Amused, Bemused, and occasionally Confused.

It always hurts worst two days later

2009-04-08T03:57:51Z

OK, so I went on an over-ambitious bike ride on Sunday. I have't gone more than five miles in a day since I tweaked my knee in August 2007, but Sunday was such a great weather than I just kept going and going. My shoulders and wrists were hurting when i got home, and my legs were tired, but my knee never even gave me a twinge.

Of course, the next day I was a little sore. I biked to work anyway (just a couple of miles) to keep my muscles from stiffening up. But you know how they say it always hurts worst two days after hard exercise? Well, they aren't kidding. I'm not twenty years old anymore, more's the pity, and I don't bounce back from these things like I used to. But still, if this good weather keeps up, I'm going for another ride on Friday. Just not quite so far.

Other random news: I've been checking out Facebook, and liking it so far, though it's weird having friends from different parts of my life pulled together in one place. Not quite sure how I feel about that, but I'm sticking with it so far.

----Ron

[link of the moment |You Are Dumb - serious snark. Warning: NSFW language.]
[book of the moment |A Meeting at Corvallis, by S. M. Stirling]
[quote of the moment|"A closed mouth gathers no foot." ]

Yes, I am indeed still alive

2009-03-17T06:19:21Z

Boy, did I ever have a nasty case of the winter blues this time around. Things are finally starting to look up again, though. I always say I'm going to get active here again... let's see if that actually happens this time. I'll post before another year goes by, how's that for a goal?

By the way, I'm on Facebook now, in case anybody cares. I guess that's what all the kewl kids are doing these days, or something.

----Ron

[link of the moment |Weregeek A funny webcomic, if you're a geek anyway!]
[book of the moment |River of Gods, by Ian MacDonald]
[quote of the moment|"The truth will set you free. But first it's going to piss you off." -- Found on Usenet ]

Still here

2008-03-13T02:19:49Z

So, um, yeah, I have a blog, I guess I should post once in a while. Thing is, my life has been pretty boring. Busy, but boring. There are worse things, though.

----Ron

[link of the moment | Homestar Runner!]
[book of the moment | Rimrunners, by C.J. Cherryh]
[quote of the moment| "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice."]

House is finally legal, woo-hoo!

2007-05-03T18:56:52Z

At long last we got the inspector to come look at our house again and this time he signed off on it! Now we can get our mortgage and pay off the family loan and all the other steps we need to take to untangle our finances.

Not much else to say today, except:

09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0

If you don't know what that's about, click here for an explanation. It's mind-bogglingly moronic that posting a specific number online is illegal, but thanks to the DMCA, such insanity is the law of the land. You can find more info here, courtesy of the EFF.

----Ron

[quote of the moment| "Remember when conservatives protected privacy and freedom?"]
[book of the moment | Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier - security demystified.]
[link of the moment | Astronomy picture of the day]

And another month goes by.

2007-04-19T01:20:29Z

Yesterday we thought we might actually get the city building inspector to sign off on our house, so we can actually get a real mortgage instead of this weird family loan arrangement we have. It's taken six frackin' months to get this far... mostly spent chasing down contractors. It took us an entire month just to get someone to come insulate the heating ducts in the garage; he hardly ever returned phone calls, and was always busy, and our little job just wasn't very important to him I guess. I hate nagging after people to get them to do what they said they would do, but if that's what it takes, so be it.

So we finally got that done, and we thought it was the last thing on our list, but the home inspector arrived yesterday, took one look inside, and said "What, no handrail on these stairs? I can't sign off on that!" See, one of the items on the list he gave us, way back in October, just said "handrail on stairs". We thought, that just meant the upper stairs, which were totally open to the lower floor and definitely needed a rail... not the lower stairs as well, since those were between two walls. But it turned out to be both.

The funny part is he barely looked at all the other nione items, and some not at all. "Oh, you got that ductwork insulated? Good. No, I don't need to see it." GaaaaH! I could have just lied and saved myself a month and a half of chassing insulation contrators! Of course, I'm not all that great of a liar so he probably whould have noticed something was wrong if I hadn't been telling the truth.

Anyway, off we go on another round of contractor-chasing. Right away we got hold of the guy who did most of the other stuff, and he said, sure, he could do it right away, he might even have a handrail in stock, he was going to call back and let us know... but he hasn't yet. Well, he did good work, except for not telling us that the lower stairs would need a handrail too.

So it goes. Which reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut. I guess he was ready to go, but he will be missed. He wasn't really a huge icon of my life... but his books did have a real effect on me at a couple of crucial stages. I reread Cat's Cradle in honor of his death, but I forgot what a depressing book it is. That combined with the house stuff combined with a lot of other little nuisancy stuff that I'll not go into here, really got me down for a few days.

