Quick break in the hotel room in Grand Rapids, and what do I do? Connect to the wireless network and check Twitter, LJ and DW...

All told, the trip has had way too many disasters, but they have all eventually been resolved, at least. I would like a less disastery vacation some day, but I suppose I shouldn't complain, as I am at least getting a vacation.

Current Mood: tired

A couple of pictures of the new hair coloring (and recent cut). It came out subtler than I originally intended, but I like it.

Current Mood: pleased

I was up at 5:30 this morning writing down a dream that I had so that I can turn it into a story.

I blame this on murnkay. I'm sure I caught the writing disease from him, and not any of the many other authors I know.

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Current Mood: amused

I haven't forgotten my promise to post pictures. I either need to get the ones Joel took or I need to grab the ones I took using Amy's camera and upload them, and I haven't done either yet.

Interim update: three windows shattered, five more with frames broken so they'll have to be replaced even though the glass survived, lots of windowscreens trashed, a window air conditioner trashed, skylights trashed, roof will have to be replaced. We have a $4000 hail deductible on the house. We'll have to figure out whether we want to try to pay the incremental cost of any upgrades we could do as long as we have to replace a bunch of stuff.

The Taurus is totaled, though we'll be buying it back since it's just cosmetic damage. We'll be getting around $4000 for it net, so that pretty much covers our deductible on the house. The Honda took approximately $7500 in damage. The trailer hasn't been evaluated yet but I suspect it's totaled as well.

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Current Mood: tired

So we had a close encounter with a tornado a couple of hours ago. Shattered windows but no injuries other than the hailstone that hit Bill in the ear and the little glass shard I stuck myself with cleaning up a bit.

Still no power, posting from my phone. Should have some impressive photos in the morning...

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You know, I usually like kynn, but I do acknowledge there are occasionally times where she gets pretty damn strident.

The irony of the tone argument being used against her (particularly nastily) on a time when she was actually being pretty damn reasonable is not lost on me.

(I want a mood icon that captures "frustrated and angry and disappointed and sadly unsurprised and...")

Current Mood: disappointed

So for a game I'm playing, I need a phrase in Japanese (or, frankly, in bad wannabe Japanese). I'm wanting an overly-polite "Excuse me, Secretkeeper, please hear our prayers," sort of statement. The obvious bits are something like "Gomen nasai Secretkeeper-sama, ?? ?? kudasai," but I'm not sure what the ?? ?? should be.

This is an spell invocation for a cleric of Hello Kitty, so weeabooness is totally in-character, if that matters any.

ETA: Looks like I had anonymous and OpenID comments turned off. Whups. I think it's fixed now.

ETA2: Here's what I have so far, in romaji: Gomennasai Secretkeeper-sama watashitachi no inori o kikite kudasai

Thoughts?

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Oh dear.

I found a tutorial on how to get a minimal C++-based kernel up and running on x86.

Last night I installed Bochs and a GCC cross-compiler and got my minimal C++ kernel to boot.

I've wanted to write a hybrid C++/Python OS for a while, and played around with OSKit at one point, but never went anywhere.

Now I have to get enough minimally up and running that I can use things like STL. And, more importantly, a Python interpreter and Boost.

Oh, dear.

Current Mood: accomplished

Why do I read transfeminist writings? It just ends up pissing me off. Especially when it's good.

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Your result for The Kink Spectrum Analysis Test...

Ultraviolet (350 nm)

Current Mood: stressed

Just testing the crossposter. Nothing to see here, these are not the posts you're looking for, move along.

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So I am really, really trying to keep from getting my hopes up.

And I am failing utterly.

Okay, I just found this snippet of XML. There's more, but this should be enough to horrify anyone who understands XML:

<VariableSection><![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0"…

ETA: For those who don't know XML, this is a not-completely-insane way to do a usually-complete-insane thing, namely to embed an XML document inside another XML document. The case where it's being used is not something that could possibly warrant even thinking about something like this.

I can haz Dreamwidth. No, I don't have any invite codes yet. I'm not moving yet, but it seemed worth staking out my claim there before someone else grabbed "ysabel".

Compare these two posts:

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-possibly-using-category-metadata-to-filter-rankings/

http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

Even if this is true, it doesn't absolve Amazon. This is not an exploit of a bug, it's an exploit of a policy decision. This is not a software glitch -- the software is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It was designed to allow exactly this sort of thing, intentionally, because the people making the policy decisions asking for this feature (deranking) didn't think through how it could be exploited.

ETA: I find the policy decision of hiding things from me that Amazon thinks are inappropriate for me to see incredibly objectionable, if that wasn't clear. The fact that said policy decision is also easily exploitable is just icing on the cake.

ETA2: More on the specifics of this particular claim, and the likelyhood of it being a metatroll: http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html

That said, I still think it has signs of being some sort of exploit.

ETA3: What they said: http://tech.blog.extendance.com/2009/04/13/amazonfail-a-architechtural/

http://open.salon.com/blog/amytuteurmd/2009/03/12/no_maam_your_5_year_old_did_not_get_gonorrhea_from_you

Today while walking to lunch I saw a bumper sticker. In large letters, it said, "JESUS DIED FOR ME". Under that, in very small print, it said, "and you".

I think this sums up quite a lot, honestly.

Current Mood: tired

So, my browser's title bar is (as it generally is when you read email in okcupid) "OKCupid.com: An intimate message".

The subject is "Missed IM messages". The contents of the message?

theferrett: *snerk*

theferrett: I know that feeling. :)

theferrett: Well, not the cock, but still. :)

(Posted with theferrett's permission, I might add...)

Current Mood: amused

I am five today!

P.S. I'm still working on the last batch of readings. Probably this morning.

Current Mood: happy

I've done this once before and I'm in the mood to do it again today. One-card readings from the Brian Froud/Jessica Macbeth The Faeries' Oracle deck by request.

Somewhere between the first fifteen people and the first thirty people to ask for a card will get one (or possibly more, if the faeries insist, but I guarantee at least one). I may not get to all the actual readings today, but I will post an edit when I'm not taking any more requests. If you give me a question, I'll try to interpret with that in mind. If not, I'll be more general.

Be aware that this deck is really, really prone to poking fun at askers of questions, and I will not water down that tone at all. *grin* But it should be all in fun. Usually, anyway...

P.S. cow, koemiko, lyssabard, littlone and dekucat, since I missed you last time any of you may have a card just by asking, even if I've closed it. I'll keep you in mind when I decide when to close requests.

ETA: Yes, I know LJ is going down any moment now. If you get in before then, maybe I'll have them when LJ's back up, if not, well, I'm doing this when LJ comes back up this afternoon. :)

ETA: I have fifteen as of right now. I'll probably do a few more but how many depends in part on how these go.

ETA: Taking a break for a few. I have seventeen requests so far, and I'm thinking I'll stop at twenty-one, since I like the idea of seven by three requests.

ETA: I have twenty-one requests. This round is closed. I'm working through the remaining readings.

Current Mood: thoughtful