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May 11th, 2008

a quote fraught with meaning…

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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

–T.S. Eliot, from Little Giddings

This one is going into the quotes file.

Anyway, consider this a thread for open musings. What’s on your mind, folks? Comment away, either here or on LJ.

I may have more to say tomorrow, despite the May death march.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

Book 2: The Home Stretch

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Shortpacked!@TNI: Impenetrable without YouTube.
Shortpacked!: Beginning of a new storyline!

Confused by the TNI strip? Educate yourself. After seeing the poor dude humiliate himself over something so mindbogglingly simple, I couldn't resist. Because I'm a jackass. Apparently "Waspinator," one of the members of our forums, posted the video response! I have never been so proud.

Here's the skinny on Shortpacked! Book 2 preorders so far. I've raised enough money to afford a print run of 1,000 books. That's how much I produced of Book 1, and I gotta tell ya, it's not gonna last much longer. I'm feeling the drain as my remaining Book 1s escape through my fingers, and I haven't been to more than two small conventions, much less a full-fledged Comic-Con. Buttloads were ordered just in the past few weeks, along with preorders to Book 2.

1,000 books of Book 2 would cost me roughly $6500. I've gotten that plus all the money I need for postage to mail the books out to y'all. That is an amazing show of support from you folks, and I am incredibly grateful. However, for another $1000, I can order TWO thousand books. That would mean I'd have these things in stock for quite a while, and peeps won't be disappointed when they come to see me at Cons and I'm all sold out. Now, to get that $1000, I'd have to get preorders for 76 more books. I think that's possible, and I think we can do this in a week.

Call it a Book 2 Drive, if you will. I've even got the prerequisite thermometer fund raiser graphic on the right.

To help put a dent in the numbers, I'm gonna put that Batman/Mortal Kombat original art I showed you at the beginning of the weekend up for auction, and dump whatever I get for it into the Book 2 funds. So even if you've already preordered your book, you can help this process along in another way.

It's weird, having upwards of $7,000 sitting in my Paypal account from preorders, because none of it's actually mine! I don't see any of that money. It all goes right into the book and sent to you. Some day in the future, I may make a profit from this book. Probably (hopefully) at San Diego Comic-Con, after everything's all paid off. But first, I have a duty to you folks. I gotta take care of ya. And in the weird fabric of things, I need help from you to do that.

So if you've hesitated on preordering Book 2, please take some time to do so now. It's heartily appreciated.



EDIT: Shortpacked! Extras are SOLD OUT! I'm leaving a few slots open for those who promised to pay for them through snail mail, but otherwise, they be gone. There's still oodles of the normal ones, though!

Ferret Update

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I haven't rambled on massively about my cute feezley roomies. Arwen is doing tons better than 2 weeks ago. Tomorrow morning is the last dose of the last antibiotics. He's been playing like the old weasel, which makes me beyond happy. He's dealing good with the other two, playing and poinging and snuggling and whatnot. Speaking of the other two, Whiskey is looking more like Arwen every day. And acting like him, they're constantly wrestling and chasing each other around. Both also have a weird desire to bite my feet. Whiskey has mostly grown out of his desire to chew on everything, just a few things like me. ;) Nyx is still small, and cute and wildly curious. She wants under the doors in the worse way. She also is more affectionate than either boy, she'll put up with me holding her longer than the others. She also likes climbing up me to look me in the eyes. She doesn't wrestle as much, but she cheerfully joins in the ferret rumbles and chases both boys around. But she rather explore than wrestle. I do expect one of these days for her to show up with a shirt with a 'Mythferret' logo on it.

I'm so so glad Amythest talked me into getting the kits. They keep Arwen happy, and boy do they keep me on my toes. *happy ferret smile*

Weekend Update

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It's been a pretty good weekend. Friday started off with me getting out of work early, medicating the ferret, then meeting up with Amythest. We, plus some friends were originallyh going to go to an outdoor concert, but due to the heat and humidity, we decided that a movie night would be better. So we hung out at her place and watched Back to School. Fun, definitely 80's movie. Came home, played with ferrets and went to bed early. I was a tired fox, and I knew I'd be getting up early for Scarby the next day.