But it could be worse. I could work at Virginia Tech instead of WOU, for instance. That was scary to read about. I feel for everyone affected, and I sure hope nobody gets it into their head to copycat this.

Blah, now I'm depressing myself again. But it's a nice day outside, after some serious rain, and I got some solid work done today, which makes me feel like I'm getting my programming mojo back after months of frustration. And we're this close to getting our house signed off, and all the steps after that are pretty much lined up and ready to go.

I guess it's not really so bad after all.

----Ron

[link of the moment | Making Light - a way-cool blog.]
[book of the moment | (too busy to read lately) ]

P2P and the RIAA

2007-03-14T01:46:32Z

A bit of background: as part of my day job, I write a weekly briefing of all our faculty, staff and students about some technical topic. Mostly I get to choose it, but sometimes the topic is decided higher up.

Two weeks ago I was sort of short on ideas and so I (somewhat reluctantly) did one Peer-to-Peer file sharing and our policies on that. Then my boss told me I had to do a second part about the RIAA's latest crackdown, targeting college students. (Because I guess it's sort of bad press when they target preteen kids, single parents, and people who don't even own computers, but I wasn't allowed to say that.) That put me in kind of a quandary, because I don't much like the RIAA's legal tactics, but I bit my tongue and wrote the thing anyway, taking as neutral a stance as I could because I knew I was going to have to get it approved by the higher-ups.

Now, before I take this any farther, let me make a couple of things clear: I do believe that it is wrong to download and share stuff if you don't own the copyright. Even if the artists are only missing a few cents per song, you're still stealing from them, and by making an illegallly downloaded song, movie, or whatever available to others, you're aiding and abetting theft from the artists. Yes, I know most of the profit on music and movies goes to big fat corporations, and there's a certain appeal in sticking it to the man, but I still need to live with my conscience.

That does not mean I like the RIAA or want to help them, though. In case you don't know about what they've been up to lately, they are starting a major new offensive targeting college students with lawsuits. When they find somebody sharing a song, they look at their IP address which tells them the network the sharer is on, but not much else. If that network is owned by a university instead of, say, Earthlink, the RIAA is more likely to start a lawsuit. They contact the university and demand the sharer's name, and if the university refuses, the RIAA can subpoena the necessary records. Our university will not turn over student data without a subpoena, but unfortunately subpoenas are easy for the RIAA to get.

The RIAA also asks the university network administrators to forward a warning letter to the student, offering a chance to settle out of court. I consider this really insidious; the thing is, the RIAA is not guaranteed to win in court (though they do more often than not, it still costs them a lot) and they want to scare students into admitting guilt and paying a smaller amount to avoid the lawsuit. Considering the RIAA sues for a minumum of $750 per song, an out of court settlement might be tempting. But if you do share music, and you are hit with one of these letters, definitely seek legal advice before agreeing to the offer. Here is a directory of lawyers currently taking on RIAA lawsuits.

That's it for now.

----Ron

[link of the moment | The Comics Curmudgeon - When you're tired of being mad at the world and want to be snarky about something trivial instead]
[book of the moment | Code 2.0, by Lawrence Lessig]
[quote of the moment| "In thory, there is no difference between theory and practice."]

Not a warm and fuzzy Valentines post

2007-02-15T02:16:33Z

Meet Ty and Renee Ziegel. As a Marine reserve sergeant serving his second tour in Iraq, Ty was badly wounded by a suicide bomber in December 2004. He lost his left arm below the elbow, all but two fingers on his right hand, the sight in one eye, and a piece of his brain. His fiancee Renee was there with him through the whole recovery process, and they got married in October. You can see more photos here, read more about the couple in the Sunday Times of London or in this People magazine article (available through the website of the Fisher House Foundation, an organization that helps wounded troops and their families.) It's great that they've managed to keep their lives together and I hope they can continue.

But this is what he looks like now. It's not going to get any better. And he's one of the lucky ones.

War is evil. Sometimes it might be the lesser evil, but anything that does this to people is never a good thing. We all owe the troops and their families for putting them through this. Very few of us can honestly say we did enough to oppose this useless war; I know I can't. But you can do something to help the people that went and fought it, and to help their families. Please donate to Fisher House if you have anything to spare.

----Ron

[quote of the moment| "We're all in this together!"]

Still alive

2007-02-01T21:17:58Z

So, um, yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it. I hate winter sometimes.

