if you want to say hello (or something less pleasant) get thee to the messageboard.

i've been trying to be constructive, and find outlets for complaint that don't bring me down further or give my friends and family compassion fatigue.

to that end, here is the Shit-talk Composter. type the bad stuff in the box with the compost pile, do the captcha, click "dump it in".

it brings you a picture.

(and posts the talk/picture combo on a blog - so don't be telling your secrets, yo).

five questions from buhrger. if you didn't ask these of me, ask and you shall receive five from me, whereupon you post your answers with these instructions and perpetuate ad infinitem.


( answers )

i have a five questions meme to answer. one of the questions has a link in it (without which the question makes less sense), so i used view source on the page to copy the html.

did you know that lj lists the variables for all possible userpic choices (by keyword) with your published comment? since i have 104 icons, there appear to be 70+ lines of code for a one-sentence comment.

i don't have enough skills to know for sure that there's a better way, but damn, there must be a better way.

the unfortunate side effect of getting the 360 back is C watching bad (but not so-bad-they're-good) fantasy movies.

i would like to un-experience every glimpse i have had of The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior.

the Kuki Linux project is seeking designers and programmers based in the UK.

since e_bourne was successful, i decided to try the nytimes no-knead bread which apparently is something people have been doing for years (recipe is 2006) but between various diets and general hate of the fuss involved in yeast bread i haven't been paying attention.

works beautifully. while it requires pre-planning, the actual time involved in dealing with the bread is minor. it produced a nicely browned boule loaf with a firm crust that shattered nicely. C wants to do it again soon.

the only thing i want to change is to use a smaller pot; the recipe calls for a 6-8qt container and i used our 12qt dutch oven. i'm guessing the smaller container would make for a rounder loaf.

in looking up the link to the recipe i discovered a couple other versions.

also this soup mimerki suggested to use up a can of coconut milk is not really Thai, but it is quite tasty and filling when you add a couple handfuls of shrimp and much more chili paste. (i used dairy milk instead of rice milk, left out the salt -added to taste at table- and increased to 1.5t of chili paste. i'm guessing 2.5t or more would have made me happier. the 1.5 was savory but not spicy.)

tonight's soccer match was satisfying; a closer as joyful and electric as the opener.* those tickets were the best present i ever bought.

now, on to the playoffs.






*yes we won, it was fan appreciation night with a lot of joyful appreciating by the team, and C finally snapped and shouted down the guy behind us who yells at the ref every time we get carded (even when we deserve it). the guy shut up for the rest of the match. aaaaah.

today, UPS left the standard passive-aggressive sticky note and no package.

but hey, if you contact them by seven, you can drive yourself to their warehouse in SODO between the railroad tracks, and then stand around and wait through most of the one-hour window they give you until the package is produced.

and lo, M$ gave us a new 360 with a warranty instead of repairing our busted old one, and a month of Live for our troubles.

they did not, however, send along a power block or a/v cord.




*headdesk*




if you call the service number on the website, you go through a series of recordings that never lead you to a human. if you exhaust the automated menu, it actually says "then i can't help you".

i used their email form. they make you choose a problem from a drop-down menu. "Console will not power on" it is.

(Sounders FC clinched a playoff spot tonight, but that is not what i'm here for.)

i found out tonight that there is a cute pop song about Kasey Keller. i went looking for it and found it on youtube, playing over video of the victory it chronicles.

but i wanted a better recording. and that's how i stumbled upon a photo slideshow of him at his old Bundesliga side, Borussia Mönchengladbach, set to a catchy tune - Cologne, Cologne, die scheiße vom Dom. *snicker*

the coda to the video is a clip of him leading the stadium in singing it. (Cologne is a rival, and yes, Keller speaks fluent German.)

sometimes i love the internet so much.

Microsoft support tracking is very well-designed. they know that console gamers are needy. they have happy little icons and package up the UPS tracking info in a way that makes it look like progress is happening.

and it is.

our 360 is slowly crawling across the country. since there hasn't been another scan since Wednesday, i took the UPS tracking number off the M$ site and visited UPS where i confirmed the worst. the UPS delivery date is on their site. as you may know, UPS never brings you the thing early, even if it is sitting in the local warehouse.

now i know that it will arrive next week, on a day that both of us work. SIGNATURE REQUIRED.



i tell people to never send us UPS because they won't leave us packages, even if we sign the "we missed you" slip or otherwise beg and swear that we will bear the risk of the package being left on our porch-that-is-invisible-from-the-street. package delivery is not convenient if i have to stay home from work, drive to SODO, or add several days having them reroute to my office (which we are not supposed to do anyway).

i suspect one of us will stay home from work to sign for it. hate.

via a locked post, a cool brain science article combined with a comparison of football and dogfighting cultures: football, brain trauma, and being "game". (includes vivid description of dogfighting.)

key bit for the teal deer crowd: repeated knocks to the head cause the same kind of brain damage as second-stage Alzheimer's. the only way to see it is by dissecting the brain; the damage is already present at 18, and NFL vets have visible scar tissue. research is just starting, but this is also bad news for soldiers.

ugh. both of my brothers were linemen in high school and then went on to a couple decades of employment that involved getting knocked around. not in any way equivalent, but bad news when there's also family history of dementia.

what if the people who were such thugs in the land of my youth were suffering from brain damage, and had grown up with a brain-damaged parent (football/military/heavy machinery)? what extra frosting of awful does this add to physical abuse?

i thought i would look into renting a 360 for a day or two while we wait for repairs.

