing Wren 284--

I made my first (and thankfully last) trip to Ikea right before Christmas. I know, timing, timing is everything Roger Wilco. It was a nightmare.

But the signs labelled shortcut and pointing to a semi-solid wall were the worst feature. My oldest son kept offering to fix that for them. The flimsy walls did look easy to kick over.

HLN--Local woman finishes week long on-site computer training at work with (most of) her faith in humanity restored.

With a couple of caveats--a complete medical software for documenting office visits that didn't consider I might want to document some people are allergic to penicillin. 'Cause #1--that never happens and #2--why would anyone in the medical field care?

I state with pride that I can, however, document with ease an allergy to acacia berries (there's a prescription I write twice a day, gotta admit.)

297
a complete medical software for documenting office visits that didn't consider I might want to document some people are allergic to penicillin

My reaction is FAIL - because I'm one of the people who is no-shit-allergic to penicillin. (Anaphylaxis is so much fun. Not.)

@P J Evans, #298--

You are so not alone. I can document penicillin allergy now. Only took me an hour and a half to figure out how to "create" an allergy. The worst thing is, the "scrubber" that should keep me from prescribing amoxicillin (a form of penicillin) if somebody's allergic to penicillin is null and void if you "create" a custom allergy.

I sent in a request for a patch, since they only had 2 antibiotics in the entire list.

Ditto on the penicillin warning fail -- I've been lucky so far, I found out I was allergic when the dentist gave me some after the last procedure.

All I got was a rash, and it dawned on me then that the reaction I'd had to the last time I'd received an injection of same (losing breakfast) was another flashing red light.

What's really weird is that I'd never had ANY problems with penicillin before -- tetracycline* yes, but not Old Faithful.

*It won't stay down, so there's no point in taking it...

One amusing security question recently: a website that clearly needed an actual proofreader asked me for my "favorite past time." That's actually a more interesting question than the "favorite pastime" that I suspect they were asking about. And much better than having to remember what nonsense I entered for questions that really don't apply, like "high school mascot" or "first car you owned." (I may or may not put "none" rather than hope I will remember what cartoon character I said was my favorite on some random day three years ago.)

Here's pretty much how I feel about St. Patrick's Day in this area: Drowning the Shamrock, by Frank Delaney. Excerpt:

All these kids from New Jersey and the five boroughs
And hundreds of cities, all drowning their sorrows,
With bottles and glasses and heads getting broken
(Believe me, just ask the mayor of Hoboken)
All that mindlessness, shouting and getting plain stocious —
That isn't Irish, that's simply atrocious.

Vicki #301: Mine's the Spring and Autumn Period. What's yours?

Jacque @ 292, 293:

I've got a tab open on their streaming page and I'll refresh every once in awhile to see if they put up the video.

No, I don't know Jon Singer, and I would appreciate an introduction if he's into wayang kulit.

OK, here's something important developing....

Parents treating severely disabled children to limit their growth.

This is straight-up bioengineering -- altering someone for external purposes, in this case making them easier to care for. The couple of examples cited were totally disabled, and would necessarily require intensive caretaking.... I agree that keeping those two small probably will improve their quality of life, by making it far more practical to bathe them, groom them, transport them, and so on.

But then, they're describing two out of 60-odd kids that are currently getting this treatment... and that's one hell of a slippery slope, there.

Throwmearope @297: I would say that medical software that is unable to record a penicillin allergy is...not medical software.

Dick Harmon @305: I have studied that case before. It is indeed troubling.

The closest I have come to a situation like this was a 400-pound woman who needed two caregivers to assist her onto her her bedside commode, and there were only two people working nights at that place. The management offered her the choice of either moving to a facility that could provide 24-hour care, or to get an indwelling catheter. A smaller intervention, but still troubling.

Jacque @ 277:

It's frustrating to me that we haven't been able to do better by you.

You're kidding me, Jacque, aren't you? You wonderful marvelous people have kept me afloat--emotionally as well as financially--more times than I can count. You've made helpful (NOT hlepy!) suggestions. You've offered options, opinions, shared experiences, searched for solutions...honestly, if I hadn't had ML and the Fluorosphere watching my back, I don't know what I would have done...but I doubt it would have been pretty.

It isn't the Fluorosphere's job (or that of any of my other friends, online or meatspace) to solve my problems for me, and I don't expect it. (Although if someone does happen to drop the magic word in the right place that helps me find a job good enough to help me start the climb out of this hole, I will kiss the ground they tread (or at least blow kisses to the air they breathe. :)) But I appreciate the hell out of ALL the help you've all given me since I started posting about Life During/After Foreclosure.

Speaking of which, I'm still enthusiastic about the book idea, but do you think it might be considered a little too much like The Girl's Guide to Homelessness? I know the details are significantly different (although how different, other than age, I don't know--I've deliberately not sought out that book because I don't want it hanging around in my head while I work on mine), and I haven't heard that there's been any kind of glut on the market re: the topic...but I'm curious what y'all think.

Elliott Mason, I SO feel for you re: the job situation. I've applied for a boatload of jobs in the last 2 years myself, and been lucky to get the autoresponder "got your resume" email. The only interviews I scored--both in 2010, dadgummit, other than the recent apartment management ones--came from (1) a recruiter who found me on the website where one is linked in (in case the formal site name is a Word of Power), and (2) an editor at an ad agency whose email about needing a proofreader was forwarded to me by two separate people. Either job would have been great, and the latter interview, while it didn't lead to a job (editor said the company decided not to hire anybody after all), did get me some temp work.

Frustrating. Jacque--and any others who might be willing--may I also send you my resume for dissection? I have one functional and one that's sort of hybrid; I use the latter for jobs doing financial proofreading.

Thank you all!

David Harmon @ #305: The blog Single Dad, Disabled Daughter has a lot to say about that treatment. Single Dad knows whereof he speaks--he has an adult, severely disabled daughter for whom he is sole caretaker. (Link goes to a list of all the posts tagged "Ashley"; tabs at top can take you to the earliest, most recent, or other categories.)

Lila #308: Indeed -- The important article is his first, Ich bin ein cripple.

I note, however, that the "pro" perspective is also represented in the comments (as a minority). We here are mostly SF fans; we're familiar with the idea of modifying human bodies for various purposes, going at least back to Brave New World. We're also more than usually aware of the limits to human dignity -- notably, that the universe-at-large shows little concern for it.

My question here, is whether this is something that has usable potential for good. As one of the commenters to the DwDD post made explicit, a large (especially very large) immobile patient does get worse care, simply because it's harder to care for them. So the direct alternative here is potentially worse care down the line. The Dad's devotion is touching, but what happens if his daughter lives, say, another 25 years? When she's in her 40s, and he's in at least his 60's, who will be taking care of her then?

And we need to remember that there's another alternative lurking in the shadows, an older and darker one, from times when taking care of a permanently crippled and non-communicative person was so difficult as to be usually impractical. And though it's frowned on now, euthanasia still happens -- committed not only by the callous, but by the desperate.

But as DwDD and his commenters note, deciding for someone who's unable to speak for themselves is ethically fraught... a "living will" is one thing, but who gets to decide for someone who's never spoken and never will? It may be that we humans are not morally advanced enough to decide such things fairly.

David Harmon: given that these patients are not able to feed themselves, a much less invasive means of keeping them a moveable size* suggests itself: reasonable calorie input control. Given that eating (for those able to swallow) may be one of the few pleasures available to them, that option is also not without problems, but I think it's certainly less fraught than major surgery.

Also, the term "pillow angels" makes me queasy as hell. This may be a clue either to the mindset of the Ashley advocates, or just to my own prejudices.

Overall, I'm glad it's not my decision to make. But I hope parents like SingleDad will also get their turn at the podium.

---

*I refer to a healthy weight for their frame size, not artificially limiting growth

#240 ::: etv13

I don't know the answer to that question, but I will say it's an urgent matter, and perhaps urgenter than you know because people like that can move more stealthily to isolate somebody like that than you might realize. There are people for whom that house has already burned down, people for whom that ship has already sailed.

Also, the term "pillow angels" makes me queasy as hell.

