She's mighty, mighty, just letting it all hang out.
Apr. 29th, 2012
11:55 am - A note about this journal ![[sticky post] [sticky post]](http://l-stat.livejournal.net/img/icon_sticky.png?v=11043)
Welcome to my Live Journal. If you’ve landed here from one of my communities, you should know that I write about everything in one place. So if you were hoping for just costuming/fandom/reenacting, you’re going to get more than you bargained for. Most of my posts are open/unlocked because that’s how I roll. I read a lot of entertaining/educational stuff on Live Journal, and I consider leaving my journal open to be "paying it forward." I love learning about people; I think human beings are the most fascinating creatures on the planet. =)
I write what I want to. If you enjoy what you read here, it’s nice to hear that once in a while. I enjoy comment conversations immensely. If you’ve got an opposing point of view, and can make it in a civilized manner, I welcome your contributions to the discussion. I do try to have an open mind, and I’m always willing to learn new things.
However, this is my journal. If you don’t like what I post, I’m not forcing you to read it. Please don’t try to censor me or tell me that I should lock a particular post. I’m working on speaking my truth, and when someone says that I should lock a post what I hear is that I should be ashamed of what I wrote. I will not hide or be ashamed of who I am, what I feel, or what I think. Even if I put my foot in my mouth and make an ass of myself. There's something to be learned from those moments too.
A note to Lurkers, please be aware that one of the dangers of eavesdropping on other’s conversations is that you might occasionally overhear something that you don’t like hearing.
Anonymous comments are now disabled. I’ve had too many Russian spammers. If you do not have a Live Journal account, you can leave a comment via OpenID.
Apr. 4th, 2017
09:49 pm - How to Migrate to Dreamwidth
Updated as I learn new tricks
Dreamwidth was founded by ex-LJ staff members and the Dreamwidth code is a fork of the LiveJournal open source code (which just means that the software that runs Dreamwidth is based on LiveJournal’s code base). So the features (journals, commenting) should feel pretty familiar to anyone who has used Live Journal. Dreamwidth does not include advertizing. There’s the added bonus that you can subscribe to someone’s feed without friending them and allowing them access to your personal posts, which seems useful to me (especially during the "getting to know you" stages of online friendships). I’m also looking forward to being able to search my own journal (I’m always trying to find a lost post about something or other, I haven’t always been good about tagging my journal entries so I can find them here).
Added bonus for data nerds like me, Dreamwidth publishes their site stats. The LiveJournal Statistics page has been down for several years. The last time I managed to take a screen shot was 2012. (I’m a data nerd, I wanted actual proof that the site was dying before I fled.)
If you want to move to Dreamwidth:
Read the Guide to Dreamwidth for LiveJournal users.
There are a few Live Journal features missing. The two biggest things are no advertising, and DW does not have an official mobile app. But LJ no longer supports their mobile app, and this page lists workarounds for mobile users.
Create a free account OR Buy a Paid account if you prefer. (They’re slightly more expensive than Live Journal, but Dreamwidth is ad free, I’m happy to pay to support that!)
If, like me, you’re an icon addict, buy more icons so that your posts have their proper icons when you migrate (and so that you can migrate your entire icon collection).
Import your LiveJournal to Dreamwidth. This may take hours or days, depending on how many journals are waiting in line ahead of you. (FYI Your friends-locked posts will have a padlock icon, private posts will have one of those little red circles with a slash through it.) If you import your journal more than once, you'll get duplicate entries. (I imported mine in 2010, so all my earlier posts are now duplicates.)
ETA April 10 The importer is still running, we swear! It's just very busy.
Find your friends (put their screen name in the search box and select "Site and Account" from the menu before you hit search).
Friend people (From their profile page click Subscribe to read their posts, and/or Grant Access to add them to your friends circle. From their journal page, click the Add To Your Circle link up in the header and either subscribe and/or grant access.)