Anyway, we've gotten the work on the house done, but the city inspector keeps forgetting to check his voicemail or something because he never responds when we try to set appointments to get everything signed off. We need that paperwork so we can get our bank loan, and we need that bank loan before... well, before a lot of things that I don't want to get into right now because I really should be working and not typing here. Suffice to say that a big chunk of our lives are on hold until we get this done.

Anyway, I'll try to post more often here in the future. Yeah, I've said that before. But then again, I'm still here, and I always do come back. So there.

----Ron

[link of the moment | Doonesbury - we need this comic now more than ever.]
[book of the moment | Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson (yet again... I love that series!)]
[quote of the moment| "Remember when conservatives protected privacy and freedom?"]

The move rolls along...

2006-10-20T03:29:10Z

Well, we might have finally found a contractor to bring our house up to code. Maybe. He hasn't called back since he visited, but he's only the second to get that far. Everybody is busy this time of year, not to mention that there's a lot of new construction in our town.

Luckily, the city building inspector said we were OK to stay in there on our temporary permit. We've made major headway moving our stuff and unpacking it; we still have to do more this weekend, but we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. All the cats are moved, except our half-feral who we haven't been able to catch. And we've one less cat now; we finally had to put Mao to sleep after her kidneys failed. She hadn't touched food in days, and when she stopped drinking too, we knew it was time. She wasn't enjoying her life anymore, but if there's any such place as cat heaven, she's there now, probably off hunting. That was always what she loved the best.

Work has been running me into the ground lately, but this week I've felt more energetic and am finally gaining instead of falling farther behind. But I've had about enough for today. Time to jump on the bike and head home. Did I mention I can bike to work now? That's probably what's got my morale back on the upswing.

----Ron

[link of the moment | Security Now - a podcast helping anyone learn about computer security]
[book of the moment | Aristoi, by Walter Jon Williams]
[quote of the moment| "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice"]

I guess I'm old

2006-10-05T19:38:47Z

OK, so I went online looking for instructions for my old bike computer and our new house's garage door opener. With a bit of google-fu, I found both. And then it hit me... when I was a kid, this would have been science fiction. I remember reading novels that featured a global datanet, by whatever name, and thinking, "Man, wouldn't it be cool if such a thing existed?" Then I heard about the Internet. "What?! You mean it really does exist?" I thought, and had to go check it out.

This was 1990, mind you, so I had to sneak into the local university's computer lab and learn this weird-ass operating system called Unix; like DOS, only more cryptic. Then I could read Usenet News and play on MUDs and MUSHes-- all in text of course. I was instantly and totally addicted, never mind that it was a pale shadow of the stuff I'd read about.

Well, now it's sixteen years later. Now the Internet is more than many SF authors dared to dream about in 1990. I can check my email on my cellphone, and log into my bank and transfer money, and download stories and text and video, chat with pretty much anyone, and look up instructions for out-of-date equipment... and most of the new students currently streaming past the office window have always taken this for granted. When I got on the Net for the first time, most of them were still trying to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other without falling on their butts.

This makes me officially old, I suppose. At least in the eyes of these kids. Still don't feel it, though.

----Ron

[link of the moment | Beloit college class of 2010 mindset list - In case you want to feel old too. ]
[book of the moment | LDAP System Administration, by Gerald Carter - work, work, work. But I guess this is the sort of job I always said I wanted, so why am I complaining?]
[quote of the moment| "Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened." - John Lennon (who would have been 66 in four days.)]

House pictures

2006-10-05T01:30:05Z

Sheesh, I've been busy. We're about halfway through the move, and pretty much living in the new place even though we still need to get more work done on it. Apparently you can't find a contractor this time of year for love or money or anything; they're all busy frantically finishing up projects before the rains start.

Anyway, here's some interior pictures (warning, large images, don't try this on a dialup line!)

Here's the view through the front door. Though you can't really see it here, there are two smallish rooms to either side of the stairs, plus a small bathroom and a door to the garage.

At the top of those stairs, when you turn back towards the front of the house, this is what you see. (Those are our realtors in the kitchen.) Notice the upper stairs without a railing; that's one of the biggest things we still need to get done.

Underneath those upper stairs is the door to the office, which was presumably intended as a master bedroom because there's a master bathroom right next to it. Though you can't actually see it from this view, it's actually a pretty small room, so we're using it for an office instead.

Out that sliding door in the last picture is a small balcony with a big view.

Here's another view of the second floor, giving a better idea of the layout. That open door leads out to the front balcony.

This is what we're using for the bedroom. It's taken from the same spot as the previous picture, just looking to the right instead of down.

