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The Turnip King's Bastard Son
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| The Portland Ice Storm video |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|02:27 pm] |
I don't remember who I was describing this to the other day, so, whoever you were, here it is: the wince-inducing multi-car low-speed traffic accident orgy.
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| a perhaps-easier friendslist query |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|02:33 pm] |
Those of you who find yourself handcoding HTML, what text editor do you like for the purpose?
Historically, I've used XEmacs, but I do it rarely enough (it's been almost three years since my last round of updates) that I don't really retain much knowledge in between times, and so the kinda brutal learning curve hits me each round.
I'm sure there exists something much more graphical and friendly for relatively lightweight projects (sites with a dozen or two pages, with basic CSS and minimal Javascript), and cheaporfree. Any recommendations? |
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| Speak, lazynet! |
[Jun. 14th, 2009|12:06 pm] |
| [ | mood |
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Can anyone recommend a local tax attorney? I find myself rather in need of one. |
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| On Being Okay |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|03:34 pm] |
I seem to have done it again--slacked off on posting health updates once my own sense of crisis had subsided.
The remaining impacts of my time in the hospital are as follows: Appointments with my oncologist are more frequent than they were last year. I'm only doing barbecue delivery three nights a week, down from four to accommodate the guy they hired to fill in for me. And I'm still hip-deep in insurance paperwork.
I feel as well as or better than I did in March. My blood levels are within normal ranges.
I met with a specialist at Dana Farber last week to discuss possible supplementary treatments, and she advised against any such. So now life returns to normal, with the only substantial change being that now I know with some confidence that the HCL will be coming back eventually, where before I had hoped it might be gone forever. |
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| A Modest Proposal |
[May. 18th, 2009|03:01 pm] |
Hey, if you connected turn-signal levers to the internet, so that you posted an update every time you signalled a turn, maybe more people would actually use them! |
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| Recommendations Backlog |
[May. 13th, 2009|12:10 pm] |
Daisy Owl is a very good newish webcomic in the Achewood vein.
Why did no-one tell me about Highland Kitchen? It's awesome! What's that? You say you did, over and over? Well, why did no-one tell me I should be listening when they told me how awesome Highland Kitchen is? Huh? Huh? ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yagagriswold did some research and reports that the chef is the same chef who made Green Street Grill awesome back when it was awesome.
Charlie's Kitchen's beergarden is keen-o! Thanks for going there with me, mildmannered.
My Wicked Amber horns were the best 20 bucks I ever spent.
Keep your tires inflated. Seriously--even Barack Obama says so. |
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| Beeb, you perplex me. |
[May. 1st, 2009|04:15 pm] |
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8027269.stm
"[T]"he San have already been shown to have the oldest genetic lineages, suggesting they may be descendents of a population ancestral to all modern humans."
As distinct, presumably, from people who are not descendents of a population ancestral to all modern humans. Seriously, what was this guy actually tryng to say? I'm kind of stumped. |
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| Consent only counts if you're young and pretty, right? |
[Apr. 12th, 2009|07:50 pm] |
Massachusetts state Rep Kathi-Anne Reinstein (D--Saugus/Chelsea/Revere) has added an amendment to a state bill originally about child porn. The altered bill would impose a ten-year jail sentence for anyone taking nude pictures "with lascivious intent" of anyone over the age of 60 or with "a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment that prevents or restricts the individual’s ability to provide for his or her own care or protection."
The thing that really blows my mind is the professional-media near-silence about this one. The Herald provides it's usual nuanced and sophisticated perspective on the story (headline: STATE PUTS PORN PERVS IN SIGHTS), but other than that this seems to be a blogger-only story.