Start making posts.
09:44 pm - Why I Leaving LiveJournal for Dreamwidth
I’ve been a member of Live Journal since August 26th, 2005. Although I didn’t make my first post until October 21st (longtime lurker, first time poster….).
I’ve also had a DreamWidth account since September 2, 2010, which tells you how long there has been upheaval here in LJ-land. I created that account and migrated my posts over there, just in case, and then pretty much forgot about the account.
This is probably going to be my last post to Live Journal (well, maybe my second to last post, I think there’s going to be another one about how you can join me on DreamWidth and migrate your journal contents when you come over).
TL;DR "Livejournal no longer pretends to adhere to the concept of Freedom of Speech and/or privacy as (still) practiced in the USA." I will not pay a Russian company to store my journal if it is required by Russian law to allow the Russian government to read it.
( Cut for reasons. This is kinda long.Collapse )
06:18 pm - StackOverflow Developer Survey 2017
Respondents who identify as women were more likely to agree or strongly agree that diversity in the workplace is important than respondents who identify as men. Men of White or of European descent were much less likely to agree or strongly agree that diversity is important than men of any other ethnicity.
https://stackoverflow.com/insights/surv
In other news, water is wet.
Apr. 3rd, 2017
11:15 pm - Weekend Update - Sewing Circle
We had a late spring storm this weekend that started on Friday and finished on Saturday. They were predicted anywhere from 12 – 18 inches (11 – 12 on Friday and 5-6 on Saturday). It started snowing here around 9:30 or 10:00, and even though it snowed pretty heavy at times, it wasn’t sticking at all. By the time I left the office there was really nothing accumulated on the roads, but maybe an inch or so on my car.
( Blah, blah, blah. With bonus Jeremy Renner dreamCollapse )My brain ladies and gentlemen, snarky even when I’m asleep.
09:21 pm - Signs of Spring
Despite the April Fool's snowstorm, there are definitely signs of spring.
Plenty of sunshine and lots of melting on Sunday.
I didn't wear a coat today, just my fleece vest.
This morning I saw at least four dudes wearing shorts when I swung by Hanniford's to return my movie rental to the RedBox.
On the drive home there were just swarms of joggers out enjoying the warm temperatures (we got up to 60 degrees today).
08:48 am - Weekend Update - Briefly
I'll write a longer update when I get home tonight, but yesterday's sewing circle was a success. I got the house clean (Whoot!). We adjusted Alex's five year old pattern from Brittney to give him a wee bit more room in the leg and the chest. Alena actually managed to get some sewing done, around catering to Percy's demands for attention. And Percy actually took a nap! (miracles!) I got in some sewing and chatting. And we had a bonus house guest, Bayla! For being so enormous (she's a Leonberger), that dog is amazingly chill. She just wants scritches and pets, and she's happy.
Apr. 2nd, 2017
11:58 am - Sewing circle today!
Five minutes before noon and I am up, showered, wearing pants, I've had breakfast and brushed my teeth and I'm just making a last run with the vacuum. The dining room table is cleared off, the kitchen, bathroom, and living room are presentable. (The sewing room is still a mess, but that's next on my list. Fifteen minutes should have it usable in there.)
Go me! Goal for the day, finally finish the sleeves on my pink tropical weight gown.
Apr. 1st, 2017
09:04 pm - The Matrix
Sufing around looking for something to watch on TV, and The Matrix is on SciFi.
It was so futuristic when it first came out. But that was 18 years ago. And now it looks dated. Why?
Because of all the phone booths in the movie! I never see phone booths anymore. In fact, CBS Sunday Morning just did a piece recently about how there are only a handful of actual phone booths left in Manhattan.
So where is Superman supposed to change these days?
Mar. 31st, 2017
09:27 pm - Getting caught up on the DVR
After getting really dreadfully behind with the new job and faire hitting me at the same time, I’ve been slowly cleaning the backlog of recorded shows off DVR over the past couple of weeks.