Those are all the pictures I have time to show at the moment. I'm going to seriously try to post here more often, but I can't make any promises until the move is further along. I'm having to grit my teeth against a major political rant -- they legalized torture, for ghod's sake! And the only standard for being an "enemy combatant" is "aiding an enemy of the United States", while leaving the definition of "aiding" wide open. Can you say "Police State"? I knew you could! Oh, and Fox news keeps labeling former congressman Mark "I like boys" Foley as a Democrat. (It wasn't just once.) Why do these people want to screw up my country? All I want to do is fix my house and go about my life. Instead... oh, screw it. If you're paying attention, you're already outraged. If you're not outraged, you've got your head stuck someplace so deep I can't pull it out for you, so I'm not going to try.

----Ron

[link of the moment | More on the torture bill]
[book of the moment | The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas]
[quote of the moment|"The only difference between a rut and a grave is their size." ]

Portrait Adoption site

2006-09-07T19:42:26Z

So, aliasmoi asked me what I meant by "portrait adoption site" in my last post. Whereupon I slapped my forehead and said "D'oH! I haven't been posting here for a while, haven't I." (Or words to that effect.)

You can find the site at http://www.portraitadoption.com/. It's the project that has consumed my last couple of months (except the part that my day job and house hunt consumed first), and is some of the reason I haven't been posting here. It's part of Ellen Million Graphics, owned and run by ellenmillion. The visual design is hers, but the guts of the site are pretty much all my work (which makes me responsible for any bugs in the system, but that's another story.)

The basic idea is that you can go there and buy exclusive rights to a portrait painted by an artist for the project. If you're a gamer, writer, or whatever in the fantasy or SF genres and want a portrait of one of your characters, this is the place to go. Prices are set by the artists, and they get most of the money, though EMG gets a cut. Your purchase gets you a high-resolution digital image of the portrait, and many artists also offer paper versions as well, for a slight markup based on printing costs. You also get a certificate stating your exclusive rights to the portrait; the artist agrees not to sell it to anybody else, so you know you have a unique image. (Though of course, it's up to you to protect it after you bought it.)

Right now, you can choose from over 200 portraits done by more than 80 different artists in various media including ink, pencil, paint, and digital; if you can't find something you like, stay tuned, because in a couple of months I'll be adding a feature where you can submit a description of the portrait you want, and any artist that feels inspired will create it to your specifications.

Anyway, I need to get back to work, but first, here's one quick picture of the new house.

----Ron

[link of the moment | Slacktivist - An intelligent blog. Proof that Christians aren't all right-wing fanatics.]
[book of the moment | The Warrior's Apprentice, by Lois McMaster Bujold]
[quote of the moment| "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice."]

Gaaaaah!

2006-09-07T07:20:39Z

I will post house pics and vacation pics soon, I promise! I've just been whacked by too much RL stuff since returning from vacation. Plus a really big, bad, embarrassing, headsmacker of a bug in the portrait adoption website.

----Ron

[link of the moment | xkcd - An extremely geeky webcomic.]
[book of the moment | Time Enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein (I do NOT agree with everything he says, but it's still a darn good book.) ]
[quote of the moment| Programming is an art form that fights back! ]

Back again

2006-08-24T05:52:01Z

Well, it's been a while, again, but I'm back. On again, off again, seems to be my usual pattern for things like this.

The big news in my life recently is that we're moving; to a slightly larger town much closer to where I work. No more hour-long commutes, woo-hoo! We hadn't planned to move this soon, but on our first day of house-hunting, we saw a place we both just fell in love with. We had to jump in and make an offer right away, because some other people also had made an offer. To make a long story short, just two days ago we finally found out that the other offer was turned down.

Of course, the timing is terrible because we'd long been planning a vacation for next week, so even aside from the usual pre-vacation work scramble, we have to scramble even harder to get our purchase finalized. It's a big step, but having gone through it once before i'm not quite as intimidated this time. We're going in to get the place inspected tomorrow morning, and we'll bring the camera, so I should have a few pictures to post soon!

I'll talk about the vacation and my job and my freelance projects and all the other stuff later. Right now I'm tired.

----Ron
[link of the moment |Narbonic, a hilarious webcomic about mad science. Well, not so hilarious at the moment, but I recommend reading the archives from the beginning to get the full effect!]
[book of the moment |Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold]
[quote of the moment| "Programming is an art form that fights back!"]

Time Flies

2006-03-16T05:17:25Z

Yikes, looks like time has gotten away from me again. I suppose I should actually write something substantive here tonight, but I've got too many other things I also should be doing. So all you get is a simple message saying I'm alive and well, and I havent totally forgotten about LiveJournal.

