Tags: out and about, photos
frame of mind: happy
listening to: Indigo Girls - Romeo and Juliet | Powered by Last.fm

Friday: Got Wisdom teeth extracted.
Today: Swelling on the left side of my face has only just started going down a bit. Swelling on the right side of my face has not, and it's a lovely yellow-brown color from the healing bruise that was there.

i've had to ask for a refill of my Vicodin prescription, as there are only 2 left in the bottle and I discovered on waking up this morning how it feels if I miss a dose (though go me for actually managing to sleep 6 hours in a row). Fortunately the dentist's office says they can call that in for me, and hopefully they have actually done so, and I won't have to kill things once done working (from home) and can go pick it up.

I have been tempted to post pictures of the teeth that were extracted. You are grateful that I haven't, as it is human nature to click on such things even (or perhaps especially) if you're warned about how gross it will be.

Many thanks to metaphorge who took wonderful care of me on Friday when I was still bleeding profusely from the face. Also for being the sort of partner with whom I can have this sort of conversation after I show him where I drooled blood onto my pillow:
Fox: I'm sorry, baby.
Me: Why? It's not your fault I was bleeding profusely from the face.

Tags: health, photos
listening to: Dead Can Dance - The Spider's Stratagem | Powered by Last.fm

I'm going to do a rare thing, and talk about things that relate to my job, something I haven't done in... well, several years now. Long enough that some of you may not realize what it is that I do for a living: high-level support for Apple.

Specifically, I support Apple's consumer application suites, iLife and iWork, which means no I can't help you with your iPod, no I have nothing to do with how well iTunes functions in Windows, and no, I am not "in the know" about the iPad. I know exactly what the public knows about it. Hell, I haven't even seen the iPad version of iWork yet, which is a product I certainly will be supporting two months from now.

I've been seeing a lot of people bitch about the iPad today, from two camps of people: Apple Fans, and Apple Anti-Fans. For those of you who have vowed to never buy an Apple product, this post is not for you. I am not attempting to sway your opinion of Apple products. Skip it, and go on your merry way. We are going to have to agree to disagree, and hopefully you'll at least have the courtesy to bitch about my employer a little bit less around me, since that's a little bit awkward in the making blonde jokes around a blonde kind of way.

To the Apple Fans bitching about what the iPad doesn't do: Stop it.

When iWeb first came out, I had a flock of people coming to me, asking me how to make it do this, that, or the other thing. Usually tables. When I said it can't, the question was, "Why not?" Because it's not designed to do that, that's why not. iWeb was designed as a way to create web content for people who knew nothing about creating web content. It wasn't targeted at people who already knew what they were doing. It wasn't targeted at people who had been using Dreamweaver, or people who knew how to code entire sites in a text editor, or even people who created entire sites with WordPress. It was targeted at people who didn't know any better. Now that we have iWeb 3, we can do some of the things that people wanted to do, and there's always HTML snippets for the stuff that isn't built into the app. It's still targeted at people who don't know any better, but with time, more features get added on.

The big folly of Apple fans seems to be that they forget about how limited the 1.0 release always is. By the time we get to version 4 or 5, our products seem to kick everything else out of the water. See Keynote, for example. Do you remember when Keynote first came out? I do. People bitched a lot about what it couldn't do. Now it can do most of those things. Do you remember when iPhoto first came out? iMovie? iTunes? Man, the 1.0 release of iTunes was so limited I kept using the software Apple had purchased to turn into iTunes even though the version I had was discontinued, because they'd taken some of my favorite features out to make iTunes. Look at it now; not only did we get those features back, it does a hell of a lot more.

So the iPad won't run Photoshop. I couldn't use it for a recording studio. Right tools for the right job, people. It's not meant for people who want to run Photoshop or a recording studio. It doesn't have the power for those things. It's meant for people who want a lightweight device to browse the web, watch movies, and read books. And those things? Those things it does really well. And as time goes on, Apple will learn what people are actually using it for, rather than what we expect them to use it for, and it will get modified, added to, and improved, and each version will be a little bit better. In the meantime, there are people for whom such a device is perfect... in addition to those who would rather have the iPad than a netbook, it's perfect for someone who doesn't want to do anything but read books, watch movies, and browse the web.