[Spoilers Ahoy, well, only if you’re behind on your TV like I was] Sherlock (Series 4) – I liked the first two episodes, but the third was one of my least favorite types of stories, the psychopathic villain. I really do not find stories (TV or movies) about sociopaths killing random people because they can't feel emotion to be entertaining. Why does Hollywood keep writing them? Once you figure out that the person is truly insane, all the tension goes out of the story because you know they’re just going to kill any hostages, because there’s no reason for them not to.
Taboo (season one) – After three episodes of dirty, dark, underlit London, thick English accents and muttered dialog, and a lead character who alternately glowers and has hallucinations, I gave up. I just wasn’t enjoying this mess of a show. Not even Tom Hardy’s handsome mug could make me keep watching it. And I’d already figured out what the Taboo was (incest).
The Royals (season three) – Still lots of soapy fun! This season Prince Robert returned from the dead, spoiling his little brother Liam’s romance with Kathryn (who was Robert’s girlfriend first). Although I’m not particularly happy about our hero Liam seemingly going over to the dark side, the show is still fun for me.
Timeless (season one) – Time travel shows are always hit and miss. Will they do the research? Or will the scripts make me cringe as only Hollywood can? The pilot on this one was fabulous, they went back to 1937 and the Hindenburg disaster. They tried not to change history, but of course they ended up changing things. And when they got back home, our heroine Lucy’s sister was missing. And her sick mother was in perfect health. I keep waiting for another one of their jumps to shift “current time” the same way, but so far they haven’t made that sort of dramatic shift again. Which is a shame, because that’s one of the ways they could be ramping up the tension, if every time they came home it was different and they had to adjust again.
But the time periods they travel to are interesting, and the costumes are reasonably well done, and they haven’t shied away from the fact that their pilot is black, and every time he jumps backwards he’s taking a huge risk (and having to deal with either being a slave or being horribly discriminated against). The episode where they jumped back to 1969 and met one of the NASA women from Hidden Figures (Katherine Johnson) was especially satisfying on that count, because she saved the day. The show isn’t as complex as it could be, but I’m still enjoying it quite a bit.
The Expanse (season one and two) – Wil Wheaton raved about The Expanse, so I set the DVR for it when they did a marathon, but didn’t get around to watching it until just before the second season started up in February.
I love scifi, but so often they do stupid things, like create huge open areas inside spaceships (all that space to heat and oxygenate) and completely ignore the laws of physics. While The Expanse does still indulge in huge spaceships and impossibly large open spaces on their space stations, they also pay attention to some of the important things, like that air and water are precious commodities in space. People die for lack of air (and not just by being thrown out of airlocks, although that happens too). People struggle to get clean water. And they actually go weightless on the show often enough to make it feel like we’re really in space.
The show starts out with a mystery, a missing woman, and a worn down beat-cop who is trying to find her. There are also mysterious happenings in space, that threaten war between Earth and Mars, with the “belters” stuck in the middle. We bounce back and forth between the cop, a ship full of strangers thrust together by circumstances beyond their control, and UN politicians on Earth. I especially adore Shohreh Aghdashloo as the UN Assistant Undersecretary. I could listen to her deep voice all day, and the clothes they dress her in are just exquisite. The rest of the cast is very multi-cultural, it’s not all white guys, there are a variety of women and people of color. There's a Canadian-Iranian actor, a British-Dominican actress, and now they've added a New Zealand-Samoan actress for season two.
12:33 pm - Losing a friendly face
I just found out that Ian, my friendly sandwich guy in the cafeteria, is moving to Groton CT with his girlfriend. I'll miss seeing his smiling face at lunchtime.
Mar. 30th, 2017
04:51 pm - Kimball's
Kimball's opened for the season today.
I could go get ice cream in the snow tomorrow. O_o
03:15 pm - Springtime in New England
It's 53 and sunny out today.