Yeah. Also the changes Ashley's parents chose went beyond "avoiding puberty and periods" into an what I'd call an aggressive de-sexualization. (Details elided for the squeamish.)

Tangential data-point on profoundly disabled kids:

Some friends of my parents have a grandchild who was, from birth, doomed by a brain defect to immobile, permanent infant-hood. Almost no response beyond what you'd expect from a few-month-old.

The parents were pointedly and specifically warned that any "accidents" or illnesses would be carefully and aggressively investigated. This suggests that there might be a history of parents in these situations taking . . . measures.

I need to post that I am really enjoying the new Leonard Cohen oevure, Old Ideas.

It is Real good. If you like the music Mr. Cohen produces to start with.....

On a happier theme:

I was very pleased with John Carter (of MARS! damnit), which I saw at an early bird matinee today. Not a perfect adaptation or perfect film, but a rollicking great adventure.

I think E.R.B. would have loved it. It is truer to the source novels than, say, most Tarzan movies, and the changes aren't stupid or offensive.

The theater was more full than I'd expected from the mixed reviews. The audience included a high proportion of what I have to call old nerds. My kind of people, mind you. I suppose the kiddies were all across the hall watching the Lorax (blech!)

There's a media-imposed stink of failure on the film that's totally undeserved. It's a bummer that this will doom any chance of more films. Or of miniature tharks, thoats, and such that could be used for gaming!

Bruce Cohen @304: Email me at the address at the bottom of the webpage linked from my name. I will make introductions. I suspect y'all will enjoy chatting.

Syd @307: No, I'm not kidding, but I'm glad that we have been able to help to the degree that we have. At the very least, that you don't feel left twisting in the wind is a victory, I suppose. I dunno. I find it appalling and terrifying that your situation is even possible in what we laughingly call a civilized society. But then, I want a pony for Christmas, too, so ... yeah.

And, sure, send me your resume. Also, may I have permission from you and Elliott Mason to put you-all in contact with each other? That will streamline transmission of such resume wisdom as I have to offer. Also, as you two have not-dissimilar job objectives, you might be of some assistance to each other.

Of all the job-search information I've read in the last ten years, the number ONE top recommendation is that networking is the most valuable effort you can make. Given that you-all (and I) have large chunks of continent between us, this is somewhat mitigated. But, likewise, we have continent-wide personal networks, so that compensates somewhat, as well.

BTW, both of you: if you are on L!nked!n, connect to me. If you're not, go ahead and sign up and connect to me. I haven't done much with LI, but people whose opinions I respect advocate for it.

David Harmon @305 and 309, and others.

In general I would not expect the slippery slope to run in the direction of providing excess treatment to kids with severe disabilites. My daughter with disabilities is not in this category, but through online support groups I know parents whose kids are. I don't remember hearing this particular option discussed, but I remember discussions of how to get financial support for installing a lift system that can be used to get a 6-foot-tall teenager with no motion control from bed to bath. And disussions about encounters with doctors who shrug off health issues because, well, these kids' lives aren't worth living anyway.

I do agree that these decisions are ethically fraught for someone who can't express an opinion of their own. But many health care decisions for these kids are; there's often only a choice of the lesser of evils. I haven't studied this particular issue, but it seems to me like an option that should be left on the table.

Anybody who wants is welcome to contact me; my gmail address is a mnemonic for how to spell my first name ( 2ells2tees ). I've only avoided that Linky networking site for as long as I have because I need one more set of login information to remember like I need a hole in my head ... but I probably ought to. Various people I care about have sent me connection-invitations over the years, so I know they have (or had) accounts for me to link up to.

AKICIML, kidstuff edition: My grandmother got my daughter Jingle the Husky Pup for Giftmas. Initially, she wasn't very interested; now she is. Unfortunately, his storybook went missing sometime in December.

EBay is failing me; nobody seems to be selling a secondhand storybook with no toy dog.

The 'make the dog do something' cues are several words long and very specific; in the storybook they're written in red. If anyone out there in the Fluorosphere has access to (either of) Jingle's book(s) and is willing to type in some or all of the story/cues, I'd be willing to barter fannishly in return.

Re: Jim's "Authorial Sins" side item: Surely "Wrath" should be the ABM, and "Envy" the lure to vanity-press scams?

Re TNH's Particle on Homer Eon Flint: In the way of such things, I ran into his grandson while playing bridge at the campus coffeehouse at UC Berkeley. He was astonished to know that I'd heard of his grandfather -- I think the topic came up because we were talking about SF. I recommended he come over to the Magic Cellar, where I introduced him to half-a-dozen people who were amazed and pleased to meet him.

The grandson's name wasn't spelled "Flint", but (IIRC) Flyndt because his family changed it.

Flint died under mysterious circumstances. I don't remember the story very well, but I'm sure Dick Lupoff does -- ask him if you see him.

So, the Virginia Festival of the Book starts next Wednesday.... Looking over the programs, it's amazing how many of my reactions are informed by my experience here at ML....

And an interactive play of The Snow Queen is happening right on my corner....

Elliott @ #319, It looks like Hallmark sells storybooks separately from the toy. However, it appears you can't buy Jingle stories online; you have to find a store near you (or a friend who has one nearby). The online store doesn't include that particular pup.

Re security questions, I am only comfortable with those when I can ask the question (i.e., nobody is going to be able to web-search a question like, "Whose ponies are the best?", especially if the correct answer is "I agree").

David Harmon @198: Years ago, I imagined a roller coaster designed to seem shaky and unreliable, for extra thrills. Now, I imagine a complete theme park on the theme of "abandoned theme park", complete with entering through a hole in a chain-link fence just past the ticket booth and a staff dressed in UX gear.

Mary Aileen @247: UPS is less reliable, prompt and secure than that horrible government delivery system. But on the positive side, it does cost more!

Jason @315: Saying John Carter (of Mars) is closer to the source material than are most Tarzan movies is faint praise indeed . . . .

Vella Munn, a multiply-publisher writer, is Homer Eon Flint's granddaughter.

319, 322
I was out and the local Hallmark was not out of the way: no Jingle books in the store.

Jacque @ 316:

I find it appalling and terrifying that your situation is even possible in what we laughingly call a civilized society.

This, me too. Me three. Me infinity.

Union Stations not only houses people, they offer shower services, meals (breakfast and lunch for both residents/overnighters and walk-ins, dinner for those sleeping there that night as far as I can tell), etc. There are people who look like me, socioeconomically speaking (or based on visual indicators of our possibly shared former socioeconomic status), there are folks who quite obviously ought to be in a safe place under the care of compassionate mental-health professionals, and everything in between:

She's here because her younger (half?)sister, their mother's favorite, manipulated their mother and then tossed out her older sister--and everything older sister ever gave to their mother. Did I mention she's in her early 60s and had been acting as caregiver for her mother?

He sat down across from me at dinner on Friday and asked...well, I don't recall now, but something leading to was I a conservative. I said no. He then proceeded to tell me about Errol Flynn's kids, their histories, his (apparent) admiration for the son who threatened his sister with either incarceration or being committed if she didn't start playing by the family rules--that is, her brother's rules. Today, the same guy started telling the same stuff to one of the volunteers who served us breakfast.

That man has coughed for half an hour straight.

She's six months' pregnant and, according to one of the other women, continues to smoke both tobacco and weed.

That gal took a face-plant into her cheeseburger at dinner the first night I was here and was taken away by the paramedics. She's back now, seems fine, but I haven't asked what was wrong--I just told her I was glad she was okay.

He's dressed pretty well, from his hooded parka to his shined shoes--but he's waiting for breakfast with the rest of the homeless folks.

She was warned not to leave her stuff in a certain place, but I guess she didn't really think the staff would move it. They did, and she was distressed--offended, even?--that as a result, all her stuff got rained on. I think she may have had a stroke at some point: she limps on her right foot a bit, or perhaps drags it, and she doesn't seem able to use her right arm.

Some folks have weather-ready clothing and shoes. Many don't. Some look like they're wearing everything they own. Some look like they need to own more to be warm.

I saw her, and him, and them, and that couple, too, at the cold weather shelter.

