Category: general

It’s sleeting across the area. Makes me want to be home with a cup of cocoa.

What if we could elect people every day? Micro-elections, if you will? Instead of a huge shebang that took attention away from the issues, every day a person would evaluate their elected officials and their decisions and decide if they were happy or not. Over time, that cumulative impression could result in an election, if, say, “disapproval” votes reached a certain percent. And people would throw their names into the hat to replace them whenever they felt like it–“Don’t like how Steve’s doing? Vote him down this month and I’ll run for his spot when the election comes!”

I don’t know, it’s just a thought. I’m tired of how ridiculous elections are. Things either don’t get done during that time, or get done without anyone paying attention to them. And can a person who has to focus a great deal of energy on re-election really make informed, proper decisions?

Maybe there could be a pool of politicians, and elected officials would be chosen from that pool. To get into the pool you’d just have to meet certain criteria (education, experience)–it’d be open to anyone, regardless of how much campaign money they had. People in the pool would put out opinion statements that would be published for them, with no frills. No mudslinging would be allowed. And if people liked someone in the pool better than their current elected official, they could start voting that official down and voting that pool guy up.

Or something else. Whatever. It just seems like technology could seriously level the playing field if we’d let it.

A woman was pointing at some printed text going through a machine, trying to make a point to the girl running it. The girl wasn’t having it, though, and grabbed the woman’s arm. Soon she was shoving the woman’s arm into the machine, which chopped it up into bloody stumps that fell to the floor.

I hid my eyes and screamed.

The other day I remembered a diary entry I wrote when I was pretty young about going shopping on Black Friday. I said something like, “We got up early today. Mom says all the stores have their best prices the day after Thanksgiving.” And then the entry is just a recap of where we went and what we bought. I probably listed what food we ate, too, since I have been a big fan of food my entire life.

Anyway, I always liked that entry. Whenever I’d come across it when rereading my diaries, I’d smile to myself.

Can you guess where this is going?

Before all my diaries burned up in the fire, I did type up a few notable entries. I posted them here. When I remembered this particular entry the other day, I went looking for it.

It wasn’t there. I guess I never got to that one.

The girl who shared my office at work has left for a new job. Her workstation will become kind of a catch-all for other people who need its resources, and for the rest of the time remain open and empty.

This office is big. Having it empty will be pretty lonely.

But it’s not the lack of a body in the chair behind me that’s on my mind today. It’s the fact that someone I’ve grown to like very much won’t be a part of my daily routine anymore.

I’m really going to miss her.

When change happens in my life, my way of dealing is to exert as much control as I can. In this case, since I’m losing an officemate, I’m taking the opportunity to rearrange the office. There are two doors, and now both of them open; previously, the one leading towards the newsroom was blocked by my desk. I’m not done, but I’m liking the change so far.

Except for the added noise.

Also, people tend to like to congregate in this office. It’s in a central area in the station, at the junction of many hallways. Today there have been far too many people in here. I can be pretty sociable, but today…not so much.

I finally closed the door leading to all those hallways and just left the other door newly open.

Even though I have some measure of control over the things around me, I can’t control the events…so my coping isn’t working out as well as I’d hoped.

In other news, when I’m sad, I’m perceptibly stupider. I need to remember that so I can keep my head down in the future.

Normally I save Sluggy for last when I’m reading webcomics, because it was my first-ever webcomic and I still consider it the best, and I always save the best for last. (Penny Arcade is next to last.)

But here lately I go to Sluggy right away, because I’m dying to know what happened. It’s been awhile since that’s happened for me with any webcomic :)

The current story arc starts here.

So this year’s online trend in digital photography is photos of real places that look like pictures of models. I’ve thought it was neat since I first saw some of the photos, but I thought I couldn’t do it because I don’t have a tilt-shift lens.

But then yesterday Wil Wheaton linked to a photo of his that someone called vertigo25 had done up fake model style. From that page I found a link to a mirror of a tutorial on how to replicate the effect in Photoshop.

The result isn’t quite as cool as the real thing, but it’s still interesting. So I tried it out.

This is really the best I was able to come up with. You can see my other attempts here.

As you can tell, there are some issues with photos with large height variations. It’s kind of difficult to find the best focal area. Still, it was a fun experiment. Maybe I’ll eventually figure out how to do it better, or take a photo that is better suited for the process.

(vertigo25 used a different technique to create his mask, and linked to this example. It looks like he traced around the tree and bridge to keep them in the foreground. That would probably work better with the heights I’m dealing with.)