----Ron

[link of the moment | General Mayhem - Still my favorite online community.]
[book of the moment | Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson]
[quote of the moment| "Remember when conservatives wanted the government out of our lives?"]

DRM Dystopia

2006-01-26T06:43:03Z

I'm sure there are some people reading this who don't know what DRM is, so let me briefly explain before getting into the meat of this post.

It stands for either "Digital Rights Management" or "Digital Restrictions Management" and is a general term for any technical means of controlling the use of digital media. For instance, it's DRM that keeps you from copying certain CDs onto your computer so you can play them in WinAmp, or copying a video of your kid's first baseball game onto the computer so you can post it on your family website. In all fairness, there's a lot of illegal file sharing going on, and DRM is an attempt to stop it; but so far most if not all DRM schemes have been over-broad, and have restricted legal uses as well (such as the aforementioned music and video copying.) The worst example lately has been the Sony-BMG fiasco, in which certain music CDs distributed by Sony-BMG installed software on computers that prevented them from copying those CDs... but also installed a massive security hole.

Corporate interests like the RIAA and MPAA (in fairness, I've linked to their own sites, not what other people say about them) have been promoting a lot of legislation in the last few years that would enforce various DRM schemes such as the Broadcast Flag. Their first major victory was in 1998, when the DMCAmandated copy protection in all analog video recording devices, and made it illegal to circumvent any technological means of copy protection, even for purposes that do not break copyright law. Since then, they've come in for more resistance, but they can afford a lot of campaign contributions, and have won other victories such as the Copyright Term Extension Act (AKA the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act") which extended the duration of copyright by 20 years.

Recently they've proposed more legislation: the "Digital Transition Content Security Act" This bill closes what the DRM vendors call the "analog hole" which is the ability to copy protected music by, for example, running an analog audio cable from a computer's speaker jack to another computer's microphone jack. The bill does this by requiring all newly manufactured or imported digital devices that deal with analog data to include an encoded signal in all analog output, and listen for that signal in all analog input, and refuse to copy the data if the signal says they shouldn't. Now, this wouldn't be such a bad thing if all it did was stop piracy, but this law mandates specific technologies that are trade secrets. We, and possibly even our representatives, have no way of evaluating the technology or knowing what it does.

But that's not even the worst thing about it. Stop and think for a moment; if all newly manufactured or imported devices are required to enforce these restrictions, what does that really mean? First of all, every manufacturer of digital devices wishing to sell them in the United States would have to redesign all existing product lines that have any analog output or inputs. Secondly, the particular company that makes the technology mandated by the law is going to get very rich. Thirdly, anyone designing a new device, even if they're just some inventor in their garage, is going to have to include this technology in whatever they build. Finally, it's going to mean that you can no longer open up any of these devices and tinker with them. Don't believe me? Read section 202, paragraph 1, which starts about midway down page 28 of the bill (warning: large PDF) where it specifically requires these devices have certain standards of "robustness" which means that the restrictions "cannot be defeated or circumvented by the use of generally available tools or equipment, and can only with difficulty be defeated or circumvented by use of professional tools or equipment". Maybe that's no big deal to some people, but I like being able to open up my computer and upgrade my video card every so often.

Now if you still think this is a good law, get a load of this; there is an exemption for "professional devices", which are defined as not "commonly purchased by persons other than [commercial copiers]". So, Joe Company can sell devices that have unrestricted digital-to-analog converters... until they get popular. (And if this law passes, won't there be a rush to buy the unrestricted devices?) Then all of a sudden they're in violation and every device they built suddenly becomes illegal. There's no specification for when this happens; I guess it's on the day the RIAA or MPAA decides to sue.

So, go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/ and contact your representative. If you don't know who your representative is, the page will help you find out. Or you can go to the EFF's Action Center.

You may ask why I'm suddenly up in arms about this? Read this piece by tarmle (found via boingboing). Sure it's science fiction... today, anyway. And before anyone says this, let me remind you that yes, I know there are more important issues... but if we only fight the huge battles, we'll lose all sorts of other freedoms in the mean time.

----Ron

[link of the moment |The Right To Read - a prescient SF short story]
[book of the moment |(Too busy to read)]
[quote of the moment|"We're all in this together."]

Quickie

2006-01-18T07:17:28Z

Yikes! Life's been busy.

Just had to drop in here to report I'm still alive, and to share this link I found via Metafilter. Unfortunately, if you never played Zork, Adventure, or other such text-based games, you probably won't get it. (Sheesh, I guess that makes me sort of old-school. Wonder how many people on the Net these days have even heard of Zork?)