We're all in the same boat. It's crowded, and it has huge holes, and the people who are bailing are barely ahead of the water. And then there are the people trying to knock more and bigger holes in the boat because the people in the boat are too effing lazy to deserve help.

Really? Really? I mean, sure, there's likely a segment of the population (frex, my late aunt) that chooses not to work and relies on other people to provide for them--and possibly some that don't care whether they're provided for or not, they just don't care about "the rules". But for the most part, O You Who Knock Holes in Boats, if you think we CHOSE this, you are deluding yourselves because it's more convenient than facing the fact the system is broken--and fixing it will Cost You Money.

I have this idea for, I don't know, a campaign ad or a PSA or something. Two photos: the first features a group of people, diverse re: ages and ethnicities and sex/gender, who fit the stereotypical image of "homeless person". The caption says, "See these people? They're homeless."

Second photo is of a group of decently dressed folks, equally diverse, some carrying briefcases or laptop bags, backpacks, etc. They could be any random bunch of people. Caption: "See these people? They're homeless, too. Maybe you can come up with some justification for not helping the first group--but what's your excuse for not helping the second?"

The point being that homelessness isn't an issue of "morality", it is--or should be--an unfortunate phase that people can get out of with help. Maybe I'm not expressing it as well as I'd like, but I think you see what I mean.

Would it do any good? In this political climate, I doubt it. But it's nice to dream.

Yeah, Syd, you really need to write that book.

Syd, like Jacque I want to see the book, but actually I'd like to see something sooner. Op-ed piece or essay somewhere? I don't know enough about that market for writing to know where you might submit. But your reality comes through so strongly in your writing that I wish it could be shared more widely than just us here on ML.

Jacque, OtterB, thank you. I actually signed up at the Daily Kos with the intention of posting there on the subject.

Ask me if I've been able to come up with anything I think is worth publishing on that site... ***sigh***

Syd, re something for Daily Kos: If you can't write your own story well enough for them, have you considered interviewing other folks you've met through being homeless? I know it's a lot easier for me to tell someone else's story than to tell my own. And I think you could build an audience through doing a series of stories much better than trying to tell a single one. Just a suggestion, use if useful.

330
The standard there isn't that high. (I've posted, once.)

Back from Lunacon. I did get a chance to meet both Lin and Hilary (separately), although we were going in too many different directions to chat long.

The con was fun, marred only by the fact that I dropped my credit card in the dealers room this afternoon and didn't realize it until I got home and unpacked. I've cancelled the card, and there were no fraudulent charges, so it's only a big hassle, not a disaster.

Breaking news: While I was previewing the above, I got an email (reply to my query) saying that the card was turned in to con ops. They're going to mail it back to me. Hooray!

Like P J Evans @ #326, I went past a Hallmark store while aiming for a used bookstore in the same mall (where I found Volume 5 of Kate Elliott's "Crown of Stars" septet, thereby filling out the entire series in my collection). I asked the clerk about Jingle Pup storybooks, and she told me they sold "only at Christmastime."

HLN: Local woman completes first-round revisions to novel, contacts prospective beta-readers. Now while I'm waiting for the next round, I suppose it's time to research just where one sends an alternate-history Ruritanian regency lesbian romance with magic and a touch of swashbuckling. If I'd stopped to think about marketing while I was writing it, I think my head would have exploded.

Re: Security Questions

The one I particularly loathe is "What city was your mother/father/self/spouse born/graduated in?", on forms that do not allow you to have spaces or punctuation in your answers. Besides being trivially easy to mine from social networks, have they never heard of the following cities: New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans, St. Louis (and others not on this list)?

"My life is filled with shame and despair."

So said teh 6-year-old daughter of local writer Daniel Abraham after her feeling under the weather. It is not known whether or not her mom Kat ever spent time in Midwich.

What Mary Aileen failed to mention was that she walked away with several prizes in the masquerade, and deserved every one.

We did have a few minutes in the con suite where we mostly talked sewing. Before I forget completely, the pattern for my messenger bag was McCall's M5824 and the fabric was Madman in a Blue Box on Spoonflower.

I just uploaded new pictures of the messenger bag to flickr (hhertzof) since I finished the revision just before Lunacon. I'm very proud of it as it's one of the most complex patterns I've ever completed and all the alterations I made worked.

HLN: Local Area Woman has her first gnoming Probably words of power, as there were only two links (Mary Aileen had asked about the pattern for Local Area Woman's bag and the TARDIS fabric involved).

I feel like I've passed a rite of passage or something.

Job Search Open Threadiness:

Like a number of others on here, I'm actively job hunting. I'm lucky: I'm currently employed (if grossly underpaid) in my chosen field, and my field (IT in general, .NET programming in particular) is supposedly one of the stronger ones in my local job market.

I'm still freaking out about it on a regular basis. Latest freakout was Friday, after my first phone conversation with a recruiter.*

Recruiter seems perfectly nice, and interested in placing me in a good job. OK, the commute will suck, but most of the good IT jobs are in that part of town.

But I've never worked with a recruiter before. Networked for jobs, yes. And I've got relatives in other fields (academia, mostly) who've worked quite successfully with recruiters, so I know a good recruiter can be very valuable. I keep feeling like I should Be A Grownup, and Take Responsibility for my own job search. Never mind that hooking up with a recruiter fulfills all sorts of Capitalized Shoulds.

Does anyone have any experience on working with recruiters (especially IT recruiters) that might make this easier on me (or send me running away screaming - I'm not picky)?

tl;dr
Job search freakouts not uncommon. I can haz reassurance, plz?

*I'm not an extrovert. I do not play an extrovert on TV. Friday, I got to go from phone-call-with-stranger triggery to an appraiser visiting the house for a pending re-fi (stranger-in-my-house triggery). I was twitching the rest of the evening.

**That's how I broke into IT in the first place - a friend needed a new minion, and knew I was looking.

"Give Mom my love when she comes back from the Underworld."

I'm reading Seanan McGuire's "Discount Armageddon".
So should you.

Singing Wren @ 339: Think of the recruiter as a HR person at the hiring firm. They are not working for you; they are working for the employer. In this case, they are possibly working for more than one employer, but it's much the same. Their attitude isn't as tough as a hiring manager's, because they don't have a future long-term relationship with you. While they don't want to annoy the firm with a bad hire, they really want to get someone in and get their fee. The fact that they don't get paid until the hire has been there for a period of time does restrain them from really short-term thinking.

They are often focused on filling slot A at company A, but occasionally are thinking in terms of getting a general sense of your abilities, for future reference for several different companies.

So -- treat it just like a first interview with any employer. Not fun for most of us, unfortunately. If your local market is like the one in Portland, Oregon, there are a variety of openings for .NET developers. Let yourself be picky!

Serge Broom @ 340: This is the page in Discount Armaggedon that I bookmarked --

"Oh?" I asked, interested despite myself. "What did they say?"
"That you were all insane."
"Ah." I sat up again, grinning at him. "That's pretty much true. We're all crazy. But crazy has its benefits."
"What benefits are those?" he asked warily.
"Crazy gets all the knives."

Singing Wren, could you go into a bit more detail about the recruiter thing? I am getting to the point where I need new jobsearching tools, and that's one that I knew existed, but of course no one ever does that. Like the one site with the linking: it's there, but no one uses it. Or Monster.

If I want to use a hammer, first I have to know it exists. So I am doing my best to turn weird things nobody uses into things everyone does, of course, how silly that I haven't.

In the past week, I applied to one probably-not job and one oh-please-oh-please-maybe job. It's rare that I apply for jobs I know I'd be good for. It's rare that I find them.

Besides that linking social media site, there's one that predates the Internet: 40Plus. It was originally aimed at professionals over 40, but some chapters have broadened the scope to ages younger than that. Do a Google search for chapters in your area (they may still list in the paper phone book Yellow Pages under recruitment or executive search, too).

Here's the Northern CA site. Ignore the date on the last posting; the job info below seems to be current.

Serge Broom @ 340: I actually gave up noting the killer lines after about the third chapter, because there were just too many of them. Starting with the heading quote for the prologue...

