J. Alex Lang

extimes @ 9:09am: is gonna have a great week.

sk4p @ 8:24am: ...
I was doing great. The dreams had gone away. Thing of the past. Months, in fact.

Then last night I not only dreamt about her but dreamt she was all better and we got back together.

Son of a bitch.

extimes @ 9:45pm: has sunburn on the top of his knees from sitting in the sun too long. I'm currently darker than I've been in years. GREAT weekend :)

madmadammim @ 5:05pm: 4th of July 2009 + Nobody Here but Us Servantless American Cooks
I went to see a free screening of Julie and Julia last night and it was really fun and delightful! I highly recommend it. It really made me want to blog, cook and blog about cooking!

Last weekend I had an incredibly amaizng fourth which included Erin Breen(!), watching the fireworks from Mt. Washington, lawn darts, many friends, much good food, hundreds of sparklers and mad cap documentation of all these things. About 744 photographs were taken in about 48 hours! Most of them can be seen:

    

here



    

here



    

and here.

brokengoose @ 9:42am: Best summer movie ever!
2012: It's a Disaster!

More action than a Micheal Bay flick, and almost as much funk as Black Dynamite.

extimes @ 1:22pm: is totally ready for the weekend to start. I'm off to Eerie right after work!

mizmoose @ 1:42pm: On the Internet nobody knows you're an old, gay, minority, disabled dog
Among the other stuff I'm doing for the Ohio LinuxFest (weekend of 9/25 in scenic downtown Columbus, Ohio!) I'm organizing a workshop on Sunday for encouraging Diversity in Open Source.

It's not uncommon these days to find stuff about Women in Open Source. As a non-male who has found that technology groups, whether volunteer OSS projects or for-pay jobs, can have an absurdly low percentage of non-males, I do see the need more gender diversity.

I strongly believe that gender isn't the only issue out there.

Someone once argued with me that I shouldn't move the workshop away from women. This person told me, "At OLF I see lots of disabled people and minorities but I don't see many women." My head still aches from that.

The DIOS workshop is for everyone. The minority can't move forward unless the majority sees the problems. How do I find the people I want to come to this and talk about the issues they face?


The workshop: http://ohiolinux.org/dios

blk @ 1:36pm: your dragon needs slaying

"This was nearly too much for the Prince, who had tried very hard to keep his dignity thus far. To now work in this deformity's kitchen like a scullery maid? Leander of the Eight Kingdoms, the Two-Blooded Border-Lord, Son of Helia the Radiant, would absolutely not bake filthy, thin peasant's bread in this wretched place. He had promised to serve her, yes, but he had meant to do so in some manly fashion which involved the slaying of some things and the rescuing of others. Bread needed to be neither slain nor rescued.

"He opened his noble mouth to say so, but the chill stare of the witch stopped his woods like a noose about his neck. Her teeth gleamed horribly bright under cracked lips, and seemed to lengthen and twist into clashing ivory knives. In a moment the vision had evaporated, but the Prince was now convinced that bread-baking was a most estimable and agreeable work, and that perhaps kneading was not too dissimilar to slaying."

- Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden

I love home-baked bread. I've even done it a few times, and not had it come out badly. But it never seems to get done, because I don't have the time or the energy or the magical kitchenaid mixer to mix, or the right pan, or the proper proportions. But then I stumbled across a disturbingly simple recipe for no-knead bread. Of course, I don't have the pot it calls for, but some web browsing showed some people doing it with other pans.

So I tried it, and lo and behold, I made awesome bread. Perhaps its only flaw is that I cannot eat it all RIGHT NOW. And, as the referring article bragged, it really is simple enough for my kids to be put to work serving me. If I am lucky, they will find it an estimable and agreeable work.

J and I are now off to slay some bread. Yum.

mizmoose @ 7:02pm: When your own biases bite you in the behind
I've got a verizon wireless cell modem, bought (&, sadly, contracted into) when I was still employed. It worked great with my Powerbook. When I got the laptop (an acer aspire), not so much.

I've been working with Verizon Wireless to try to find the problem. Part of it is definitely theirs, but it's looking like the majority of the issue is the laptop. It disconnects the network for no reason, it suddenly decides the device isn't plugged in, the management software suddenly hangs and has to be hard closed, sometimes requiring a reboot, etc. Fun, fun times.

(I recently tried making a "master system backup" and it failed twice to burn a dvd it liked. I'm now remembering an E-Machine I had at work that had symptoms like this and I'm starting to smell a bad master bus. But I digress.)

The first two times I called VZZ I talked to female techs. My first thought on hearing a female voice was, "Oh boy, I hope she understands dorkineese." I am ashamed that I had these thoughts, but there's still a part of my brain that's hardwired to 30 yrs ago when teachers told me "Girls don't need to know math and science." So after thinking such stupidity, I mentally kicked myself in the ass and moved on. Both techs were more than competent, understanding technobabble and asking quality, clarifying questions.

The third time I called I got a guy. I don't even recall thinking anything positive about getting a male tech. All I do recall is that within 5 minutes I wanted to start banging the phone against my head.

When I pointed out the return times I get from ping, or the error messages I get when packets don't go through, he would insist, "But do web pages come up? That's the data we have to have!" I kept trying to point out that if ping is giving errors web pages won't load but he kept insisting. Frankly I'm not sure he even understood what ping is.

Then to top things off he wanted me to make sure that Internet Exploder wasn't set to automatically try to dial/set a network connection. I told him I rarely use that browser and he told me that while talking to him I had to use IE because "it's the only browser we support!" Dude, you're just my network provider, I'm not reading my mail from your servers or doing any other applications on them. If ping fails, ssh fails, web browsers fail, ANYTHING with a network fails.

That'll learn my stupid brain to make stupid assumptions.

The 1st time I called they offered to replace the modem with a new one. The 2nd time I called they let me go to a VZW store and swap it out for a completely different model. The 3rd time I called I was told the problem was "going to be escalated to Engineering". However, I now have the weekend to find my paperwork for the laptop so I can call Costco on Monday. And to find my big backup disk so I can back this thingy up. I bet it is broken, and bithey're gonna want me to ship it somewhere. *whimper*

stuntviolist @ 11:40pm: Interesting Articles with Interesting Local Analysis
A few weeks back folks were sending me emails with subjects like "Obama wants to bulldoze entire neighborhoods."

The email forwards I got linked to this article from the UK telegraph ""US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive"

I thought, "Gee...I don't like that"

Then...

Last week Pittsburgh's City Paper ran an article by Adam Fleming that describes some neglected properties in the area and who was buying and selling them. "Shaky Ground". I picked up the city paper last week because I thought the front cover graphic was really cool.

Some more interesting analysis of Fleming's article has been posted to the Tube City Almanac.

Journalism Worth Reading

Tear 'Em All Down and Let God Sort 'Em Out

This caused me to think about it some more.

I now see why it may be important to tear down or bulldoze large sections of neighborhoods that are blighted this way. Who is going to put money into properties that are right next to horrible messes that are not only eyesores but may even be dangerous? Tearing down the abandoned/neglected properties would help to shore up property values in neighborhoods where prices are unstable. This could help to bring development... etc.

Oh gee, why can't anything just be "black or white" or "right or wrong" anymore?

extimes @ 12:56pm: RD just rolled over 70000 miles!

extimes @ 12:03pm: thinks he may have an ulcer :(