My aunt has had some pretty serious complications from surgery. She’s in the ICU; my mom is with her.

Any good thoughts you might be able to send her way would be appreciated.

So yesterday I decided to spend far too much money at Wal-Mart on Christmas decorations. (After the fire, I don’t have any. So it’s only natural that I catch up. Right?)

When I got home I cleaned and decorated the office.

I’m pretty happy with my little Christmas tree done up in pink. It goes with my armchair. Plus, pink is pretty :>

When I first started picking out ornaments, I went for a bunch of silver and blue stuff. This is one of two garlands I bought, thinking I would use them on a larger tree that I would buy later. This time around, I just picked a small tree that at the time I thought I’d put in the kitchen.

When I got home and realized there were two little trees in the box instead of one, I decided to put one of the garlands on one of them.

I could have made both trees identical, but what point would there be in that?

I also kept both trees in the office, because unfortunately they have to be plugged into each other–I can’t have one in here and one in the kitchen. But I think they look okay in here :)

It was impossible to avoid bringing this snowman home.

Here’s the full view. As you can see, I also got quite a collection of Christmas CDs, as well as some peppermint-colored candles.

Not pictured are the ornaments meant for a larger tree (which I still hope to get later!), the little silver reindeer hanging from the bathroom doorknob, and the larger red candle tray with a peppermint pillar surrounded by additional round peppermint candles.

I’ve been listening to a CD called Christmas Dinner – Elegant Saxophone Quintet, filled with instrumental Christmas favorites, since yesterday :)

The web is transient by its very nature. In the time it takes to open an FTP program or change a few settings in a CMS, years of content, years of history, can completely disappear.

Maybe it’ll get captured by Google cache or the Internet Archive. But it won’t be where it used to be, and you won’t find new content along the same lines, either. More importantly, if the site was a place of interaction, that means suddenly you have lost a community.

The result is just jarring. You’re left wondering what happened, and sometimes there’s no explanation. If it’s a larger website, the abrupt transition or closure might have made the news somewhere, but if it’s someone’s blog…

It’s a place where you used to interact, even just a little, and suddenly it’s gone, and you don’t know why.

Whoever took everything away probably didn’t mean anything by it.

But it’s insulting. It demonstrates antipathy towards the site’s community. It says to them: I don’t care that you came here. I don’t care if I ever interact with you on the web again.

I would have liked to, but things just didn’t turn out that way. I suppose if I had tried harder I could have made time for it.

Oh well.

Here’s a survey I found over at the Extraordinary Bride’s blog.

That part about not giving a paragraph explaining why is talking directly to me.

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Hey you! Yeah that’s right, you! When you do this survey you can only use ONE word to answer each question, no more and certainly no less (what would be the point then). And for the love of god, don’t type one word and then give a paragraph explaining why, it kinda defeats the purpose (and i haven’t figured what that is yet).

Not as easy as you may think.

1. Yourself: searching

2. Your girlfriend/boyfriend: happy

3. Your hair: flat

4. Your mother: ideal

5. Your father: warm

6. Your favorite item: camera

7. Your dream last night: interrupted

8. Your favorite drink: water

9. Last time drunk: never

10. Your dream car: bicycle

11. The room you are in: lonely

12. Your ex: bald

13. Your fear: trapped

14. What you want to be in 10 years: me

15. Who you hung out with last night: hubby

16. What you’re not: humble

17. Muffins: blueberry

18: One of your wish list items: tickets

19: Time: incomprehensible

20. The last thing you did: googled

21. What you are wearing: comfortable

22. Your favorite weather: crisp

23. Your favorite book: expelliarmus!

24. The last thing you ate: minty

25. Your life: good

26. Your mood: odd

27. Your body: huge

28. What are you thinking about right now? wanting

29. What are you doing at the moment? blinking

30. Your summer: nothing

31. Best part of your life: opportunity

32. Best friend: two

So, with the ending of the Audioblogger chapter of my online journaling experience, I’ve been wondering what to use to replace it, if anything.

It occurred to me the other day that I could produce video posts and host them with my spankin’-new YouTube account. Because I have no editing software, the videos would simply consist of me, talking. Perhaps the camera would be on me. Perhaps it would be focused on some sort of scene.

It wouldn’t be as immediate as my phone posts, or as simple…but it might be interesting.

It would also open me up to ridicule from the YouTube masses. But hey.

I made a comment this afternoon and it’s still not up. Perhaps some of you made comments as well! So this post is an effort to get the blog to republish and maybe reveal any activity over the past day.

Godspeed, intarweb.