I haven't had so much fun in quite a while. Most highly recommended for anybody not allergic to high-tension silliness.

janetl @ 343... Gray Woodland @ 346... And wouldn't we also like sharing our Greenwish Village (which is really a sublet from a lady Sasquatch while she's visiting Canadian relatives), with mice who take everything we say as a religious pronouncement, whether it's the act of waking up or the need to purchase new socks?

job search subthread: Seconding Linkmeister @345 in the recommendation of 40Plus. My husband went to the DC-area chapter a few years ago when he was laid off en route to his employer going belly-up entirely. He got some good things from them - interviewing practice, ways of describing past layoffs and job changes without sounding bitter or flaky, and most especially social support. I will say that he's an engineer and didn't find them especially helpful for job leads, and he had to take the job hunting advice with a grain of salt (they kept telling him he needed a one-page resume, which is good advice for many fields, but a technical job needs to have sufficient specifics on one's technical experience).

In my experience, recruiters are most helpful for technical jobs and less for things like Syd or Elliott are looking for. It's already been said that a recruiter doesn't work for you. Do not feel you need to be loyal to them; don't stop your job hunt efforts outside the recruiter. They have employer slots they are looking for candidates for. Good ones understand the field, and all of them have some level of access to job information that you may not see advertised elsewhere. Companies that do enough hiring will use the recruiters to pre-screen resumes, and if the recruiter is forwarding your resume to a company they will often give you helpful pre-interview tips on exactly what the manager is looking for. But, from the recruiter's point of view, if they've sent 5 strong resumes to company X, it doesn't matter that you would have been equally strong and they didn't send yours.

Singing Wren @340: My FG is a .NET professional; drop me an email (the one in my name here will do) -- I can forward it to her for networking (or is that .NETworking?) if you would like.

General resume discussion: Federal resumes are a different beast from the "usual" and they are never "one page", so yeah, you need to match your resume to the job application. The good news is, USAJobs seems to be finally free of bugs (although you have to re-enter some things and you must recheck your previously-uploaded resume as the changeover did mess it up).

Ginger, they changed the resumes? Drat. The job I am actually qualified for got one of mine I didn't think to check. Hopefully, they'll still like me.

Hilary (338): Thanks for the pattern info. That's a terrific bag; you can be justly proud of it.

Diatryma @ 350: I'm not sure if they've changed FedRes requirements recently, but the new online applications don't upload documents, they convert them to a standard format. The revised USA Jobs site had messed up some formatting, but the information was all in there.

Re: Federal Jobs

The government seems to always be in search of IT folk. IF Obamacare isn't repealed, HHS will be needing a lot of people in various areas to manage the required oversight.

If you are at all interested in a Federal position, apply now, and pray that you're hired BEFORE Congress changes the retirement bennies.

If a Republican wins, you can expect an increase in available positions because the Executive Branch always gets larger during Republican administrations.

Singing Wren (ref myself at 349): I seem to not have an email embedded; use the following letters -- n e i v e t 2 -- at the aoldot com address, and I'll .NETwork youse.

Serge Broom @337: So is the shame-and-dispair-filled 6yo by any chance this young lady?

If so, please inform her progenitor that we are awaiting the publication of The Great Goat Escape with great anticipation.

Open threadiness: New York Times Sunday Review Your Brain on Fiction

Short version: neuropsych research indicates that reading sensory words (e.g. cinnamon, leathery) activates the same brain regions as experiencing the sensations. Also, people who read more fiction show more empathy.

So who needs a holodeck?

Lila @310: Also, the term "pillow angels" makes me queasy as hell.

My StFnal brain ("What if?" "If this goes on....") insists on extrapolating this idea out to it's psychotic extreme, and offering up the prediction of a black market in perpetually infantalized "babies," for those folks who, "love babies, but it's a shame they grow up."

Simon Gyrus @ 7: John Carter of Mars should have sold itself: a splashy poster with JC sword fighting a Thark, with two moons in the sky. The slogan: "Before Star Wars, before Avatar, before Transformers, there was JOHN CARTER OF MARS!"

At first they pretty much did. Here's an early poster. Moving away from this line (and title) was a mistake, IMO:

http://tinyurl.com/7jcdss7

Singing Wren: My husband has found each of his jobs over the past decade exclusively via IT recruiters, to the point that he's developed relationships in that industry. He's offering to give you a reassuring portrait of Life With Recruiters, if you'd like me to put the two in touch.

Best way to email me is probable to use the link in my signature here use the Ye Olde "Contact Me" Pop-up" link on that page. It's rudimentary, but it generally works.

Wow, that last sentence entirely failed to parse. I hope its intent was fairly obvious.

Jacque @ 355...

That is indeed the young lady in question. I'll ask her parents if she has shown any literary inclinations, but she appears destined toward a career in Science. Science!

I've been involved with recruiters from both sides, hiring through them and being hired through them (these were engineering jobs, and the recruiters were all specialists in high-tech industries). The one major drawback I've seen to using recruiters in either direction is that many of them use the shotgun approach: they ignore the employer's requirements and dump any resume on them that has at least one word in common with the job title. This forces the hiring managers to be ruthless in discarding resumes because that's the only way to get through several hundred to select the ones you're going to consider at all. It also means that often the recruiter is not presenting you at your best by emphasizing your strengths and unique experience.

Still, I have gotten jobs through recruiters, so it is possible. But I agree that you should not expect the recruiter to do all the work: keep looking yourself just as hard as if you hadn't engaged the recruiter.

Just a quick drop-in, I'm way behind here, but a quick Googling for mentions on ML didn't show anything about this new MMO my wife showed me a story about so I decided it would be prudent to add one.

The concept of "The Written World" (not quite in beta yet) is that players alternate between being author and protagonist, and the worlds created are persistent and mapped, and possibly branching. Sounds really neat, but I've not the storytelling nor game-playing chops to really give it a thorough going-over as an idea. Thoughts, anyone?

For what it's worth, I think what clinched my own job interview last week was when the security head interviewing me said the job would require spending long stretches of each shift patrolling the property by myself, and I replied "I spent thirty years with the Postal Service spending most of each day on the street by myself. That probably counts for something."

Jacque, #357: Bob Shaw had something like that as an unexpected consequence of immortality treatments in ONE MILLION TOMORROWS. The protagonist sees a woman with a baby carrier,, then realizes with shock that the handle of the carrier is worn thin from use and that the baby's eyes show the intelligence of an adult, trapped in an infant's body.

Serge, #361: But if that young lady hangs around with that "grumpy old guy" enough, she'll end up as a Mad Scientist. BWAA-HA-HA-HA!!!

Open threadiness in world events:

Al Jazeera has obtained confidential documents prepared for the Syrian president by his intelligence and security chiefs from a Syrian official who was a mole for months. He brought these docs out with him when he realized he was close to being discovered. They include operational reports and plans from the daily coordination meeting of the heads of all Syrian intelligence agencies.

Okay, okay, AKICIML: I wanna know what the resin is that this guy is using...? The artist's website is in Japanese.

doo-wah, doo-wah ...

Bruce Arthurs @ 364... Humph... They laughed at me at the University too!

Serge Broom @361: Well, there's still Herr Pater, n'est-ce pas?

So, I go to post a comment on the excellent Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog, and it requires a login of one of several IDs. OK, so I pick Twitter, since that's where I saw T-NC's tweet that drove me to the blog in the first place.

Up pops a window saying I'll be authorizing the comment system application (which I won't name, to avoid Google-juicing it) to a) modify my Twitter profile and b) post Tweets in my name!

Excuse me?!?!?! Who the HELL would allow THAT? I bailed, and didn't even look at the other options. There are things that are OK to just do, things that are OK to do with permission...and things that aren't even OK to ask for. Post Tweets in my name? That's in the last category.

Apparently some don't care, because there were plenty of comments on T-NC's blog. And I certainly don't blame HIM (pretty sure the choice of comment software was The Atlantic's, not his). But really, fuck that out the door.

I cruised around his website with Google translate but didn't see anyplace where he named the resin. My guess is that it's some form of silicone; you can get it in highly transparent varieties that keep their form stable after curing (it's used to cast biological samples like circulatory and nervous systems).