Blockbuster doesn't do it anymore.

Rent-A-Center is just creepy. first, there are no prices or terms anywhere on their website. second, the store finder is like a map of low-income neighborhoods and military bases in the region. (not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that, but predatory much?)

we've had our Approve 71 sign in the planting strip out front for almost a week now. it's baby's first yard sign and i'm pleased to be able to host it where it's visible in an area with lots of foot traffic. (and we are near the parking lot for the splitters.)

the signs come from cafe press and they're kind of cool - a printed vinyl pocket with a three-part wire frame. the whole thing ships in a tube but makes a nice flat and sturdy sign in short order.

after a day or two it had been knocked around a little. i shrugged it off, since there are always cars parked there or dogs being walked, etc. every morning on the way to work i would straighten it. later this week when i came home from work, the top of the wire frame was gone and the sign pocket was turned 90 degrees so that it was an indistinguishable shape and unreadable.

uh oh.

when i came home from an engagement last night, around 10:30pm, i found an Approve 71 sign on the ground down the block from my house. it had been split at both seams, like someone tore it as much as the tough vinyl would allow. i picked it up, and indeed, it was our sign. looked like whoever grabbed it scooped it up as quickly as they could and left the frame behind. i took the wire uprights inside and put the whole thing back together with an internal cardboard reinforcement and white duct tape. and put it back outside before going to bed.

WTF, Ballard, WTF. C and i think from the way the ground is torn up that passerby have both pulled it down and put it back several times.

is a mess. i finished it last night, and the details are evaporating from my memory, leaving nothing but a sense of dissatisfaction.
the only thing to recommend it is that it is set in the same world as the delightful Shadow of the Wind. (and i have just stolen from you the moment of joy that comes from recognition. if i thought it outweighed the mediocrity of the rest of the experience i would be more careful.)

went down about as mysteriously as it swelled.

ate, took benadryl, went to sleep. woke up late in the afternoon and the swelling was almost entirely gone. today when i look in the mirror i can almost see that one eyelid might be thicker than the other but it's so subtle that i'm not even sure it's there.

um, okay.

weekend is not going entirely as planned.

the 360 has the red ring of death. considering that ours was made in 2005, it's had a remarkable run. repairs are still cheaper than replacement, so i need to drop it at the UPS store and deal with the withdrawal. i knew we played a lot of rockband, but i didn't realize just how much we used it to stream netflix. regular television is even worse than i remembered.

and i need to get off the computer because my right eyelid is grotesquely swollen since i woke up and it's kind of hard to read right now. i suspect it's a bugbite but i'm not sure, took some benadryl and we'll see. i'm supposed to be social this afternoon. hoping to avoid the ER :/

printer sharing: turns out it takes under five minutes to set up a mac + linux lovefest over wifi. no need to dig up a driver for the mac laptop when the printer is hosted on the linux desktop, printing from the clients is just as snappy as from the host <3 <3 <3

we'll see what happens next week when we try to throw our DM's Vista lappy into the mix.

(sparked by sirriamnis and javagoth's roundup on Roman Polanski.)

i am often confounded by how to deal with objectionable humans who make art. the work does not magically suck the second i find out something nasty about the creator. my general rule is that i don't give them money anymore, and i don't worry about money already spent (no buying new books/tickets/DVDs, but no throwing out of things i own.)

Roman Polanski really did drug and rape a 13-year old girl. and he really did flee the country to get out of going to jail. change the name, and no one would be questioning that the man should be back here doing time and it wouldn't matter how much time had passed.

i'm pained by the people and organizations who think that Chinatown or The Pianist makes him a special snowflake.

the list of protest petition signers is worst if you are a film nerd. extra-hurty for me: Fatih Akin, Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Terry Gilliam, John Landis, Michael Mann, Tilda Swinton, Wong Kar Waï, Wim Wenders. (others might care more than i do about Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and David Lynch.)

the full list is very long and dense, so it's under a cut. ( Read more... )

is apprehending him at a film festival setting a precedent that puts dissident filmmakers in danger? um, no. and if Polanski had stayed to hear his sentence read in 1978, none of this would be happening.

i have a few months to think about how my money rule works with a SIFF pass.

there was a genuine downpour as i was heading home from work today. not a problem. waterproofing on coat, bag, and boots worked perfectly.

i baked winter squash with chicken-apple sausage for dinner. and then we made chocolate pudding (hot) for dessert. the heat is on, and In Search of the Trojan War is on in the background.

it's a good night.

ZT Systems, seriously awesome. if i had gone to their website earlier, i might have been in much less pain today. they live up to the positive reviews on newegg; i'm constantly finding another thoughtful touch on the case or in the materials from the box, plus they build and service in the US. <3

#! is my new boyfriend. it just works, but it also pushes me to do the kind of learning i want to do. (i looked at Arch raevnos, but i'm not quite ready for a steady diet of "bleeding edge" packages. i suspect getting to know Openbox and leaving desktop icons behind is a step in that direction.)