Perhaps, if you think that disabled or older folks are capable of consent despite Rep. Reinstein's opinions, you may want to have a word with your own representative on the matter, and save the courts a spot of bother reminding the legislature of basic constitutional rights. |
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| Augh! My head! Get it off me! |
[Apr. 9th, 2009|01:21 pm] |
Two headlines on the Globe editorial page today:
A carbon cap with teeth
The thorniest mine in the drug war |
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| Happy Numbers; De-Cyborgization |
[Apr. 8th, 2009|02:12 pm] |
My ANC is now pushing 2500; Wikipedia says anything above 2000 is "normal."*
My hematocrit, or "crit" as the kids are calling it, is a modest 25.9, bu that was enough for Dr. Weissman to authorize the removal of my PICC line. The minor downside of that is that the blood draws this Friday and next will involve actual needles. Nonetheless, I shall not be missing it.
She has also authorized one drink a day for the time being.
The Flagyl pills for the C-Diff** also end today, so all-in-all this feels like a big turning point. I'm in no state to go back to biking quite yet, but other than that, my life returns to something rather like normal.*
* I guess there had to be something normal about me, someday.
** The J-Lo of stomach ailments. |
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| Home. |
[Apr. 4th, 2009|05:57 pm] |
Arrived home about half an hour ago, driven by the superhumanly patient dreda and rising_moon, who had been on-call for this purpose for something like 84 hours straight now, including an hour spent in the MTA parking lot after I had said "Definitely definitely four no fooling" at two or so.
My morning hematocrit reading had been 19.6, enough to provoke one unit of transfusion. I found this out about nine AM. Three hours between that nine and that five of my work day were the actual red fluid. The other five went to red tape.
But now Yagagriswold is making me dinner, while I sit in my freshly-cleaned living room on my own sofa, under my own lap blanket, with a cool drink in my hand. Bliss! |
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| My So-Called Status Update |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|06:33 pm] |
Chemo bag 3 of 7 has been installed. Still feeling pretty much normal. Hydrating like a mofo and running to the bathroom every half hour to help my kidneys flush out the dead cells we are helpfully producing for them.
Wifi makes everything better. My spousal-type person makes everything even betterer. I have never been so grateful for the amazing timeskinkitude of Civ IV. Sam & Max Season One turns out to be only moderately amusing.
Have resumed using Google Calendar to try to keep track of scheduled visits as that starts getting complicated. Unfortunately, almost no-one knows what time of day they're going to arrive. Fortunately, it's not like overlaps are an actual problem.
Does anyone have a copy of Dark Light by Ken MacLeod? I'm within a day or so of finishing Cosmonaut Keep. |
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| It's an eventful week |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|12:26 pm] |
On Monday evening, Spike and I walked down to Nathan Tufts Park, and, with jbsegal officiating, and dreda and rising_moon witnessing, got married.
We'd decided that we wanted to get it done before I went into the hospital again, so we kinda hustled though the process, but what we produced was a short. tiny, very happy ceremony that suited us very well. I don't have the vows we wrote here with me, but I'll probably post them in the next couple days.
Today I'm writing from Mount Auburn Hospital with a PICC line in my arm; the chemo should begin in a few hours.
In a year or two, there will be a bigger celebration with much booze and food. |
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| Sculpey! |
[Jan. 26th, 2009|04:30 pm] |
After about a year of stop-and-start progress, including several multi-month abandonments of the project, yagagriswold and I have finished renovating my hatrack. It was two dollars and pretty much black with tarnish when I bought it at a church yardsale. I disassembled it, polished the polishable bits, and then we went to work with the Sculpey and paint. Most of inspiration here was Yaga's, but the execution was pretty equally divided. We're still hoping to add a few refinements, but it is now actually in use, and so ready to show off.
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| But yesterday! |
[Jan. 19th, 2009|05:13 pm] |
Yesterday was a snowday for me, and one of those "Weekend" things I keep reading about for my sweetie, and we finally dug out the PVC and foam I acquired two years ago for just this purpose (the duct tape is of rather fresher vintage), and I scratched my head and tried to summon the couple lessons I'd gotten from jeremywhite some time around the turn of the century.