@371: Actually, it belatedly occurred to me that the obvious thing to do is ask McGuckin's.

janetl, OtterB, Nicole, Bruce Cohen:

Thanks very much for the information about recruiters. I am somewhat less freaked out about dealing with this recruiter. I'm glad to hear that my first instinct (keep applying for jobs on my own) is correct.

Diatryma:

The recruiter in my case actually contacted me through the linky site. Recruiter sent me a message, I replied, and things went from there. "Things" in this case means I sent a copy of my resume, and we set up a time for an initial phone interview regarding a job posting. This particular recruiter works for a company that provides temporary and contract stafffing in the IT field. I'm being recruited for a contract-to-permanent position. In theory, and assuming no personality conflicts, the fact that I'm a US citizen means that I'm likely to be hired on as a full time employee after the contract period is over. In practice, I have no idea.

I'm really not sure how one goes about getting in touch with a recruiter in general. I'm sure it must be possible, and I've got a former co-worker who still gets calls at my current work number from recruiters he wasn't interested in working with.

Is the linky site perhaps more popular in some industries than others? I know the majority of my contacts there are in IT. But I also made a point of connecting with a bunch of my college classmates as we were approaching graduation, so that surely skews my perception.

Nicole, Ginger: You have mail!

Open threadiness: my jobhunt continues, helped out with coaching from a friend on The Modrun Jobhunt. For example, here's the written version of my "elevator pitch":

My core skills all revolve around communication, in writing and in person. I’m an excellent technical writer, and have worked in Quality Assurance and Technical Support, primarily in the financial industry (banking and insurance brokerage). Whatever my formal role, I take on the documentation tasks; I’ve written specifications, user manuals, and branching diagnostic procedures for help-desk personnel. I was once asked for a business requirement for a provisioning system and wrote a specification complete with SQL script templates, saving months of back-and-forth time with the developers. I'm happiest in a multidimensional environment where I have a variety of contrasting tasks.

Anyway, I'm writing little toys, tools, and games in JS (and later in Python), and I'm to put them on the web so I can show them to appropriate people as part of the jobhunting process. A friend generously offered to host them. I'll post here when I have something worth showing.

Singing Wren @ 373 -

I'm really not sure how one goes about getting in touch with a recruiter in general.

If your skills have any level of demand and you register your resume with CareerBuilder, Dice, and Monster, they'll contact you. Boy, will they contact you.

Job-hunting sucks. And we may be going right back to it -- Husband's contract ended today. He was initially hired as a 90-days contract to hire, and in December the contract was extended another 90 days (allegedly because he wasn't performing up to par, but that was retracted a few days after the contract extension when his supervisor "cleared things up").

When Husband left work today, he was told that he was working through Wednesday (the date of a major site rollout); however, management two and three levels up the chain from him were still 'discussing' what was going to happen. He's terrified that they're basically going to work him through the rollout, and then kick him out the door.

I'm not even sure that it's legal for him to work without some form of contract; IANAL.

It's frustrating and frightening.

Re: resin

When I was in college, 40+ years ago, Frank Stella was doing cast-resin pieces with the initial (thus top) clear coat in the mold being a 2-part resin (he had an exhibition in our gallery and we met him and talked about his work). Several of us played with the stuff, and what you got when you mixed pigment in. There's got to be a lot of info not only of whatever that was but of what Time Has Marched On blah blah blah.

All the ones I know of were epoxies, where the carrying medium was nasty stuff. Good ventilation mandatory if you want to keep brain cells.

Crafts stores used to carry this stuff, for people who wanted to make a paperweight with a dandelion gone to seed in it. You layered it up.
McGuckin's would be a good place to start.

Singing Wren @ 373: What Steve C. said at 375 — post your resume, and the recruiters will come. My impression is that Monster isn't so much for the developer crowd. Dice is better. Reportedly, stackoverflow is the best for IT, but I don't have any experience with it myself.

I definitely recommend having a listing on the Linky site*, and getting linked up with people that you work with, or would like to work with. I like getting weekly updates as to what people have changed on their profiles — promotion, new job, whatever they've posted as a status (if anything). It's nice to have a way to keep in touch with respected co-workers without going over the line into "friendship" in Facebook or the like. I've worked with people that I had no desire to discuss religion, politics, or books with — but whom I treasured as hard working, reliable, bright, positive and all those other good things. The Linky site lets me keep that connection at least tenuously alive after jobs change.

When I'm looking for a job, I appreciate being able to research a company, see if there's anyone there I know, and contact them with questions. It's useful to learn 'Omigod, don't go there, they are crazy and dishonest' before I've customized the the resume and created the perfect cover letter.

I do not ask for recommendations on the site, and don't write them. That aspect of the site squicks me.

Don't worry that recruiters won't be able to find you unless you link to hundreds of people. The free membership limits how you can contact people unless you're linked to them, but recruiters pay for a membership that lets them do more.

*For readers who are puzzled by this reference, the full name of this business networking site is a Word of Power that will get you gnomed.

Albatross at # 285: "knowledge based authentication" questions, where some service looks up stuff about you in public and commercial databases and then asks you about it. ("Which of the following addresses have you ever lived at.") This is fundamentally wrongheaded (an attacker could presumably have the same public/commercial databases at hand)

The credit bureaus do this, because they have the information themselves without asking anyone else. What make of car did you buy two years ago? Which of these dollar ranges is your monthly mortgage payment in? That sort of thing. This information isn't supposed to be available to an attacker, because US laws on credit-related data are stricter than for other personal data.

The commercial databases that are more readily available don't have the depth of coverage or reliability to be used for such purposes. I'm saying this from inside knowledge, although this is my own opinion and does not necessarily represent my employer's views. In fact my employer's opinion was different from mine when the Vice President for Creating Products from Thin Air still worked here.

Aargh. Frank Gallo, not Frank Stella (we had them both).

Also lots of info on how to do resin sculpture for the googling (or is it binging, now?).

Looks like the Japanese guy was mixing his stuff up in an old coffee press pot. I loved the sumi-e of the final goldfish.

Heather Rose Jones at # 335: I suppose it's time to research just where one sends an alternate-history Ruritanian regency lesbian romance with magic and a touch of swashbuckling.

Let us know when and where it's published. It's time I expanded my reading horizons to include regency.

Micheal's craft stores carry that transparent resin stuff.

HLN: Local woman falls down stairs, resulting in baby daughter sustaining a broken leg, but no other significant injuries. Woman heard making extremely appreciative comments about local healthcare practitioners. (For the record, nope, it really was an accident, and yes, I'm always ridiculously careful on stairs, which makes it frustratingly random.)

In other news, related to the job sagas, I've been recommended for a specific job, by a former manager, whose recommendation and opinion I value extremely. I'm presently ambivalent, however, as I've seen the management team they're referring me to in action elsewhere, and they may or may not favor the "demonstrating your dedication by getting visibly agitated and working lots of overtime" model of achievement. I am trying to decide whether to interview, emphasizing my own very low drama approach or whether to just give this one a miss, on the assumption that even if they hire me, they're unlikely to change...

Is the linky site perhaps more popular in some industries than others?

Yes. In the academic world we hates it, precious. Our jobs get properly advertised, not networked, so it doesn't help us any, and we get spammed heavily by it. Every month or so I go in and deal with the backlog of connection requests I've been sent, but I never use it for anything else.

I can see that it has the potential to be very useful in other settings.

KaiTei... Best wishes to baby daughter.

Allan Beatty @ 381... It's time I expanded my reading horizons to include regency.

May I recommend Madeleine Robins's Regency mysteries about Miss Sarah Tolerance? Sarah is heterosexual, but she swashbuckles.

KayTei @ 383: Aaargh! Best wishes to you both.

KayTei @ 383: Oh, dear. I've heard that babies heal very fast. May that be so.

Heather Rose Jones @ 335: I suppose it's time to research just where one sends an alternate-history Ruritanian regency lesbian romance with magic and a touch of swashbuckling.

I have not idea where you should send it, but it sounds like something I'd love to read. I enjoy Madeleine Robins' Regency swashbuckling. I just discovered The Parasol Protectorate, and I'm finding them great fun.

