Making some holiday cheer to spread around!

Please allow me to repeat the disclaimer on my userinfo that declares everything in this journal is my own opinion and not that of my employer.

My vacation has been since last Saturday and lasts until the first week of January.

I thought I could go on reading friends pages and stuff and keeping up with people, staying in IRC, and everything. I tried removing some people from DV/subscriptions/twitter but it still doesn't make me feel as though I can be here socially without being here professionally, the latter of which I absolutely cannot do right now. So I'm not going to be reading friends pages, and I don't think I can sign in to IM or LJ's IRC right now either.

The point of a long vacation was so I could get away from people (define as broadly as you possibly can) pulling knee-jerk reactions, bullshit moves, flailing around like Chicken Little, and yelling yelling yelling. This happens every day at my job to a lesser or greater degree, did you know that? And it adds up until it manifests as jaw pain and extreme anxiety on my part. Regardless of any merit current issues do hold -- for I do believe there are certainly issues worthy of serious open discussion -- in order to heal myself I need to get the hell out of here, and stop thinking about this website entirely.

So I may be posting (as this is my primary diary/journal) but I won't be reading or engaging in discussion until my break is over. Maybe in a few days I'll reconsider but only to test out how my new splint therapy is working. Yes, the dental splint is in; waiting for the office to open so I can schedule my fitting.

I'll miss you guys. A lot. It really hurts to cut off your emotional support group when you're trying to heal, but I'm left with no other choice.

Don't break anything while I'm gone. Anything I could have prevented, anyway.

ETA 12/15/2009 10:47 AM: the code has now been rolled back and will not be pushed with the next codepush.

synecdochic has chapter and verse here. Comments are frozen, I believe to the entire post.

This is LJ-specific. NOT Dreamwidth.

* Gender will be a mandatory field at LiveJournal account creation

* LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field. That's right: you get to be male or female. Period. That's it. (Source.)

LJ is now saying "it didn't mean it" in various AmazonFaily ways, but if you want to register your displeasure (and convince them that -- unlike Amazon -- they should not try to sneak this change to LJ in later) go to Edit Profile on your LiveJournal account -- if you have one -- and select Unspecified for your gender option. Then, go to http://www.livejournal.com/contact/?dept=feedback and politely register your displeasure. POLITELY, boyz and grrlz, because the kiddies who read and process Feedback are not the people who make the decisions. They are often the people who are on the same side of the issue as you are and are yelling up the food-chain about the decisions.

To also reach someone who's higher up the corporate ladder than the poor staff members who have to read and reply to Feedback, also email anjelika@livejournalinc.com -- Anjelika, GM of US operations. She's currently saying they never meant to make that part of Changelog go live at LJ's next codepush, so letting her know personally that it would make you very unhappy is a real plus. If she's on our side, it will give her ammunition. If she isn't, it will give her a headache...

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My mom used to have the most astounding collection of VHS tapes. She had the entirety of Blake's 7, Are You Being Served?, Blackadder, lots and lots of Doctor Who...why yes I grew up a BBC junkie! My grandma did the same thing, except with Lawrence Welk, quilting or cooking shows, and the like. She would tape kids' shows for us and gift us the tape. It was awesome.

I adopted this habit in my teens, recording hours and hours of Ghostwriter, early 90s SNL, Kids in the Hall sketches, music videos, and MST3K (pre-SciFi era you could fit 4 MSTs on a tape if you stayed up took out the commercials for three of them, and I was usually up doing AP Bio homework anyway). I also have my rainbow tapes which are...potpourri and I mean that in the (im)purest sense of the word. These could and do have anything on them. Yellow Tape is mostly SNL in its early 90s glory (except with the "dirty" sketches cut out so Dad wouldn't get upset), Purple's mostly KitH, Green is mostly music videos, but as for Red, Blue, Orange, and Spotted -- you have no idea what you're going to get when you put it in. "Best" of all are all the unmarked tapes that I know have important things on them, but they're completely unlabeled.

