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Friday, July 4th, 2008
maradydd
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5:41p
Furniture! Falling from the sky!
So no shit, there I was, walking back from lunch with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) whimsywanderer and davidsarah, and guess what whimsywanderer noticed, just sitting out by the curb?
Yup. I has a fainting couch!
Happy 4th of July weekend, everyone!
current mood:  delighted
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densaer
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10:53a
Big Sur.
As of this morning, the Big Sur fire complex is at 65,393 acres. It grew by 8,000 acres from Wednesday to Thursday alone, according to Cal Fire. Containment is only at 5%. Here's the satellite image for the morning of July 4 at 4am:
If you feel like doing something, you could consider a donation to the Big Sur Volunteer Fire Department. Alas, they have no web donate :(
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rezendi
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12:37p
and I heard it in the wind, and I saw it in the sky, and I thought it was the end,
Happy America Day to all you Americans. I am playing Soundgarden even now in your honour.
After a hard run on Tuesday, a harder-than-expected yoga class on Wednesday, and a hard boxing workout yesterday, I have decided to make today a rest day. Was going to go biking, and I could, I'm not achy or strained, but I have the vague proprioceptic notion that putting that off for a day or two might be wise.
Today is not a work rest day, and yet I am posting to LJ instead of writing. I even have a pretty detailed outline for the next 5-10K words of the new book, too, but right now I have no desire to actually write them. Oh well. I'll go push the car uphill in a bit. Part of it is that this particular section is set in Colombia, and the next in Mexico City, and I have never actually been to either place.
Fortunately, that will be fixed by the time I get around to the second draft; I have decided to do research, by which I mean slake my wanderlust, by means of spending a good chunk of this autumn overlanding from Bogota to Mexico City. (Uh, perhaps not literally 'overland', what with the Darién Gap and all. Maybe I can hitch a boat ride from Cartagena to Panama.)
OK, fine, back to the grindstone.
The working title, incidentally, is Swarm, and it may possibly be a loose kind-of-sequel to Invisible Armies.
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(118 comments | comment on this) Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
densaer
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11:53a
Behind the eight ball and trying to catch up.
Dear $DEITY,
I have lots to do, and not a lot of time in which to do it.
Let me be productive today, with no tones on the radio.
Let me finish my expense reports, that the gods of AMEX may be appeased.
Thanks.
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rezendi
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2:09p
The mind of the single-issue man
Today's Montreal Gazette contains, on its op-ed page, a stunning apologia for Robert Mugabe written by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
I have neither the time nor inclination to detail how astonishingly wrongheaded this piece is - though what the hell, I'll pick at a few points: 1) it hasn't been about the white farmers for at least five years now, and anyways, the "land reform" wasn't; 2) the 2002 election was highly questionable and is now hardly relevant; 3) the country is in ruins not because of "Western sanctions" but because of jawdropping kleptocracy and mismanagement; 4) describing widespread violence, starvation as a political tool, and other horrific abuses as "clumsy" is, to grossly understate, a wee bit disingenuous.
But what is actually interesting about this piece is the glimpse it gives us of the single-issue mind: a person who has only one sociopolitical litmus test, and views all events through glasses tinged with that colour. Elmasry's a smart guy - aside from being head of the CIC, he's an engineering professor at the University of Waterloo. (I'm pretty sure he taught one of my classes there. My memory of him is vague, but I was not exactly a faithful student, so that's true of most of my former profs.) But he appears to be utterly incapable of analyzing a person, or a situation, in any light other than "does it challenge the Western hegemony? If so, is good, and if necessary we will twist our minds and arguments into Moebius pretzels to support it! If not, is bad, and we must condemn!"
He's not so different from the many who take all criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, or the even more who see everything in terms of gender politics. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if his type is a near-majority. But most such people use weasel words and pretexts in an attempt to seem reasonable. You rarely get to see so stark an attempted defense of the indefensible as this. It's weirdly fascinating, in that car-crash way.
( Full (and spelling-corrected) text of the article under cut )
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letoams
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12:43p
Anyone wants to go see Wall-E tonight?
I need a break of being locked in my house coding for 12+ hours straight. I hear there is sun and coffee outside!
So anyone? Wall-E ? :)
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(8 comments | comment on this) Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
chocolatecoffee
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10:27p
Music!
When I got home after a lovely dinner, I could hear some live music playing in the neighbourhood. Surprisingly it got louder the closer I got to my house (away from Queen Street), and it sounded really good! I dropped my things at the house and went for a wander to find the source, and met one of my neighbours out doing the same thing. It turned out to be a birthday party across the road from me - my neighbour went up to the gate and said hello, then waved me to come on in. The host introduced himself and his guests, including the 66-year-old birthday boy, gave us each a beer and welcomed us to stick around. :)
I stayed for a set and then wandered on home, but threw open the windows so I can still hear them pretty well. The band's quite good, they're called Donkey I believe, and they're playing at a place called the Grasshopper on Friday (pretty close to my workplace), so I think I'll go check them out again. It was nice to meet some music-loving neighbours too. :)
Quite a lovely evening!