KayTei, oh no! Hopes for swift healing.

KayTei @383: Best wishes to you and the baby.

So glad it wasn't worse.

No second-guessing yourself; that's why they're called _accidents_.

Good luck and thoughts to those looking for jobs. I'm currently aware that I need to update my resume "just in case" and I'm totally lost. I'm not particularly educated, but I can be trained to do nearly anything. My current position was defined once by the SAP system, but has morphed enough to serve the needs of the business that I'm really not sure how to describe my skills.

In other news, I have recently confronted one of my fears - buying a car, facing my lousy credit. I feel that if I can get past that, I may be able to delve into the resume/job issue again.

Hm. "Don't make me type all this again" checkbox not working. Let's see if deleting my browser history helps....

Argh. No dice. Anybody else running into this? Mods? Halp?

Allan @381, janetl @388,

Thanks for the encouraging words -- trust me, when it gets to that point (I'm thinking positively: "when") I'll let the entire world know where to get their hands on the book. But that's still a ways down the road. In the mean time, I'm allowing myself to celebrate all the minor milestones along the way.

...is getting tired of typing her name. (Am I incredibly lazy, or what?)

Re: resin

Turns out McGuckin's does have clear resin; coupla forms of it. They also confirm my recollection that this stuff is horrifically carcinogenic, too. So yeah: ventilation.

Carol Kimball @380: Also lots of info on how to do resin sculpture for the googling (or is it binging, now?).

Googling. Trust me. There's a reason MS is advertising Bing so hard. </snipe>

I loved the sumi-e of the final goldfish.

With a broom, no less.

KayTei @383: I'm always ridiculously careful on stairs, which makes it frustratingly random.)

Snow snakes. They're endemic where I live. ;-)

nerdycellist @391: I'm really not sure how to describe my skills.

Does it help any to describe the kinds of problems you like/are good at solving?

For the fans of Maru-san

KayTei #383: I'm sending good thoughts for you and the little one, for quick and easy healing.

And as it turns out, Husband didn't have two final days. He went in this morning and was back out within half an hour, desk contents in box. He's taking it pretty well this time, which is good, but it's still a blow. We were just getting back on our financial feet.

janetl, #378: Is there any setting on a Linky account which will prevent the software from scraping your address book and spamming all your friends with repeated requests demands to join? If not, that's something people should be aware of; they may want to create a clean (i.e. with no address book attached) e-mail address for Linky use.

Jacque, have you tried re-booting?

@KayTei #383--

The dog swept my legs out from under me when I was carrying my oldest son down the stairs. My son was about 2 at the time. We were living in California.

Fortunately, I was 8 months pregnant then with my second child and I was so ginorme I just bounced. All the way down about a dozen steps.

My hubby* yells out from the garage, "Hey, are we having another earthquake?" Strangely, I let him live.

Then the two-year-old looks up at me and says, "Again, Mommy, again!!!!"

*This is the same husband who when I asked him how a person could lose 80 lbs and still be fat, said, "I don't know, dear, but you've done it."

Artists get up to the damnest things.

Jim: yup. Didn't help. (I suspect it's the bronze age browser I have to use, though why it would just start doing this this week...?)

I really can't help you, Jacque: I'm not seeing those symptoms myself.

Jim: *sigh* Oh well. Probably a Planetary Alignment. Or I'm holding my mouth wrong.

I wonder: is this a function of JavaScript?

Jacque, it's definitely a cookie, and probably JavaScript is the code that writes the cookie. If you've disabled JS I bet it won't work.

Once you HAVE the cookie, of course, you shouldn't have to check the box again unless you want to change your name/address/url. Nice thing about this: if you put in 'sees spam' after your name and DON'T check the box, it throws away the extra after that one post. At least it does on my browser.

Lee @ 398: Is there any setting on a Linky account which will prevent the software from scraping your address book and spamming all your friends with repeated requests demands to join? If not, that's something people should be aware of; they may want to create a clean (i.e. with no address book attached) e-mail address for Linky use.

Oh, I don't know. I've been using it for a very long time, and it's commonly used in my circles, so I don't hear about that. If it's like some other websites, there's probably a step when you sign up, when it asks for access to your email contacts "to help you get set up". If you say no at that point, it shouldn't have any way to see you contacts. Anyone you link to is already a member, so they're fine.

"Should" is, of course, a dubious word.

I had to retype mine a couple of weeks ago, for reasons I don't understand. It's a computer thing, I guess: occasional amnesia on the part of the software or the machine.

Abi: you got the otters up! I was lol when my 15-yo showed me that. It's such a better match than the cats that had previously been cited.

Now, of course, I keep seeing otters and hedgehogs . . . .

And then there's this--Mycroft and Watson: http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8nq3y58OP1qzhl6vo1_500.jpg

(if the URL doesn't work, search images for Stephen Fry and hedgehog)

Lee #398, janetl #406: Well, the Linky spam is actually one reason I'm actively resistant to signing up -- I get annoyed when they send spam in my friends' names, and I certainly don't want to inflict that annoyance to others.

Tentatively identified most of the trees edging my backyard as Siberian Elm. Called "one of, if not the, world's worst trees...a poor ornamental that does not deserve to be planted anywhere" and considered an invasive weed tree. Well, they give pretty nice shade, through right now the samsaras are messy and they're trying to put out suckers all over themselves. They were planted in dustbowl states because only Siberia has worse weather.

Janet Brennan Croft #410: Did you spot the larva in the Wikipedia photo? ;-)

410
And they'll come up from seed if they have a chance.

My parents' place in Texas came with a big elm (about 40 feet tall) in one of the back corners.

A standup routine in which the comedian describes 'the best meal I ever had' when he was a teenager. It involves perhaps the most utterly annoying-to-targets non-destructive teen prank I've EVER heard of.

Caution: contains reference to Tom Jones songs. :->

Many thanks for the good wishes. Of course, my daughter is completely unfazed, and is using the cast to brace herself up so she can scootch around even more effectively. I'm assuming at that point that she'll be just fine.

Jacque, I don't have any solutions, but I can confirm the problem -- my "don't make me type this" box cut out weeks ago, and I've been assuming that one of the defensive programs on my computer is interfering with it somehow, like by eating all my cookies or something. It's equally impacted on both firefox and Aieee, and my auto-installations are all up to date, so I decided it was probably less work to keep retyping my name than to track down and fix.

Jacque @ 395

I meant to note -- we have a colony of invisible turtles out here that seem to fill a similar ecological niche to your snow snakes.

Speculating wildly, with silliness in mind:

1: Today is the 60th Anniversary of the first rock concert (complete with audience riots), the Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland.

2: This year is also the 60th anniversary of the Accession of Queen Elizabeth, at the age of 25.

She would have looked good in a poodle skirt... The world's first rock'n'roll monarch?

Happy birthday, Teresa!!!

Happy Birthday Teresa!

(thanks, Serge, I'd lost track of it.)

Happy Birthday, Teresa!

408 Melissa Singer: This is relevant to my interests.

Happy Birthday, Teresa!

Mycroft: I keep meaning to ask and then assuming you must already know . . . .

Are you aware of Sherlockology? (spoiler replete for season two as they are British, but they are very good about warnings)

Also, the Save Undershaw Preservation Trust is looking for 10,000 likes on Fb for good reasons (as opposed to a Fb scam).

And, forgive me, I don't remember where you live, but my teen has fallen in with the Sherlock NYC crowd and says the meetups are fun and that she's usually the youngest person there (but they're nice to her and her friend A anyway, a dead giveaway that this is fandom in action).

If you're a t-shirt kind of person, redbubble has some amazing Sherlock ones. The teen just received "The Canon."

Teresa, I hope that you have a good day today.

Happy birthday, Teresa! Enjoy. HAVE FUN.

Happy Birthday, Teresa!

HB, TNH!

"This is your birthday song; it isn't very long."

HAAAAAAPPY BIRTHDAY!