Got up on time, got snagged by [info]techie_ and headed out. Got to Scarby, met up with [info]mustangkitty04, [info]luckycjljw and [info]lifeblender. Always good to see them. Wandered around a bit, ran into [info]dartpoly and some other people. A while later Amythest and Nymaz made it out there as well, but the heat and humidity was not making things easy for Amythest, so they bailed early. But, plans were made to go see Speed Racer in the evening. Wandered around some more, ended up buying myself a nifty fox pin. Finally we headed out, giving [info]luckycjljw and [info]lifeblender a ride home. Then me and [info]techie_ headed off to see Speed Racer. I was pleasantly suprised, it's corny, it's cheesy, but it's fun. Check reality and any sense of physics at the door. But it's fun and funny, and not as bad as the critics are saying. Go see it.

After the movie I headed home, played with ferrets and cleaned up their cage. Went to bed around midnight and slept solid. Woke up this morning, did the usual routine, grabbed Mom for lunch at a local Mexican place, which was good. Then we hit Half Price books, then over to Walmart to do her monthly grocery run. Came back to her place, unloaded things and I came home. Now i'm just vegging out and not doing much of anything. *yawn* Quiet end to the day, quiet is good.

Happy Mother's Day

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Happy Mother's day to all the mothers out there.

Happy Mother's Day

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To all my mother peeps out there...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Thank you to everyone out there thoughtful enough to send me mother's day wishes. That was sweet! ((hugs))

sheltering sparrows, ravens and crows

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I have many talented friends. My friend Morg is one of them, sending me lovely jewelry she's made for me. I wanted to show some of them here today.

I lacked a human model to photograph these on, so Moro wore them for me today.

She made me a lovely set of earrings and a necklace she called "Raindrops".


(silver, pearls and blue topaz)

She made me some earrings to wear at our friends' wedding last autumn.

(silver and kyanite)

She recently made this cute and fun little anklet for me, which is very comfortable to wear.

(mostly mixed glass)

And she threw this cool design when I visited her last autumn.

(serpentine, I believe)

If you are interested, she's got some lovely wares up at her website. (I keep wanting to buy a good amount of them. Save me!)

Happy Mother's Day, in every way! :) + birdie stuff

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Whether you celebrate Mother's Day as a mom, stepmom, grandma or aunt, or as the child, stepchild, grandchild, niece or nephew of one of the above -- I hope you have a very HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! :D

I'm still going thru all the pix I took of Blueberry & Jellybean on their May 7 B-Day "party", but I'm not done yet. *sigh* Hopefully I'll post soon -- they're very "squee-worthy"! LOL In the meantime, I didn't want Mother's Day to pass without wishing everyone a great day, in whatever way you celebrate!

OH, before I forget, speaking of moms, yesterday I saw THREE different male-female bird pairs. :) One was the house sparrows who are raising their babies in a hole in the side of my neighbor's house. Actually it's for the exhaust air from their clothes dryer, but the mesh fell off years ago, so it's now very appealing for birds who like to nest in cavities. I see these cute birds all the time, actually, and hear them cheerfully chirping every morning and at various times of the day.

But yesterday I also saw a pair of house finches hopping along on the ground, eating things near my 4 o'clock plants, plus a pair of lesser goldfinches visiting and cleaning themselves on the fence and in our blue potato bush tree. And then today I saw the female goldfinch pulling threads/filaments off the fronds of our Mexican fanpalm. I guess she's going to use them in making a nest! :)

[info]aokugi posting in [info]1word1day
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sophistry / sof-uh-stree
noun
1. a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.
2. a false argument; sophism.

Example: The deceitful leader often used sophistries in speeches to his people.

Origin: 1300–50; ME sophistrie < MF, equiv. to sophistre
(Also see sophism of Ancient Greece.)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sophistry

Good day

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This was a really good day. I got up when I intended to, went to Scarborough Faire, saw several spiffy people and then went to see Speed Racer. The movie was cool. Now I'm relaxing at home and watching a show on future air combat. :)

May 10th, 2008

SUPER WEDDING WEEKEND

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Joyce and Walky!: SUPER WEDDING WEEKEND

Everyone's getting married this weekend. Everyone! If you think you know someone who isn't getting married this weekend, you're just misinformed. This includes yourself.

Gerald and Danihana, familiar folks to the forum, met through reading It's Walky!. They is getting married today. It is major sucks, because Maggie and I were supposed to be there, but something dumb happened and we couldn't. It is no fair, because I made this wedding happen by existing. The bragging rights are all mine!