----Ron

[link of the moment |Questionable Content - one of my favorite webcomics]
[book of the moment |Sharpe's Trafalgar, by Bernard Cornwell]
[quote of the moment| "Programming is an art form that fights back!"]

No, Joss Whedon did NOT say Firefly is dead.

2005-12-22T01:27:07Z

It seems there was a Joss Whedon interview in Entertainment Weekly that has been blown insanely out of proportion. Don't believe what you read; Joss isn't saying Firefly is dead. He's just saying it doesn't look like he can make a sequel or a new TV series at the moment.

Read this thread on Whedonesque for some perspective. Includes a post by Joss himself mocking EW, though he isn't promising anything. And hey, even if there isn't ever any more official stuff, we're lucky we got what we had, and we'll always be able to make more ourselves.

On that note, I'm going to try out an experimental LJ-based Firefly RP. More on that later. Still writing, too.

----Ron

[link of the moment |Stick Arena - Mindlessly fun multiplayer stick-figure violence!]
[book of the moment |Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson]
[quote of the moment|"Invent a wise saying, and your name will live forever." --Anonymous]

Firefly Fanfic

2005-12-15T02:34:54Z

I've come across some good Firefly fanfic that I'd like to share. I generally make a point of not looking for this stuff, and not trusting links people send me unless I know them well. These are so many bad fanfic clichés out there, the thought of seeing them applied to the Firefly crew really gives me the jibblies. I'd rather miss out of five good stories than get bad images permanently burned into my brain from one bad piece.

So, I'm lucky to have friends who have pointed out some good stuff recently.

First off, there's Another Horsedreamer's Blues by loneraven, exploring Mal's Unification Day habit. Then there's the intense
"Mine Eyes Have Seen" by leadensky. If you've ever wondered what happened right after the battle of Serenity Valley, this is one answer to the question. I'm not sure what Joss Whedon had in mind, but this story sure fits with my picture. It's not just the battle itself that Mal's bitter about.

Then, for a nice change of pace, try "Big Damn Zombies, Sir". Don't let the URL scare you off; there's no slash involved here. As for the zombies, well, you'll just have to read and find out. I about wet myself laughing when I read it.

That's all for now. Still maintaining the 250-word-a-day challenge, mostly; I missed a couple of days when sick last week, and another earlier this week from work stress. That's doing pretty good considering my track record. Once I get into the habit, then I'll try a challenge worthy of an actual writer.

----Ron

[link of the moment |Your Guess is as Good as Mine - New essay from Kurt Vonnegut]
[book of the moment |The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson]
[quote of the moment|"Speed is irrelevant if you're traveling in the wrong direction." --Gandhi]

Another Serenity Parody

2005-12-04T07:12:04Z

eregyrn sent me a link to another Serenity parody... which is even funnier than the one I wrote! Better yet, the site has a bunch of other hilarious movie parodies. The Lord of the Rings, both Star Wars trilogies, the Matrix trilogy, X-men, Spider-man, and more!

That's all for now, I'm busy with lots of stuff. Well, OK, I'm proud to announce that I've managed to keep up my 250-words-a-day writing thing so far, except for one day. (Not like I have legions of adoring fans who care, but hey, it's my journal so I'll say what I feel like saying.) That said, I need to go write my 250 words for today or else this will become the second one I've skipped.

----Ron
[link of the moment |Bitey's Castle - way-cool Flash cartoons by a former Disney animator]
[book of the moment |A Short History of World War I, by James L. Stokesbury]
[quote of the moment|"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." -- Anaïs Nin]

ronswartz @ 2005-11-24T22:25:00

2005-11-25T06:25:31Z

"Well, you've got to write something!

"Shut up, conscience, I'm writing this all right?"

"But... that's cheating!"

"No it's not. We agreed, 250 words a day, but they didn't have to be part of a story. At least this gets some words down on paper, which is the whole point, all right? Once I get good at writing even when uninspired, then you can lecture me about the content of what I write."

"And you're checking your wordcount. Now I know you're just doing this for the sake of the requirement, not because you want to."

"Actually, it's over 100 now."

"So? You're still doing this just because you're supposed to."

"Well, isn't that the point? To learn to produce words even when my muse is nowhere in sight? (And where are you anyway tonight, you b**ch? I have about five stories I should be working on for the club, not to mention my side projects.)

"Ummm... let me get back to you on that. I'm still sure this is cheating, somehow."

"Heck, while I've got you on the retreat, chew on this: how about I post this to my LiveJournal? You've been after me to be more regular there too."

"Uhhh... because you'll just play into the stereotype of the angsty LiveJournal whiner?"