*puts on hamster-costume hat*
*dances around*
*presents T with a large basket of newly-discovered arcane citrus fruits*

Melissa @422: is there a good place around Sherlock for me to post what I thought was going on in "Reichnbach Fall" and see if others agree? As I was watching it, what was going on was quite clear, and there are all sorts of little pointers ("Vg'f n zntvp gevpx" being the most obvious one for anyone who's studied fgntr zntvp). I keep hearing that Moffat says that nobody's really figured it out, but I think I have a solid idea about what happened and I want to know if anyone else thinks the same.

Regarding "Karen Wright":

Supposedly a fairly standard way to shipping, um, contraband is to post it to an addressee who isn't home during the day, so that the box gets left on the porch. The actual intended recipient (who doesn't live at the address) collects the box from the porch. The addressee generally has no idea that hir porch is being used as a dead drop.

In this case, best guess would be that someone with access to the St Martin's Press mailroom was the intended recipient of the dead drop.

Tom @422: An awful lot of it seems to be on Tumblr, but let me ask the teen, who may know of a non-Tumblr aggregation. I know there is a HUGE amount of speculation, including theories which include elements of that thing you mentioned.

Last night the teen and I had a serious debate about the layout/blueprint of 221B before I threw my hands up in despair and concluded that it is literally impossible to re-create in a realistic fashion. This offends the architect who lives in my brain but/and is also apparently a big debate point in the Sherlock universe.

Xopher HalfTongue @405: it's definitely a cookie, and probably JavaScript is the code that writes the cookie. If you've disabled JS I bet it won't work.

Okay, that makes sense. Far as I can tell, I have JS enabled, and it seems to be working elsewhere.

Poking around (in IE7 ::SIGH::), I go to Tools > Internet Options > Browsing History > Settings. This brings me to a dialog titled "Temporary Internet Files and History Settings." I click on the "View Files" button, and up comes a directory with a listy-list of lots of items, and I do see some things labeled "cookie" that have a nielsenhayden.com address. That's as far as my 'puter-fu takes me.

Happy Birthday, Teresa!

Hoping you have a wonderful birthday and a great year, Teresa!

Happy birthday Teresa!!

Regarding "Karen Wright", I lol'ed at the comment: "Best query letter. Ever".

Happy Birthday Teresa!

Happy Birthday Teresa!

Where's the connection for "Karen Wright", please?

yay, Teresa! (and many more)

Carol Kimball (437): Jim's Diffraction on "Why They Haven't Read Your Manuscript Yet."

Jacque:

Did you click the "dont make me type all this again" button?

Teresa: Happy birthday

Open threadiness:

This post discusses the massive prosecutorial misconduct in the Stevens corruption case. That has always looked to me like an internal power struggle within the Republican party, though I dont know enough to be sure.

Happy, happy birthday! Woo-hoo!"

Said it already elsewhere, but: Happy Birthday, Teresa!

Harpo birdbath!

Janet Brennan Croft #444: WithWhy a duck?

Belated birthday greetings to Teresa.

Drat, you're now older than me for five whole months.

David Harmon... Honk!

I suppose Facebook has its uses. It alerted me to Teresa's birthday. I said a bit there a few days ago, but now that it's the actual day (or thereabouts), here's a bit more: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

David @445: I'm a stranger here myself.

@Melissa Singer in open thread 170

Only just had a chance to look at your offspring's work - startlingly professional. Have clicked the appropriate button :D

Well I never - that's the first time I've ever been gnomed. An overly brief post to contain a link?

At least it gives me the chance to include the "Happy Birthday Teresa" I'd intended, but which slipped my mind between starting to type and hitting post :P

[It was a broken link. The usual cause of that is not putting in the quote marks around the URL in the link. -- JDM]

albatross @440: Did you click the "dont make me type all this again" button?

Repeatedly.

A belated "happy birthday" from me too, Teresa.

Elise: was that a Windup Girl reference? (Just started the audiobook this week).

Lila @452: nope. try again.

(Did someone call me schnorrer?)

Lila @453:

Here ya go.

(I hate it when people turn quotes into guessing games. This is me speaking personally, not ex cathedra, but it always feels like I'm half the butt when there's a joke everyone else is in on and I'm left out. And I loathe that feeling.)

Apropos of abi's Parhelion: One woman's encounter with the new Texas law.

Abi and Lila, my apologies.

The site commonly abbreviated Ef-Bee appears to be down, at least for me, and for several hours now.

Anyone else?

Melissa Singer... Effbee has been up and running all day for me.

Jennifer Baughman @ 456... What a wonderful world the creeps are building.

And as soon as I posted about it, the site came back.

Must be the good spirits around this place.

Just FYI, I got a virus-scan warning when I connected with an ML page earlier today (sorry, I failed to note which page—I think it was the homepage). Just now, when I clicked on the link @456, it brought up a page saying I was getting blocked because a virus infection was noticed on my machine.

Serge Broom @460: Oh, I'm livid. When I was young and working temp jobs, lo these 20 years ago, I had no insurance, and no sick time, and desperately needed a full checkup; I went to Planned Parenthood (past the gantlet of big-haired protestors) for my checkup. With all the cuts, I wouldn't be able to do that these days.

I'm sending letters. I don't know what good they'll do, but I'm advocating, I'm speaking up, I'm doing everything I can. I'm ashamed to live in a state that thinks nothing of violating women's rights in such a vile manner.

Jennifer Baughman #456: That account brought tears to my eyes.

A less pleasant sign of spring: Just removed my season's first tick from my back.

OK, I watched Alien Encounter on the Science Channel, mostly because Scalzi was on it.

In the second episode, they have an alien spaceship powered by a solar sail driven by lasers...mounted on the ship.

Sigh.

The Science Channel.

Fortunately Scalzi probably wasn't involved in that part.

Melissa Singer @458, 461, are you familiar with isup.me (also known as "down for everyone or just me")? I've found it very useful in cases such as yours, though the one time that I used it when EffBee actually was down it was slashdotted and was itself down.

I put a pic of Gracie on that HugDogs site.

Xopher #466: Actually, I think that would work, though probably not half as well as an external laser. Since you'd still have the reflected laser light heading back along the ship's path (and exiting the ship/sail "system"), there should be at least some action/reaction going on.

Xopher @ 466... I suppose you're going to tell me that Wylie Coyote kept breaking the laws of physics.
Say... Didn't the Mythbusters try something similar with a sailboat?

David, in that case it would work a LOT better to omit the sail and point the lasers backward. It's nonsense.

lorax: I will try to remember that, and thanks for offering it.

Xopher #470: Good point.

Would it work a LOT better? I'd expect it to be just about exactly the same as pointing the laser backward -- a tiny bit less for whatever amount of laser light was absorbed instead of reflected.

David Goldfarb #473: I doubt the efficiency of the reflection good enough to even rate "almost as good", let alone "exactly the same".

The real problem, though, is that with the laser on board, it has to propel its own mass... including its power plant, fuel/battery, and any other support systems.

Um...I'm confused. I was referring to elise's birthday wish @ 427 including "arcane newly-discovered citrus fruits", not to anything Melissa said. No apologies owed to me in any way. Sorry if I inadvertently hit a button.

Teresa, your link to the LJ post on forging antiquities is locked. I have a LJ account and I can't read it.

David, even if the sail is a perfect mirror and all the angles are worked out so that NONE of the light goes back toward the ship (and the sail was more or less parabolic)...the sail still has mass, which makes it a pure loss, even if a subtle one.

And considering the size of the thing, even a zero-mass sail would cause drag against interstellar hydrogen.

The point isn't that you absolutely can't drive a ship that way, it's just that it's a really inefficient and stupid design.

David Harmon, Xopher:

No, mounting the lasers and the sail on the same structure just means that you add energy to the photons emitted by the laser, and get it back when they hit the sail, minus whatever inefficiencies there are in the laser and the sail. Result: no net change in momentum of any part of the structure relative to the rest of the universe (though the opposed momentum of the laser and the sail will cause a tensile force between the two; if you had a powerful enough laser you could rip the structure apart and the laser and the sail would move away from each other, though the net momentum would still be zero relative to the center of mass of the structure, the structure would just have gotten bigger). If you just let the laser beam go, you get to keep the reaction the laser gets when it emits the photons (not much per photon, so you need a really intense beam to get any thrust to speak of).