Tomorrow we're supposed to get ten inches of snow, with another five on Saturday.
Springtime in New England! It's never boring!
Mar. 29th, 2017
10:25 pm - Quote of the day – Writing
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/book
She [Izzy] remains true to her character, and Owen, like most men with women, is in over his head.
For me, the open marriage was solving a basic problem of writing novel, which is to get your characters up a tree and throw rocks at them. This was a very efficient way of doing that.
“get your characters up a tree and throw rocks at them.” I kinda like that idea.
10:24 pm - The wheel goes round and round
Today my Director shared a blog post (having “transparency” as one of our corporate values leads to a lot of blogging on our internal web site). And his post included a link to this article in FastCompany: Marcus Buckingham thinks your boss has an attitude problems.
Which got me thinking about company culture, so I popped into Live Journal to re-read an old post I made back in 2011 about company culture.
Which included a comment where kass_rants mentioned Marcus Buckingham.
It never fails to amaze me how everything in my life seems to end up connected somehow.
Mar. 28th, 2017
11:48 am - Spam of the Day!
Today’s contestant gets bonus creativity points for the following details:
1 – Claiming that I am dead!
2 – Not being sure if Mrs. Kathryn G Walker is a she or a he.
3 – Claiming they are protecting me (and this big inheritance that I didn’t know about) from scammers.
4 – Coming from Japan and NOT Nigeria!
( Mrs. Kathryn G. Walker Said You Are Dead.Collapse )
08:48 am - Amusing things that happen on conference calls
I'm sitting in an early morning (my time, late evening Brisbane time) video conference call. And I look up from my notes to see the Brady Bunch style display of people on the call, and there's a black kitteh butt in one of the screens.
Nicole's cat decided to traipse across her keyboard, right in the middle of the meeting, and lovingly made a bunch of changes in her Google doc with its wee toes. Thank dog for undo!
Hee!
(And now I wish I'd stolen Holly's cat butt icon for this post)
Mar. 27th, 2017
09:02 am - Weekend Update – Boston Flower Show
Saturday was a grey day, and as a result I had low motivation to get anything done. I ended up spending the day on the couch, watching TV on the DVR and occasionally getting up for a short burst of tidying up the house. It was a good compromise, I was able to indulge my desire to veg out, and also got the kitchen and living room tidied up quite a bit. In the evening, while watching more TV, I sorted through the pile of mail from this week and two large boxes of magazines and papers that have needed to be sorted. 90% of them went into the trash.
Sunday morning I was up early and showered because fionaniconnor was coming over and we were going to the Boston Flower Show together. I emptied and filled the dishwasher, which meant the kitchen counters were finally clear. Then I hauled out the trash bags of stuff I’d sorted through on Saturday. And then she arrived and we were off!
Last time I’d been to the Flower show (I can’t remember if I made it last year or if it was the year before?) I’d found a sweet parking lot in sight of the Expo Center. This year they were constructing a new building and what I think was that parking lot now had a fence around it and was full of dirt and big construction machines. *sad face* But Angela pointed me towards a parking garage under the hotel across the street from the venue, and after the usual driving around underground, we found a space.
The best part of the Boston Flower Show is walking in the door and getting hit in the face with a blast of fresh air. There are so many plants indoors, it’s like walking into a forest, all that freshly exhaled oxygen from all the greenery. Ahhhhhhhh.
Angela had never been to the Flower Show before, so I suggested my preferred routine, which is to go up and down each row, so there’s less chance of missing anything. We wandered down the first aisle, and turned up the second, where we made our first purchase of the day. A booth selling leather hats and shoes had two shoe shine boxes to demonstrate their wax based leather restorer. I’d worn my clogs, which were pretty scuffed, partly because I’d thought in the back of my mind that I might get them shined (and partly because I wanted to buy another pair of clogs, and it was an easy way to remember what size fits my feet!). We both got our Danskos polished, then picked up two tins of the wax. I’ve got a ton of leather shoes that need some TLC.
