It's been a while since I've posted an update... let's see... in order of onset...

I've fallen in love with a friend. She means the world to me.

I've gotten divorced. Amicable, mutually agreed upon, almost completely unrelated to the abovementioned relationship, as smooth as such a thing can be, and still absolutely the worst experience of my entire life. I love her still, and I wouldn't give up what we had or what I learned, but wow.

I've had a big job crisis, and a big crisis of confidence, nearly been laid off, and moved into a job (at the same company) that I'm not really fitting into. Still want to change the world...

I've moved, and then moved again, to another country. Beauty, eh?

No other news. Oh, I lost like 75 pounds, I guess.

So, I'm sitting here at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, with hundreds of people who are passionate about privacy. The effect? My dubiety toward many of the basic premises of the privacy movement remains... and I'm beginning to develop a certain hostility toward the whole thing. Not to say that there aren't some good points here, but the overwroughtness runs a bit thick... and the willingness to acknowledge the sometimes very large costs of privacy absolutism runs a bit thin.

In other news, I just got my STD test results back.

Hmm. How can I possibly act out my urge to strike back against the paranoia?

Hmm...

HIV	Negative
Hepatitis A	Negative
Hepatitis B	Negative
HSV nonspecific	Positive
HSV II specific	0.2 (normal range)
Syphilis	Negative
Gonorrhea	Negative
Chlamydia	Negative

For the record, I had this test done because I'm a promiscuous perv. Or at least a polyamorous perv. I'm almost sorry I don't have anything more interesting than cold sores.

Hmm. OK. So, some of the usual suspects are trying to come up with a bioconservative legislative agenda vis-a-vis cloning and stem cells and weird hybrid human-whatever chimeras and creating babies with same-sex biological parents and what-have-you along those lines. For example, we have Eric Cohen: The Bioethics Agenda and the Bush Second Term. The irrepressible Leon Kass is, of course, involved.

We're sorry to hear of the delay. I've checked into the matter and determined that your order shipped on December 23rd, 2004. We would think this a straight-foward issue of lost mail, except that we were notified last week that Canadian Customs Officials have confiscated another customer's [sexually-oriented-comic-book] order, classified it as "obscenity", and will destroy it unless the recipient can defend its artistic merit to their satisfaction. (This is darkly amusing in light of the fact that the work is printed in Canada).

Every once in a while something happens to remind me that the US isn't the only broken place in the world.

... thus, yesterday's Science Day party was pure fun. I'm happy to report that nobody was, in fact, blinded with science. There were some complaints about the soundtrack. Apparently I included too many songs about microwaves.

I'm not sure I can claim we did all that well with our science goals... but we had some success.

Now to finish cleaning up the garage...

I dunno. Maybe it's just that my brain has gone. Found via BoingBoing...

L0rd 0f teh Ringz0rz
Teh Tw0 T0werz.

OK, this is the "interview" meme. spider88 has asked me 5 questions (I guess that's the canonical number), which I'm meant to answer in "interview" style. I answer them here, and then any of you who want to may request in the comments that I come up with questions to ask you. Thus groweth the tree from one root into many branches.

Still here; I just haven't been posting, because I suck. I mean, I have excuses, like having been sick and travelling and jet-lagged and overwhelmed with Holiday Foo and trying to catch up, but we all know that all those are just ways of hiding from the brutal truth of my overwhelming suckage.

... and I should be working. So I'm going to go do more of that now...

This almost works, if you read it artificially enough.

hukuma, enochsmiles
catgalbarb, </a></b></a>photogeek
sunah, mr_privacy
densaer, fanlain

chocolatecoffee and
ketzie, ephermata
cypherpunk95
blueelf13

Take that!

How the hell do you stress "ephermata", anyway?

I'm baaaaack.

The world is full of assholes. And clearly people are insane.

Funny thing... used to be that I figured everybody I met was monogamous, or at least into SM (serial monogamy, you perverts!). I was rarely disappointed. Occasionally annoyed, but not disappointed. :-)

Nowadays, when I find out somebody isn't poly, at least somebody who's been introduced to me by a friend, I'm taken aback. I mean, somebody mentioned being monogamous the other day, and I blinked three or four times. It just didn't cross my mind.

Yet the large majority of my friends, let alone casual acquaintances, are in fact strictly monogamous, or serially monogamous, or at most "loosely monogamous" ("Oh, it's OK to fool around until you get into a serious relationship"). Even among those who might be called "poly", many are from the poly-lite "swingers" school ("Oh, sure, sex, but only in structured situations where there's no danger of emotional attachment").

So, since most people are some flavor of mono, and that didn't surprise me in the past, why am I starting to be surprised at this late date? Strange. Am I getting narrow-minded?