If the laser beam + sail idea actually worked, it would be a Perpetual Motion Machine of the 1st kind: one that gets more energy out than you put in.

A friend elseweb points out that "throwing photons backwards is just abut the least efficient possible way to turn energy into thrust. The same energy content of particles with actual rest mass would produce enormously higher thrust."

Of course, then you need to carry that reaction mass. Probably still a win, but not something you can do for hundreds of thousands of years without refueling, and the show assumed that the aliens had figured out how to get free energy on the way from the "dark energy" of the universe. Handwaving, but at least explicit handwaving.

I'm taking a poetry class on traditional forms (which would never have occurred to me before I started hanging around here). Thus, a sonnet.

The mangrove roots itself along the shore.
It lives in land and water, stretched between,
and makes a home where hatchlings can be born;
Holds sand grains, nutrients, and things unseen;
Protects the coastland, nature’s treasure chest,
And opens branches to the salty air
Where pelicans and herons come to nest
In raucous twilight bustle circling there.
It’s not pristine, not tranquil; it’s a stew,
A muddy swamp. What value can we find?
Yet from the chaos life begins anew,
And from the muck, the glory, by design.
In liminal conjunction, so do I
From roots in earth and water touch the sky.

OtterB, that's terrific! It's both emotionally moving and scientifically informative. I haven't seen that combination before, ever (that I recall).

*tempted to write a sonnet about the Great Vowel Shift*

Xopher, I would really, really love to see a sonnet about the Great Vowel Shift.

...see, now I'm wondering if someone should set up poetry swap-meets, like fic exchanges and the like. "Will provide haiku cycle on British Literature topic of your choice in exchange for a Shakespearean sonnet on linguistic history."

The Female Gaze: Okay, so half the reason I go into my art store is to stare at their department manager. Let's call him "Fred." He's 60-ish, has long, sandy hair with just a dash of gray, is slender, and has a bass-player's slouch. He's very humble (sometimes excessively so—I suspect he could benefit from some time in the DFD thread) and sweet-natured, and has a really warped sense of humor. (Let's be clear that I also really enjoy the company of the other, great folks who work in that store, as well.) So.

Well, the bastard has gone and grown a beard.

Last time I was in, he was just starting it. When I was in there today, it's in full, and nicely trimmed, and he's obviously gotten used to wearing it.

I was, um. Well, let's just say, it was a little warm in that store. And the air seemed a bit thin. And the ground felt kind of unstable.

It's a damn shame he's married. I could so very easily feature inviting him into my lair. Really, one of creations nicer accomplishments.

OtterB, that's lovely!

Nicely done, OtterB.

Fade, I'd like to see a poetry exchange; it'd probably motivate me to write more poetry.

Jim, the "Kicking the Amazon Habit" sidebar item does not work for me. Not sure if it's the link or my browser.

Jacque @ 483... When I finally decided to grow a beard, my friend Elisabeth, surprised at my new facial pilosity, showed her appreciation by gently pulling on it while saying "Hmmm..." That was 31 years ago, but there are things a nerd doesn't forget.

lorax: thanks for pointing out isup.me; I was wondering whether Crooked Timber was down just for me, but it seems to be more widespread.

Seconding Fade Manley about Xopher's suggestion. Although in the right wrong circles, a poem about the Great Vowel Shift could spark endlesss arguments.

Serge Broom @487: When I finally decided to grow a beard, my friend Elisabeth, surprised at my new facial pilosity, showed her appreciation by gently pulling on it while saying "Hmmm..."

A nice beard just kind of makes me want to, you know, nuzzle.*

—

* Consider this fair warning.

Jacque @ 490... :-)

#486 ::: Magenta Griffith

It's working for me at this moment. The link takes you to G+. Perhaps you have to sign in with a Google account?

Jacque @ #432:

As is so often the case, that song is older than many people realise.

OtterB #480: A good try, but in the first quatrain your a/a rhyme doesn't quite work ("shore" doesn't rhyme with "born"), and in the third quatrain "find" doesn't rhyme with "design". It is a good try, and, as a poem it has merit, but as a sonnet it needs a bit of work.

I'm pretty fried from a long day, but mini-recount of the Virginia Book Week SF/F session I attended tonight (one of only two in the program :-( ):

Jack Williamson (The Lost Fleet series), Randy Asplund (artist), Leona Wisoker (Secrets of the Sands et seq.). All were friendly and interesting. (Leona claimed she wasn't interesting; I beg to differ.¹)

Abi take note: With the decreasing demand for painted cover art and illustrations, Randy's new sideline is hand-making books, with medieval materials and methods. He brought a sample, which was gorgeous -- calligraphy, illumination, gold leaf, and at least one groan-worthy visual pun on a Bible verse.

¹ She also has a very clear voice, which I noticed happily because my hearing loss usually gets snippy about high-pitched voices. (that is, most women & almost all children) Alas, I'd run out of cash so I couldn't buy her book at the talk, but I got her free-sample booklet, and a bookmark.

David Harmon @ 495... The "Lost Fleet" series is by John G Hemry under the pen name of Jack Campbell. He also is a fan of singer Petula Clark and of the Three Stooges, whom he used for a demonstration of Quantum Physics at the 2006 worldcon. None of that has anything to do with his books, I just felt like telling you.

I may be too tired... I will check the program in the morning.

493 ::: Paul A. @493:As is so often the case, that song is older than many people realise.

Ah-HAH! I knew it! I've never seen the Disney Robin Hood, but even the first time I encountered Hamster Dance, I thought it had a distinctly Roger Miller-ish flavor. Here's the actual transform.

Ah...Roger Miller. One of the Immortal Knights of Inestimable Silliness.

(Damn. He passed away almost twenty years ago. How the hell did I miss that?)

Baugh! Coding fail. Speaking of being too tired....

OtterB @ 480

If that's what you can do on assignment, I'd like to see you play with more poetic forms. That's clever, and well done.

Some Making Light tech advise needed. Normally I leave a bunch of tabs open in Google Chrome on my laptop to the active threads, and then refresh before starting to read again so I see the new comments.

Recently, however, I got an iPad. You can't do the Chrome thing with Safari on OS X, since it seems to live to kill tabs that haven't been refreshed constantly. Has anyone worked out something using RSS, or another browser, or something so that I don't have to post at the end of every thread I read and then do a search for my name? Thanks!

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) @478: That doesn't seem like it can be right to me: what about the momentum of the light that reflects off the sail and then goes out into the universe at large? That has to be balanced by a change in momentum of the spaceship in the opposite direction. Yes, you'd do better to leave off the sail and just point the laser the opposite way (and you do hugely better mounting the laser somewhere stationary behind the ship, of course) but you do still move.

Wait, so now David is Galileo: "Still, it moves." :-)

Stock market eats itself in recursive trading.

Fragano @494:

In a community which recognizes this as a villanelle, it's a sonnet.

I particularly like the way the octave is so richly descriptive, while the sestet is analytic and narrative. A nice turn.

re Serge @496, David Harmon may have tpyoed "Jack Williamson" for Jack Campbell, but at an ABA in Anaheim back in the 90's, I met a non-SF author who shared Jack Williamson's name. Interesting guy, a long time reporter who'd had his first novel published, BUT NOT WARRIORS, about the Japanese internment camps during WWII and the unfit-for-combat soldiers who were assigned to guard the camps.

At that same ABA, I met yet a third Jack Williamson, who ran a small press devoted to books about goat-breeding.

I've now had a bit of sleep, and yes, that was a fatigue-induced braino for Jack Campbell¹, (mundane name John Hembry). (Of course, Jack Williamson's presence would have implied that were were in an S/SF story rather than a panel. ;-) )

For the other two, I'd had their card and pamphlet in front of me. (Even in the morning, Randy Asplund's card is still pretty trippy....)

Speaking of Jack Williamson... Is there anybody else hanging out here who will attend the Williamson Lectureships this coming Friday in Portalès?

Greg Bear about SFnal ideas... "If you have this incredibly original SFnal idea, Jack Williamson probably already thought of it... In the 1930s", or words to that effect.