We found my pashmina scarf lady. Her scarves are the perfect size and weight to wear as either a scarf or a shawl. I’ve been shopping her for years, both for myself and for gifts, picking up a new color every year. This year I was looking for brown (to wear with Magda’s brown gown) or black. After we’d chatted for a few minutes, she remembered me (or at least pretended to). She had to dig under the table in her suitcase, all of the stock she had out was patterned, but we found me a black pashmina to add to my collection.
We’d made it about halfway around the exhibit hall, looking at vendors, the photography competition, the ikebana, and the flower arrangement challenges, when we both decided (almost at the same time) that we were hungry. We headed back to the food court we’d passed and had the special, a hot turkey, stuffing, and cranberry relish sandwich. Our first lunch companion was a charming little man and his mother who announced as he slurped on his juice box, “I’m about done here.” He was really adorable.
Once they toddled off, we were joined by a delightful older woman dressed all in purple with huge glasses and a wooly cap. She struck up a conversation by telling us that her friends didn’t eat, but she was hungry, and we chatted with her for a bit. One of her friends popped in right when we were having a conversation about relics, and then her friend abandoned her again. We laughed about how they’d go home and tell their friends about the weird people they met at the Flower Show. But she was delightful company. Turns out she was the first woman to graduate from her college with an architecture degree (I can’t remember which one, but IIRC it was a good one. Maybe Rutgers?). I was telling Angela about History Camp and the Boston Navy Yard and Rosie the Riveter. Then we got into a conversations about hairstyles after I'd showed our new friend my 1930s waves from a couple of years ago, and she pulled off her cap to show us her short cropped grey hair (which she said she’d had short for years) and Angela let down her bun to show off her knee length hair. Finally we all finished our sandwiches and headed back out onto the floor.
I almost bought some earrings at a booth with a big spread of silver jewelry, but after the third woman in the booth shoved another item under my nose, I decided they were too pushy and I would keep my money. It also turned out that they sold everything by weight instead of pricing it, which was just harder than it needed to be. Good boothies are hard to find.
We found the clog people, and because it was the last day of the show, they were short on larger sizes. I did manage to find a really cute pair of Mary Jane style clogs in my size which came home with me. OMG, they’re so comfortable. I’m wearing them to work today. We spent a lot of time in the hat booth, trying on many, many hats and laughing along with the other ladies enjoying trying on hats. I picked up another big brimmed hat to wear as part of my Suffragist kit (because I want to have a couple and besides, I’m a sucker for big hats) and Angela bought a lovely huge hat as well. Then we went back to the broom booth, where they were sadly out of the hand brooms that Angela had been eyeing for her car, but I picked up a coconut frond broom tied with twine instead of wire, that I’ll be using in camp this fall (tons of leaves end up blowing into my tent, so it will be nice to have a broom that I don’t have to hide this fall). Our final stop was to pick up plants on our way out the door. Angela picked up a couple of hydrangea and a two bouquets of roses and I found my daffodils at the florist outside the hall. They’re just starting to bloom on the kitchen table, it was lovely to wake up to them.
I had planned on getting stuff done when I got home, but the couch called again, and I spent my evening watching movies and farting around looking at my Pinterest boards and searching for patterns online. Not a bad way to spend my evening.
Mar. 24th, 2017
04:49 pm - Emojiis
I just realized my phone has way more emojiis on it than I thought it did.
Now the question is, why does my phone have an Easter Island emojii? What the heck am I supposed to do with that one?
08:56 am - Quote of the day
From one of my co-worker's blog posts about attending an engineering conference (no link to source, it's behind the company firewall).
It's true that I didn't contribute anything except body heat to the sessions - possibly not even a word - but I was a glorious parasite, sucking down the knowledge that was flowing around the room...
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