"That stereotype is bollocks and you know it. I don't care how many people with "Real Blogs" make snide remarks about LiveJournal being just for wangsters. (How do you spell that word anyway? Combination of 'wankers' and 'angsters'?)"

"I'm your conscience, not a dictionary of nonexistent words!"

"Oh that word exists all right. But now who's trying to divert the conversation? There are whiny people everywhere, I wouldn't give a bucket of warm spit for the elitist stereotype that they only exist on LJ."

"Uhhh, don't you mean, 'bucket of warm $#!+'?"

"My conscience trying to get me to swear? Now I've seen everything. Funny that you couldn't come right out and say it, you had to figleaf it when everybody knows what you meant."

"No, you haven't seen everything! How about--"

"Stop! I don't need that kind of mental image, especially not from you. Some people have consciences, I have a smartass."

"Hah, so I do have some power here? I thought you were just going to brush me aside and write this silly excuse for fulfilling your daily requirement."

"That would be our daily requirement. And in case you hadn't noticed, I passed the 250-word mark back there somewhere and you didn't even notice. Do you see me stopping?"

"Well, you're going to stop soon."

"Yes, but I proved my point. And incidentally proved the value of this whole 250-word-a-day requirement."

"How do you figure? Not that I mind, since I was the one pushing you to take on a challenge."

"Oh, aren't we proud of ourselves! Sheesh. Anyway, if I hadn't have had that requirement to make me sit down and start typing, I wouldn't have ended up with this momentum. Now I can think of all kinds of stuff to make you say!"

"But wait, I'm your conscience, you can't do that!"

"Oh, I think I just did."

"And you're going to post this wank for everybody in the world to see?"

"Well, not everybody. If everybody in the world read my LJ, I'd be scared spitless. But some people do, and it'll get slurped up into Google's archive sooner or later, and it'll be out there as long as the Net exists."

"You're mighty optimistic about Google's prospects, I see."

"Oh, you know what I mean. Somebody is going to keep archives, and since storage is only going to get cheaper, odds are they'll keep them around as long as the Net exists. And don't you even start about that whole 'how do you know the Net will still be around' business!"

"OK, fine, I won't talk about the possible collapse of society. But I still can't believe you're going to be posting this in public. Shouldn't you be ashamed of being an exhibitionist?"

"As far as I can tell, all writers are. And I happen to think this is kind of funny. Well, OK, It's kind of a wank too, but I bet some people will like it."

"OK, now you're talking to your audience, shamelessly fishing for compliments."

"Well, first of all, it's not totally shameless because I have you around. And secondly, if I were talking to my audience, you'd know because it would sound something like this: 'Hey, you, reader, whoever you are. Yes, you. What do you think of this? I'm never going to improve my writing if I don't get feedback, so how about some? Preferably something with a bit more meat in it than just telling me that you liked it or that it sucked.' See, conscience? That's talking to my audience."

"You've sure got a lot of nerve, demanding random people take time out of their lives to help you be a better writer!"

"Well, it's not like they can't ignore it if they don't feel like responding."

::sigh:: "Well, are you at least going to edit it?"

"No! Maybe if I was going to try selling this or something, but I'm not. Well, OK, I've been doing a bit of it as I went along, and I'll still spellcheck and so on. But don't you guilt-trip me about editing!"

"Of course I'll guilt-trip you, I'm your conscience!"

"No you're not. You're just an imaginary voice I made up to give me somebody to talk with when I wrote this. And now I'm going to stop, and you're going to go back where you came from."

------------

OK, that was actually a lot more than 250, but I got on a roll. Since I'm in a weird mood I decided I really would post this, so here it is.

Oh yeah, and a happy American Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate it!

----Ron
[link of the moment |Slacktivist - a cool blog I found. Mostly political, but doesn't fit into the usual boxes.]
[book of the moment |Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling]
[quote of the moment| "Being weird is not enough!"]

What happened to my weekend?

2005-11-21T06:32:10Z

Boy, my weekends always seem to go by too fast. I'm just busy with this, that, and the other thing, and pretty soon it's Sunday night and I'm looking at going to work in the morning again.

At least this weekend I got a lot of writing done. I've decided, that since I've not been able to stick with writing 500 words a day, as I've challenged myself a couple of times before, I'm going to try 250. I think the key for me is going to be getting in the habit of writing something every day, even when I'm not inspired. Of course, Saturday I was inspired and got almost 2000 words in, but I can't count on that. If I can get myself used to writing at least a bit every day, even when it's a struggle, then I can start worrying about expanding it.