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photogeek_mtl
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9:25p
Moving Hell..
What a day...
Movers were supposed to show up at 8am this morning - we booked them over 2 months ago. We're supposed to give possession of our house to the new owners tomorrow. Here's a rough timeline:
- 9am: we call them - we're told that they just left and will be there within an hour.
- 10am: still no movers - another call, and we're told noon at the latest
- 11:30am: another moving company, apparently sub-contracted by the one we hired calls us and tells us they are too busy, and asks us if they can come by tomorrow.
- 12am-2pm: our mover isn't answering the phone.
- 2pm: we finally get ahold of the mover, and he says that one of his teams is just finishing a job and will come by soon.
- 3pm: we call him for an update, and he tells us that we won't be getting a mover until tomorrow morning.
Fuckers.
I'd highly recommend you don't deal with Premiere Van Lines. They are offering us a $25/hour discount from their normal $250/hr rate (for 3 guys and a truck) - but really, losing our reservation just isn't cool.
We're damn lucky that the people who bought our place are very nice, and don't have their movers booked until Friday, so they don't mind us not being out of here until tomorrow some time.
I just hope these guys actually do show up tomorrow.
The good news is that we met our neighbours on the the north side, and they seem very nice - they have a daughter about a year and a half older than Kaia.
And the deck at our new place totally rocks. We had dinner out there tonight, and it was really nice. It's been an exhausting couple of days, but it will definitely be worth it once we get settled...
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chocolatecoffee
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5:11p
break time?
I'm misreading "maps" as "apes". It does make the bug reports more interesting.
I hermitted all weekend and tried to make my home less repulsive. Saturday I finally got my bike back, weeded the front yard, purged some crap from my house & picked up groceries. Sunday and Monday were mostly lost to net (got my ISC rating back up to 800!) and bad television. Bad food, too - made a couple of feeble efforts to clean up the kitchen but couldn't bring myself to cook in it. I settled for potato chips and takeout. Tuesday I got back in the game: planted seedlings & cleared the overgrown grape vines and berry bushes to make room for more vegetables. I also choked down some proper food - egg-white omelet with fresh herbs (saving the yolks for ice cream) in the morning, and a better class of takeout for lunch and dinner (burger and prime rib dinner from the Tulip).
Now I'm dying for some human contact. Made plans for quick catch-ups with courtly today post-work and svan tomorrow. If the weather's nice on Friday I'll go to the pool after work, if not, maybe a movie. Hancock is out!
Okay, I think I can read properly now. Back to it.
current mood: so-so
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tormenta
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4:43p
Calling Programmers - any physical location OK.
Consulting Gig I am part of a team of 4 engineering firms, who have collaboratively put together an Excel/Access/VBA-based tool together to design a mechanical system. The resulting spreadsheet has about 14 sheets, one Access database and code, contributed by various members of the development team. As consulting engineers who collaborate in large project teams to create building design drawings, we are conversant with concepts of coordination and collaboration – teamwork, documentation sharing, control of documents, etc., but no one is familiar with the particular processes and protocols software development professionals have created to neatly manage a project of this size – ie. document/code management tools, bug fixing, QA, and so forth. Comments screened.
current mood:  hopeful
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inki
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1:13p
July 14th: Poly Speed Dating!
Still looking for a primary relationship? Having trouble finding that second partner? Unable to line up play dates? Still looking for that perfect couple? Maybe what you need is ... poly speed dating!!
My friend Luke and I are putting on an experimental speed dating event. This is an event not to be missed.
Monday July 14th
6:15-9:15pm
Spud's Pizza
3290 Adeline St, Berkeley
easy parking / 4 blocks from Ashby BART
Register now at www.polyspeeddating.com! Pre-registering will get you better matches and ensures a spot for you in the event that we sell out.
Pre-registration price: $12
Door price: $20
No one turned away for lack of funds - please contact us!
All money goes to food and rent: this is a zero-profit endeavor.
There is no reason that the complexities of our nonmonogamous lifestyle should prevent us from engaging in the celebrated act of speed dating. Using a complex algorithm hand-tailored to your needs we can make this dream a reality. This speed dating system will take into gender preferences and individual/group preferences. You can come looking for one person or many, and you can date as one person or many. All genders and sexualities are welcome. The system will accommodate you.
Food will be provided. The speed dating itself will probably consist of around 10 dates of 5 minutes each. Participants will note down any interest and two-way interest will lead to both (or all) people being informed of the match.
Questions? Email psd@vzvz.org.
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