Tags: computers, work

This article makes for a very interesting read.

Even before getting to the confirmed conspiracies in question, we have this line, which explains a lot about how cultural psychology and propaganda works:

In fact, it is common for "hit pieces" or "debunking articles" to pick extremely fringe and not very populated conspiracy theories. This in turn makes all conspiracies on a subject matter look crazy. Skeptics magazine and Popular Mechanics, among many others, did this with 9/11. They referred to less than 10% of the many different conspiracy theories about 9/11 and picked the less popular ones, in fact, they picked the fringe, highly improbable points that only a few people make. This was used as the "final investigation" for looking into the conspiracy theories. Convenient, huh?

Yes, there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that are wildly out of control and highly implausible. There are others, however, that are much more plausible, and even likely. All of the events outlined in the article are things that people suspected might be happening before they were investigated and then proved. Some of them are quite famous, like the Watergate scandal and the Manhattan Project. Others are things that really should be higher up on the public radar, like the 1933 plot to overthrow the US government and replace it with a fascist regime (Protip: when picking your point man for your conspiracy, make sure he's actually on your side). And then there's the JFK assassination... everyone pretty much agrees that there was a conspiracy, but no one seems to know what it was, except a bunch of people who are now dead. And just why are Oswald's tax returns still Classified documents, anyway?

Yes, conspiracies exist. Any time a group of people get together and plot to do something in secret, it's a conspiracy. A lot of them never see the light of day, and many more do but are never found out. People are not always up-front about their motives, especially not when it comes to obtaining money and/or power. No, the sinister answer is not always the correct one... but sometimes it is.

Tags: exospection, links
frame of mind: thoughtful
listening to: glitch.fm

For Christmas I found a list of the Top 50 dystopian movies of all time via Roger Ebert's twitter stream. I intend to use this list as a checklist of things to watch, though on a quick count have discovered I've seen just shy of half already.

( the list... )

Tags: links

There's a post I've been meaning to make.

I'm making it now.

First off, for those of you who missed Jeffry's announcement, I've made the incredibly difficult decision to leave The Kimberly Trip. If you've ever had to end a romantic involvement after several years, not because you were fighting, but because you just weren't the same fit anymore... it was about that difficult.

My reasons for leaving primarily revolve around mental and scheduling capacity; I just do not have the same amount of free time and mental bandwidth as I did when I joined them six years ago, and I realized that staying would result in a half-assed effort that would not be helpful to anyone.

Since then, I've been paying more attention to some areas of personal growth that I've been neglecting, and attempting to absorb the feel of other styles of music. I've been catching up on RSS feeds and blogs. I've been keeping up on current events a bit better. I've been expanding my online network a bit. I've been experimenting with other ways to use music as a creative outlet. I've been waxing philosophical with various friends and acquaintances. I've been exploring my streams of consciousness a bit.

Mostly, I've slowed myself down a bit. It's helped.

In semi-related news, I've taken up cooking. Living alone it's kind of obnoxious, though I realized that really, what I objected to wasn't the cooking part, it was the cleaning-up-afterward part. When cooking at home, I don't get to make a deal with a cohabitant that one will cook and the other cleans up later; sadly, the cat is good at neither task, and really, I don't think I'd want to eat something she cooks (slobbered mosquito, anyone?) nor do I really need cat hair stuck to all of my dishes. Well, with a little more free time, I feel less like the cleanup process is a waste of my time, and furthermore, I really only need to cook one night out of four, since generally the minimum size of packages the ingredients come in make about four realistic servings of whatever it is. I'm eating better food since I started making it myself, and no longer feel like a processed food junkie when I go grocery shopping. Leftovers get stored in single-serving containers for ease of reheating later. I have low-carb high-fiber bread-like options and lean lunch meats on hand for less dinner-like meals. Oh, and I have a weird thing for poached eggs. They're pretty awesome. Especially with a dash of garlic salt. Damn, now I may have to go make myself one.