I loved these 6-hour tapes, except of course on days when Mom wanted a lot of Jon Pertwee and I wanted to watch My Little Pony & Friends. I didn't get into the Doctor until high school. Then one night in 1994, while Ruthie and I were in the living room, unable to sleep because we had the chicken pox -- we were ages 12 and 16 respectively so we both had it bad -- we were watching one of Mom's AYBS tapes and discovered there was a Doctor Who episode plonked in one of them. And in our addled state of pockiness and 2am and "wah the remote's so far away"...we watched it through, fell hard for it, and that was the night I was hooked. Okay, watching Paradise Towers now is pretty damn hilarious, which is why we continually tease each other about it, but you try watching it after being awake for more than 24 hours with chicken pox catching in your braces, lining your stomach, and making peeing impossible without screaming pain and then we'll see how rational you are.

...I'm seriously digressing. The point is, we could put in a tape and know that we'd have 6 hours of not having to get up or decide what to put on next, and if we fell asleep that was okay, it'd just rewind and I would have set the TV on a timer to match the time left on the tape, so it would shut itself off and all would be well.

DVDs and DVRs completely messed this up. If I have insomnia and I put on one of my MST DVDs, I know I'll have to get up an hour and forty minutes later to change the disc, which also includes "arrgh which one will I watch next". And I currently have a quirky sleep schedule, so I really, really miss having more current TV & movies in 6 hour chunks. Some of the TV DVDs make this somewhat possible (my collection of Arrested Development, for example, which has about 5-6 episodes per DVD) but now the DVD makers are getting in the habit of only putting 2-4 episodes on the tape and filling the rest with extras, like "you can watch the same episode just with people talking over it and not in the funny MST way". Extras are usually nice but...the point is I wanna watch the show for hours without stopping.

I really, really miss Mom's old tapes, too -- I would love to just pop in "Key to Time" or "Trial of a Time Lord" (ESPECIALLY after seeing "Waters of Mars", gah!) or anything out of Blake's 7 right now. I guess that's the whole point of this entry, really. I just want to watch a whole lotta old school BBC without having to rent them one disc at a time off Netflix, or torrent them and worry about legalities as well as hard drive space. Meh.

Things that have the "w" sound within them. Yes, that's Sarah Palin. Discuss.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

We did end up having a snow day on Wednesday, which was nice. Rick's office closed, too, so we stayed in. I wrote out my holiday cards and we watched all 4 Die Hard movies. It was a good day. I'm shocked that I didn't update my LJ, but sometimes it just slips my mind. I've been more active on FaceBook lately, but LJ is my internet home. I can't entirely be myself on FB.

Today I did some shopping with my friend Libby and got a lot of presents wrapped. I also got some of my packages put together for Rick to take to the post office on Monday. I'm running kind of low on small boxes--hopefully a few more packages will come in the mail and I'll have more to wrap. Right now we're watching Angel and hanging out.

I'm very, very happy to have another weekend day tomorrow. We have a lot of cleaning and stuff to do.

Hey, all. What's the second-best email client out there that runs on Windows? I'm ready to give up on Thunderbird, since I was waiting about 4 years for 3.0 to come out, only to find that it still doesn't have support to sort an IMAP folder by the date you got the emails. Is there anything else out there that people use, or is everyone so into Google that you don't even download email anymore? All suggestions welcome.

Until then I'll keep using Outlook Express. Seriously, people; help!

Nevermind, found a ridiculous workaround for my problem. Yay, Thunderbird 3!!!

This is the view next to the tv while we watch hockey. Ridiculously cute.

http://booksforkidsingayfamilies.blogspot.com/

Picture books for children about the experience of knowing or having a gay parent, family member or friend.

This list serves three purposes: for parents who would like to find books for their children about the experience of being a child in a gay family, or having a gay friend or family member, two: for librarians who would like to develop collections on this topic, and three: for counselors and therapists who would like to use these books in their practices. Summaries included are either from the Library of Congress, Books in Print or book catalogs. The list will be annotated as books are reviewed.
[from the site]


These look like books for much younger readers -- the kind who need to have books read to them than reading them, I'd say. The site contains links to a variety of resources, as well as links to a list of GLBT or GLBT-Friendly Parenting Organizations.