I also need to be more regular about this journal, and my work blog. At work, blogging actually is an obligation that's enforced on us, but I want to keep up this journal for my own reasons. It's a little too easy for me to just stay in my comfortable little shell; it's good for me to put a bit of myself out in public. And besides, it lets my friends and family know what's going on in my life. Of course in the last year or so, that's mostly been "I'm busy with work and club stuff, and that's it." That's finally starting to change, though.

More on that later.

----Ron
[link of the moment |Bruce Schneier's blog]
[book of the moment |Rubicon: the Last Years of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland]
[quote of the moment| "In a democratic society, the only treason is silence." -Anna Quindlen]

Veteran's Day

2005-11-11T19:17:41Z

Today is Veteran's Day and Armistice Day, commemorating all our veterans of armed service, and the end of the "War to End All Wars" way back in 1918. So few veterans of that war are still alive. One wonders what the US veterans think of what the country they fought for has become. But I still think my country is worth fighting for.

You can do it by writing a check for hurricane victims, by volunteering for your local charity, or so many other ways, including serving in the armed forces. Heck, you can even vote, unless your area uses black-box electronic voting machines, in which case you can't know if your vote counts or not. But I digress.

Today is the day we've set aside for honoring those who have fought in wars on behalf of our country. I don't believe all of those wars were justified, and sometimes the sacrifices of the troops have been in vain. But they still deserve honor for being willing to lay their lives down for their friends, or for their country, or for what they believed in.

As General William T. Sherman said after the Civil War, "War is Hell." I can't imagine what it would take to go and fight. I like to tell myself that if I'd been alive and young during World War II, with a clear enemy that had to be stopped by force, that I would volunteer and go. Maybe as a medic, if I was as idealistic as I was at that age in my real life. But it would scare the piss out of me.

War is always evil, but sometimes the alternative can be even worse. So I salute those who went, even if their wars weren't necessary. Heck, especially those whose wars were the wrong choice for our country to make. The people who fought in those wars really got the shaft, more than everybody else.

I salute all veterans. It's time for the rest of us to live up to their courage, and stand up and fight for this country in whatever way we can.

----Ron
[link of the moment |Wikipedia: World War I]
[book of the moment |The Wild Blue, by Stephen Ambrose]
[quote of the moment| "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew." -- Marshall McLuhan]

Getting better

2005-11-08T03:10:11Z

Whew. I had quite the migraine today. Those don't happen too often to me, luckily, and when they do I can usually just sleep them off or take a pill if all else fails, but nothing could touch this one. It's finally starting to get better, though, enough that I can actually look at the computer screen for a while.

For the last week or so I've also had a terrible case of writer's block. Yeah, yeah, I know there's really no such thing, it's all in my head, etc. But it sure felt real to me. It broke yesterday, though, and I got about a thousand words in. Not much compared to what I should be doing if I actually want to get serious about writing, but hey, I'll take what I can get!

Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be able to get back to work. I've got a stack of stuff that needs doing.

And that's it for tonight.

----Ron
[link of the moment |Schlock Mercenary - Hilarious military science-fiction webcomic.]
[book of the moment |Finity's End, by CJ Cherryh]
[quote of the moment| "Experience is a good school, but the fees are high." -- Heinrich Heine]

Vacation

2005-11-01T02:30:26Z

Well, I had all sorts of big plans for my vacation, but I think my body and brain decided I needed a rest instead. I had a serious motivational crash, and ended up hardly touching my computer the whole week. It was just as well; I really did need the relaxation, because later in the week we had to deal with a sick cat who ended up beyond saving. We finally put her down this morning. I'm not big on sharing personal drama in public, so that's all I'm going to say about that here.

While I was resting, I started reading my way through CJ Cherryh's Merchanter series (Well, OK, not really a series, but a bunch of books set in the same universe and referring to each other.) These are some of my favorite SF books, and it was good to have time to revisit them. I love her worldbuilding, and am never-endingly amazed at her portrayal of differing cultures and mindsets and how they interact; and of course the geek in me is enthralled by the nuts-and-bolts details of what it might actually be like to live in space. I swear I have an SF novel or two percolating away in the back of my head, but when I start writing I'll have to work hard to keep my stuff from sounding too much like hers.

I need to get back to work, but one more quick thing: I stumbled across "you are dumb" recently. It's basically a blog, though the author claims it isn't, filled with great rants on our culture, society, politics, and so on. I don't agree with everything the guy says, but the way he says it as almost always worth a chuckle or three.

That's all for now.

----Ron

[link of the moment |Planarity - a deceptively simple geometric game.]
[book of the moment |Cyteen, by CJ Cherryh]
[quote of the moment|"The truth will set you free. But first it'll piss you off."]