Going to try to post more. I'd had kind of a block for a while, but that may be letting up a bit. I still expect Twitter will be getting far more of my traffic; if I don't have something long to say, it's most likely going to go there instead.

Also, I set this up:

Tags: domestic, emotion, introspection, tkt
frame of mind: thoughtful
listening to: Boards of Canada - Roygbiv | Powered by Last.fm

I can has Animal. :D

And yes, just like the 6" figure... his eyebrows are indeed articulated.

Many thanks to my wonderful metaphorge for taking care of Animal, bringing him home for me, and facilitating the acquisition of the rest of the Electric Mayhem... as well as providing input, suggestions, and technical expertise for the entire project. Oh, and physical labor, particularly help assembling the cabinet and cutting the plastic that needed cutting.

Tags: electric mayhem, metaphorge, muppets, photos
frame of mind: excited
listening to: MC Lars - Download This Song (featuring Jaret Reddick) | Powered by Last.fm

I haven't been posting progress every step of the way, since while I'd been getting little things done, there weren't really any drastic changes of the status for a while, at least not that was really obvious in the pictures.

But now I've got the lighting & upper shelf of the display done (well, as much as anything is ever "done") and all that's missing is the life-size Animal himself.

So to recap, since I began this project back in October, I have:

• Acquired the rest of the Electric Mayhem and their accessories, as well as a few extra drums for Animal and a jar of insta-grow pills
• Recruited one of the Toy Story claw game aliens to play tambourine (this started because I thought it would be cute, then realized it was perfect for looking like it was playing tambourine)
• Fashioned a clear plastic base and a makeshift guitar strap for Janice so she'd quit falling over and dropping her guitar quite so much
• Added a curtain to the back to hide the lighting cords a bit (this does a limited amount of good since there's still a couple I need to run inside the case, but it looks better with the curtain than it would without)
• Gave the Mayhem a few spare guitars, courtesy of the Guitar Hero toy line
• Got an LED strip angled up at the Mayhem in the front, and three more of them around the underside of the shelf to shine on the lower part of the case, where the large Animal goes

Someone, somewhere, at some point when I was talking about this suggested somehow rigging a cheap MP3 player that will play songs by the Electric Mayhem from the display. I think this is an awesome idea. I will find a way to make this happen, but that will likely be down the road a bit.

Tags: electric mayhem, muppets, photos, toys
frame of mind: pleased
listening to: Curve - Wish You Dead | Powered by Last.fm

So, a few weeks ago I got a life-size Animal photo prop replica, and it arrived just before KoL Con. When it arrived, I realized that there was no way in hell he could live at home without being in some kind of display case where the cat couldn't get to him.

A short time later, metaphorge got a Swedish Chef's Kitchen playset from someone who happened to also have the Electric Mayhem stage playset as well that he was looking to sell for a very reasonable price.

We have determined that collecting the Electric Mayhem is my responsibility, and the same guy actually has the rest of the Mayhem to sell for a very reasonable price, and I have sent off payment for it.

We went and picked up a DETOLF tonight and Animal and his drum riser are now happily sitting on the top shelf. The other shelves, of course, are not even in place, since the life-size Animal? Is going to take up the rest of the DETOLF.

Yay!

Tags: electric mayhem, ikea, metaphorge, muppets, photos, toys

FTR, metaphorge, tyrsalvia (a.k.a "redsage"), and I will be taking the Batzmobile (now its official name) down to Phoenix for the weekend for KoL Con VI. I am wondering if there will be an emacs theme for the weekend. We will be back most likely sometime Monday late.

Looking forward to seeing those of you who will be there!

Also, there are cool things to show off but that will wait at least a few minutes. More likely will happen after getting back.

Tags: kol, travel