Which is most "your thing"?

I finally got the exercise equipment moved! And I thereby proved to myself that I need to make more use of it! Which I can, because now it's moved! To where I can make more use of it! And, even better, to where Barb can, too, without even breaking a leg! Woohoo!

Now we have an elliptical machine and a weight bench[1] in our front room. It looks so stylish you'll all just simply die when you see it, darlings! Truly you will!

( The Logjam is broken )

So, now I have to start actually using the weights, instead of just the elliptical machine. I haven't lifted weights in 10 years. This should be quite interesting. Grunt. I'm thinking maybe I'll log my progress on both weights and aerobic in an LJ filter or something, so as to expose myself to public ridicule when I slack off.

In other news, I've updated my LiveJournal interests. I now have 112 of the little buggers. Maybe I'll write a bio next...

Whelp.

Last night, I went to the Long Now[1] seminar with densaer. Ken Dychtwald on the consequences of human life extensions, and the like. Relatively short-term stuff, and relatively standard content, but he's a good speaker. Turns out catgalbarb's friend psybelle is involved with Long Now... but not that particular night. Maybe next time... looks like densaer and I are going to be going to this sort of thing on a regular basis.

After that, it was a party at the home of hukuma and rebbyribs. Many comments about my evil haircut. Out-of-towners galore. OK, two out-of-towners I knew: enochsmiles and chocolatecoffee. Snogging shamelessly, I might add. :-) chocolatecoffee didn't recognize me at first sight... I may have to shoot myself. :-)

Wow, look at all those <lj user=""> tags! I'm note sure what that means, but it can't be good. :-)

Whilst I was off gallivanting, catgalbarb went off and picked up her sister Laura, sister Laura's husband Dave, and sister Laura's and sister Laura's husband Dave's two-year-old daughter Casey at the airport. None of them have LJ accounts, so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk about them or not, but, hey, I'm a non-conformist. There are no rules.

A late breakfast is in preparation as I write this. Today's plan probably involves computer upgrades (again/still) and/or cleaning out the garage.

This is going to offend somebody. I'm sorry. It's important to me.

I'm thinking about a "Science Day" party for mid-January. The idea would be to take an afternoon and do all those fun elementary-school science experiments we all remember so well. Possible ideas include:

• Building a cloud chamber.
• Microscopy. We're equipped for phase, stereo, and maybe even fluorescence, if I can figure out what dye to use. Samples are easy had...
• Molecular modeling and visualization.
• That quickie quantum demo with three polarizers.

Presumably food would be involved (anybody got any good food experiments?). Probably the usual tubbing and/or movies would follow.

Comments and suggestions welcome...

Well. I haven't written anything here for a while. That's probably because things have been pretty dull, mostly. Little tasks here and there, no real accomplishments. Went over to densaer's house Tuesday; hot tubbing, in-front-of-the-fireplace-lying, conversation; very fun and relaxing. We've been getting a fair amount of use out of the hot tub around here, too.

This morning, I'm feeling horny. Hence the LJ mood: horny. Clever, eh? Any lust objects who see me this weekend had better watch out. You know who you are. :-)

Today's agenda: computers, multimedia, furniture moving, cleanup.

Barb's off running a cat show for the weekend.

Yesterday, there was like this whole Thanksgiving thing.

Today's (OK, yesterday's) news: Are there any more at home like you?

current mood: horny

Didn't get much done today. Bleah.

Went to dinner at Kabul with densaer. Discussed our diverse dissatisfactions. Apparently humans, our politics, and our relationships are imperfect. Whodda thunk?

Yesterday, I learned about adding RSS feeds as LiveJournal friends. Now I have a bunch of 'em. Slowly I become competent.

Also yesterday, went to dinner at Maggiano's (not my choice) with a couple of out-of-towners from work. One of whom I wouldn't have kicked out of bed, but unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity. Such is life. :-)

Yes, I do occasionally eat at home. Why?

What the heck did I do with this weekend? I think it involved taking apart computers.

Oh, yeah, and traffic school. Complete with authentication of the final exam by webcam-based face recogniation software. At least that's what I think the software was doing. Anyway, I have demonstrated my willingness to believe, or at least to regurgitate, the State's preferred mix of fact, "fact", and pure silliness, and thus placated the Leviathan. I will, of course, eliminate reactionary driving habits as a result of my re-education.

Oh, and dinner out yesterday. Zibibbo in Palo Alto. I had the Moroccan spiced prawns and the pork loin. Verdict: OK, but not overwhelming, and overpriced for what it is.

That and housecleaning.

From memepool: somebody's improved on my old idea of a sodomy tour of the US...