Also, Hooper's getting married tomorrow. Finally, he can lose that virginity.

Joyce and Walky themselves may or may not have gotten married last month in the subscription strips. Not even they know for sure!

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The week wasn't bad. Friday was pretty quiet, given that we were down a man (scheduled time off).
I got "volunteered" for a project at work, but when I found out what it was I was OK with that. More working on the stuff I've been doing at home anyway (which is why [info]vupline137 volunteered me for it).
The gang was going to watch Brave Combo at NRH's last "Spring Music" concert, but the rest of the gang decided it was too hot and humid. By the time I got home from work I didn't really want to go anyway. Just wasn't in the mood for some reason, even though I'd been looking forward to it all week.
We all hung out at Amythest's instead.
After that, went back to my place and mucked around with Wine, got it correctly installed and managed to install Day of Defeat and Guild Wars and get them working. Even managed to copy all the uploads and content off the Windows partition so I didn't have to RE-download 15k+ update files for Guildwars. I no longer have any reason to boot into Windows. If I ever go back to World of Warcraft, I may need to, since [info]_techie says he didn't have much luck getting that to work in Wine. We'll see.
Heading down to Austin to visit the 'rents for Mother's Day, just as soon as Kestrel gets home from work. I have to run some quick errands first though. Pick up more food and litter for the short, furry folk, put air in the tires, etc.

salubrious

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salubrious suh-loo-bree-uhs
--adjective

favorable to or promoting health; healthful: salubrious air.

Favorable to health of mind or body; "not the most salubrious campsite"; "one of the less salubrious suburbs"

This story collection takes its title from a quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the salubrious effects of sending "roots into unaccustomed earth" rather than replanting succeeding generations "in the same worn-out soil."

[Origin: 1540–50; < L salūbr(is) promoting health (akin to salūs health) + -ious]

tweet tweet

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  • 10:16 very old lcd monitor replaced with much newer lcd monitor reappropriated from my coworker who quit last week. 1600x1200 >>>> ... #
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May 9th, 2008

May 9, 2008 - Ophiophagy

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Ophiophagy
Noun
a specialized form of feeding or alimentary behavior of animals which hunt and eat snakes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiophagy

Bob was starting to think that perhaps all he saw in the movies was not true; he had take 12 flights across the country and not been able to capture and eat a single snake. Granted, ophiophagy was a fairly fringe diet fad; perhaps, however he should be hunting rattlers in Arizona, rather than looking for Snakes on a Plane.

Inspired by the fact that I was flying on a plane all night last night, and didn't see a single ophidian

Degree GPA and future plans

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The degree audit tool shows "Program: Complete" for the Networking degree. Nothing surprising for the Spring 2008 grades.. As in all three classes. If I did the math right then it looks like I come out with a GPA of 3.74 for the courses on the degree plan. :) It would have been higher if I'd actually taken Microcomputer Applications instead of CLEPing it but yeah.. I'll live with the difference.

Course ideas for Fall 2008 )

Leaving work early

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Cutting out of work a little early, it's been a dead slow day. Got Hydra all nice and configured, with the exception of Xen. Not sure why it doesn't want to boot, I think it's something conflicting in the latest version of Ubuntu, since Shub-Internet seemed to go fine (minus Xen's strange desire to reconfigure X for me). So I'm going to bring a different version of Ubuntu on Monday, see how that goes for me. Yay for fleeing early, and yay for the weekend.

TINY HAMSTER RAGE

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This is a serious matter.

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Is it wrong that I want this? It's one of the coolest apps I've seen in a long time. Nostalga is a powerful thing. (Too bad I'd have to stop being lazy and buy Leopard to use it. No impulse buy for me.)

Oh, and I wrote this post using FormVI. It's totally awesome.

Friday: The Day I Add To My Radiation Quota

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Well, it's Friday. I'm spending said Friday working on a new computer at work. Part new build to replace my old box, part test box to try some new things that it's been hinted at here that I should learn. So now I have yet another 19" monitor pouring radiation into my geek bod. Wee. New box is named Hydra, one of the gods/leaders of the Deep Ones, along with Dagon. Makes sense when the main box is named Cthulhu ;)

Not alot else, it's Friday. I slept decently last night, in a fairly good mood all in all. Of course, new toy to play with always helps. Ok, enough babbling, time to finish updating Hydra.

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