This entry is crossposted from http://ivorygates.dreamwidth.org/140101.html. have commented on it. Comments here are disabled. Please comment there using either your Dreamwidth account or OpenID.

Was at work until about 7:45 today. Home now and didn't get up the energy to turn on the TV until a couple minutes ago. Ready for bed; didn't want dinner, though at least intend to stay up until 10. Work deadline this week, and then two more in early January.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Poll #1496312
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40

2009?

2010?

2011

Billboard has named Daniel Powter, whose song "Bad Day" topped the Billboard charts for five weeks in 2006, the one-hit wonder of the decade. The magazine defined a one-hit wonder as any act whose second song didn't reach the top 25. To be fair, it only considered the years 2000-2007, because last year's hit-makers might still have another one up their sleeves. (via)

I have 8 Google Wave invites.

Post your email address that you would like the invite to be sent to in a comment (screened of course) and I will send you an invite.

If I go to bed and more people want invites than I have left, I will put you on a waiting list for the next round lol

1.
2.
3.
go.

p.s. One thing to be aware of, invites do not come immediately, it may take a few days to a week to come but they do come.

also, if you have google wave, you can add me to your contact list if you want, my address is dawnam at googlewave.com

From the ridiculous to the sublime.

Author's Notes: My first video: a tribute to the brave men and women who have risked and sacrificed their lives in the fictional yet heroic struggle against the Goa'uld empire, set to the songs "Heimdall's Ruf" by Equilibrium and "40 to 1" by Sabaton. Just pretend they're singing "Ta'uri" instead of "Poland" and "Goa'uld" or "snakeheads" instead of "Wehrmacht" or "Reich", that way it makes more sense ;-) I don't own any of this; Stargate is property of MGM and SciFi. This is my tribute and for entertainment purposes only. Greetings from Germany and enjoy!



(Yeah, I'm bored and distracted tonight. Why do you ask?)

This entry is crossposted from http://ivorygates.dreamwidth.org/139958.html. have commented on it. Comments here are disabled. Please comment there using either your Dreamwidth account or OpenID.

This is an immortal human document...




This entry is crossposted from http://ivorygates.dreamwidth.org/139659.html. have commented on it. Comments here are disabled. Please comment there using either your Dreamwidth account or OpenID.

So I'm starting to think about getting an HDTV. The way this sort of thing usually works for me, that probably means that I'll actually get one around June. Here are random thoughts. Happy to hear opinions from those of you that know this stuff.

I think I want a TV between 37" and 42". That way, it won't be any smaller vertically than my existing old-school 27" CRT. I also know I want 1080p and 120/600 Hz. Specs like that should be available for close to $500 in a few months, I have a feeling, if they're not already. I'm not sure what other numbers matter.

I need to buy a stand. And a universal remote. I don't know anything about universal remotes these days, except that they're uber-fancy and cost a lot more than I'd expect them to. (Apparently you can spend $200 on a remote??)

And I need some sort of DVR setup. As far as I can tell, the options are:

We sold our tickets to the Brett Favre show to see TSO. Don't regret a thing
:)

Today I completed all of my Christmas shopping for people at work. Next up is family shopping. I feel like I'm already behind.

Also, I'm getting ready to send out holiday (NOT specifically Christmas) greeting cards. If you'd like one, please PM or e-mail me your address, or comment with a link to your filtered contact info post, etc. Comments are NOT screened, so please don't post your whole address there unless you want god and everyone to see it. I have many of your addresses already, so if you know I have it, don't worry about it (although you can say "MEMEMEMEME, I want a card!"). Some of you are getting a card whether you want one or not. ;o)

Now I am going to wash some laundry so I will have some clothes to wear this week. This was a good weekend, but too short. Always too short.

( tons of bpal, bottles, decants, with pics! other etailers as well! )