Mine, which I have tentatively named Bagylsmytre, came out pretty okay:
But Spike's, which is yet unnamed, is a thing of awesomeness:
Now I promised the guys at the Caning Shoppe I would bring them by. They wanted to see what I was talking about when I begged the foam scraps off them. I estimated about a week... |
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| Porter Square Books makes a mighty fine mocha |
[Jan. 19th, 2009|04:28 pm] |
I didn't sleep last night--I was up till dawn coughing.
A statement like that is nearly always a distortion. I probably dozed off for twenty minutes here or there. I was definitely half-asleep a lot of the time between coughing fits, so it's really a definitional matter.
This cough I have snuck up on me. The bug started as a sore throat over a week ago, bad enough that i took a sick day at the beginning, then settled--to my relief at the time--into a cough. I took some Nyquil and Vitamin C, but didn't give it much thought, and didn't remember to replenish the Nyquil when it ran out.
After several hours of hacking away in the dark this morning, at four, I got up, scrounged up the key to Spike's apartment, and guzzled the cough syrup in her medicine cabinet. Turns out it was her roommate's but at any rate, it did little good.
At 6:30, I decided to get up and walk into Porter to buy cough syrup at CVS, and run a few other shopping errands I'd let back up. I checked the forecast--22°F,which seemed pretty managable after this last week. So I layered up and set out.
7 AM on a federal holiday, layered with fresh snow, is rather pretty it turns out, but the going was a rather slow slog, even walking down the middle of residential streets.
It's about a mile walk, so well before eight I was at CVS picking out my selection of druuugs. I took them up to the counter and found that I had forgotten my wallet.
I ran through my reserves of salty language a few times, then brainstormed if there was absolutely anything I could actually accomplish on this trip, sans cash or cards. I ducked into Porter Square Books and asked if I was, peradventure, due a free drink yet?
Not quite, the young woman behind the counter told me after checking the computer, but close enough. And she made me a large mocha to console me for my slog back.
I did make it back there eight hours later to actually run my errands with Spike. This time it went more smoothly. |
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| Balaclava Blues, or, I Go To Eleven |
[Jan. 18th, 2009|04:53 pm] |
Friday was, I think, the coldest night I've worked outside in two years of bike delivery. I was a little apprehensive dressing for it. I put on:
* Three(3) layers of silk long underpants from Winter Silks, which are still light-weight enough that it didn't feel particularly bulky, under a pair of quilted insulated cargo pants. Into the cargo pocket went three(3) mini-packs of Kleenex. More on those anon.
* A silk turtleneck long undershirt, under a fleecy "expedition-weight" long undershirt that I'd bought on sale at REI because I thought I looked rather fetching in it, but has turned out to be too warm to wear indoors under virtually any conditions and too snug to layer on top of most indoor clothes, under another silk turtleneck, under my sturdy waterproof nylon biking shell with mad cargo pockets.
*wool socks, under fleece socks, under fleece-lined waterproof shoes with a pair of chemical toe-warmers in them.
* Heavy "lobster" (one finger division down the middle) biking gloves, with chemical handwarmers inside.
*A light ear-covering headband under a light wind-proof balaclava under a bike helmet.
I hadn't tried using the toe warmers before, cause the insulation on my shoes is excellent. They provided just the right subtle trickle of heat I needed to keep my feet perfectly comfortable that night. The following night, with temperatures almost ten degrees higher, in the high teens rather than the high single digits, my feet were rather too warm.
Keeping my fingers warm is the biggest winter challenge of my job, since you really can't handle money gloved, so I need to remove my gloves outdoors for every delivery. I was a fool to never invest in the big lobster gloves last winter, and I love them now that I have them. There are individual finger compartments inside, which has the unfortunate side-effect of meaning that I can't stuff the mini-handwarmers inside the fingers, but most of the time there's no need to do so.
At first, business was slow, and I paced in the parking lot feeling a little chilly, but not enough to bother shedding my jacket and putting on the extra layers I'd packed. After a couple deliveries, I was sweating enough that I shed the outer turtleneck for the rest of the night.
The earband/balaclava combo is something I'd settled on last winter. My ears are apparently much more sensitive to cold than my nose. My problem with balaclavas is that in cold weather, my nose runs pretty much constantly, so that ( above-the-neck bodily fluid tmi ), such that, on arriving at my destination, it takes two or three tissues to make me presentable to ring on someone's door. I recoil from tallying up how much I spend on tissue packets in a winter--it's got to be something fearsome.
I have two balaclavas. One is baggy and cozy, but tends to slip off my nose and forehead. The other is snug and lycra-y--less comfortable, but more secure. I mostly used the latter that night, because a stray wind against my forehead was cold enough to give me an ice-cream headache. By the end of the night, it was frozen into shape around my beard, and attempting to stick to my soul patch.
At one point, I had just pulled off the balaclava after a delivery, and was trying to read the outdoor map of our delivery range. I found that the steam was blocking my view, so I held my breath. The steam was still coming up in lazy curls, and I realized it was rising from my face.
So this is all just to brag about how hardcore you are, right?
Yeah, basically. My self-mage through most of my life has been as a pretty hardcore nerdy squooshy indoorsman, so when people are amazed by my fortitude, it's rather gratifying. I actually don't think it's mostly fortitude--it's mostly learning it'd doable, and acquiring and combining the approrpiate gear. So my excuse of posting this is that its the sharing of a bit of experience on how to dress for stop-and-start biking in rough weather. |
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| Bourbon Island 1730 |
[Dec. 4th, 2008|06:16 pm] |
Bourbon Island 1730 is a collaboration betwen Lewis Trondheim and fellow french comix boffin Appollo (sic), who I'd never heard of before. It's set on the Caribbean island now known as Reunion in the twilight of the Age of Piracy.
It's a graphic novel about pirates in which no current pirates and no successful acts of piracy appear anywhere. It's about Buzzard, the last great pirate captain, who never appears onstage, and dies between the ending and the epilogue. It's about the Reunion Solitaire, which may or may not be a variety of dodo, and may or may not be extinct (In a typical oblique joke, it is hinted that the last one may be accidentally killed just off-panel in an early scene.) It is about a harsh and violent place, where I don't think a single act of violence appears on the page (though we see a couple grisly aftereffects). Many of the characters are motivated by the desire for Buzzard's treasure, which may or not exist, and the book closes with a facsimile of a cyphered treasure map which may or may not be a hoax, and if authentic may or many not be an actual guide to anything.
Trondheim's storytelling and characterization are breathtaking here. I kept pausing while reading to txt mildmannered about how infuriatingly good Trondheim is with apparently no effort at all. The book is funny throughout, poignant throughout, with a big, colorful cast, and cinematic in the best sense--the abortive attempt at piracy towards the end will, I predict, be taught in comix storytelling classes decades hence.
I lent it to my mother, who, like me, devoured it with yelps of delight; and, like me, shouted a string of obscenities when she reached the in-your-face fizzle of the ending. The bulk of the book appears to be putting an intricate plot machinery in place for a massive climax that then dissipates in a puff of wind.
In a typical Trondheim book, this wouldn't have been so infuriating--he specializes in the lovingly aimless meander, where the point is never the point. Here, though, the lead-in was so structured, so orchestrated, that we felt safe to expect the climactic payoff that never arrived. Part of me kept desperately hoping this was a mislabeled vol. 1 of a two-volume story.
Other notes: Trondheim's ability to make his art both loose and lush is well on display here. He must have drawn tens of thousands of individual leaves depicting the jungle backgrounds.
He uses Alan Moore style punning-dialogue transitions a few times, though not so much as to make the gimmick irritating.
The historical endnotes make it clear that the bad guys eventually win, and the good guys (the Maroons hidden in the inland mountains) eventually lose, wiped out by the encroaching white government. Much historical fiction would elide this by allowing a temporary victory for Our Side, and then drawing down the curtain during the reprieve. It strikes me as likely that Bourbon Island's infuriating fizzle is largely a reaction against that approach. |
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