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Below are the 25 most recent friends journal entries:

March 19th, 2010
01:34 pm girlygothic [Link]	Who's up for a group outing? I was going to just share this for revolos55. But then I realized others on my Friends List might also be interested. So, who would like to make a day of it? Oh, and besides the exhibit I linked, there are lots of others that look interesting as well. Tags: friends (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:54 pm jducoeur [Link]	Liar, liar, pants on fire Ars Technica today has a ruefully amusing article about the ongoing Viacom / Google lawsuit. Both sides are going at it hammer and tongs, and revealing what they're finding in discovery; the upshot is that both have probably lied to quite an impressive degree. The article is well worth reading (and not terribly long), but the high points seem to be: -- YouTube knew perfectly well that most of their content was pirated, and actively avoided doing anything about it so that they could drive up their value, and Google was entirely aware of this when they bought the company. -- Viacom has engaged in a lot of sleazy hypocrisy, screaming bloody murder about their content appearing on YouTube while engaging people to go and put more of it up. (For publicity, and possibly to strengthen their hand in a lawsuit.) Nobody comes out smelling of roses from this one. It'll be interesting to see the end result. If all the allegations are true, it sounds like Viacom is right that Google knew about infringement and wilfully ignored it, but Google is right that Viacom deliberately muddied the waters to the point where there was no practical way for Google to do much about it... Tags: technology (Leave a comment)
10:02 am overstim [Link]	dreams I had a very vivid dream last night... I was moving in to a house on Fresh Pond Pkwy with Pat and Kat and a couple of Wombats roommates when he was on Winter Hill. I had to continually explain to people that Crystal and I weren't having any issues- I had agreed to move in with Pat when his roommate moved out, before I had met Crystal, and I had to keep my word because he was hard up to find someone. I only moved a couple bags worth of stuff because I still would be visiting the house. The room already had a bed and a computer desk and some art on the walls. Kat and Pat were in the living room getting ready to go out and the other two roommates came in to welcome me and hang out and gave me whiskey. I remember being very excited to have cool roommates and be close to the city so I could start getting out and have more of a social life again, but also deeply sad that I'd be missing Crystal and the baby. hm. (Leave a comment)
07:57 am scorched_angel [Link]	Sooo... I was out on Wednesday night and ran into the owner of a club in Lowell who I had worked with in the past. After talking to him for a bit, I was more or less offered the opportunity to run a night in his club on Thursday nights. If I do decide to do this, I would run the night twice a month opposite Resurrection's nights. I haven't fully decided whether I will do this yet, but the wheels are turning. Part of the problem is that I feel as if I don't have enough knowledge as far as Website building/maintenance in order to keep something like that going, nor can I design fliers. Outside of that, I am pretty much all about it. It most certainly sounds like it will be made well worth my time to put in the effort, I have always wanted to see how I do on my own running a night, and given the venue, I believe that I could even be able to book live acts without too much trouble (this I will need to look into further). So my question is: Would you be willing to check out a new Thurs night venue? Current Mood: curious Current Music: "Disciple" by Slayer (Leave a comment)
06:49 am neko038 [Link]	Weird dream Ok I just had a dream where Alex and I were for some reason in a McDonald's theme park and I got hungry, he was going to wait to eat until we got home cuz it was McDonald's, and I decided nothing else sounded good but a rootbeer float. So I went up to get one and after ordering and drinking half (before I paid) an older couple came up and tried pushing me out of the way. I was pushing back and arguing with the man while Alex was in the background saying "I am still back here you know" to the guy and then the alarm went off. Silly, weird dream. But now I want rootbeer. CRys (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
04:03 am asmodai [Link]	and yet more adoration. good night. (Leave a comment)
March 18th, 2010
11:52 pm catullus_5 [Link]	Cavity I got the "We can't stay friends because you keep wanting to win me back and I can't lead you on" talk. So that's that. I'm not an idiot and I'm not a psycho so I know when that's that. Years down the road, perhaps I will hear her voice again. Perhaps not. And now... there is zilch. (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
08:58 pm jducoeur [Link]	Contact lists in Firefox Just got an interesting post via the Portable Contacts mailing list -- Mozilla Labs has a new, pre-alpha plugin for Firefox, that will import your contacts from social networks and let you use them inside the browser. It's just a baby step, but hints at the happy day when we might be able to manage contact lists more centrally, reducing the hassle of having to manage so much duplication across networks. (Consider that I have large contact lists on LJ, Twitter, Facebook and Google. Well over half of those lists are the same people, and I largely want to group them the same ways. Nowadays, I have to manage each one separately. I would love to be able to centralize that task. There are a lot of hurdles before that's possible, but every step in the right direction is a positive one in my book...) Tags: technology (Leave a comment)
12:24 pm asmodai [Link]	f/.95 First roll taken with the rangefinder. Wide open. No. WIDE.open. Expired Agfa Optima 200. (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 17th, 2010
11:54 pm little_e_ [Link]	Tree Hugging Today we took Link outside because the weather was nice. He was riding his tricycle all around. He's still too short to reach the pedals, but he can push it with is feet. Before when we showed him his trike he wouldn't even sit on it, so that's a big improvement. The sidewalk is slanted in some spots, so he'd take his trike up to the top and then roll down, laughing. At one point he got off the trike and went up to one of our little trees and pressed his ear against it. I wasn't sure what he was doing, maybe he was trying to listen to it? Then he said, "I'm hugging tree, Mommy." When we had to go in I told him that his tricycle needed to go to bed in its tricycle house (our closet). As we came inside, Link said to the chinchillas, "Chinchillas, tricycle went night-night." (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
08:41 pm siderea [Link]	[ethics, psych/anthro] The Blame Game Consider the following scenario. You are somewhere -- maybe home, if that fits the rest of the scenario for you -- and your beloved significant other (SO) isn't there. A friend of yours, who is known to your SO but not particularly in contact with your SO, drops by with her pet dog. Because you know the dog is very well behaved and mellow, you allow it into your house with the guest. While you are preparing refreshments, your guest excuses herself to use the restroom. While the guest is out of the room, the dog is laying placidly on the floor across the room from you. You're in a bit of a rush -- maybe the food you are preparing isn't coming out right, maybe the pan is hot -- and in your flustered haste, you knock a vase off a shelf, whereupon it smashes on the floor into many little pieces. The vase has no particular monetary value, but was a beloved heirloom of your SO: it was hand made by your SO's much beloved and lamentably deceased mother, and has some particular symbolic sentimental value. You may reasonably surmise that your SO will be distraught at the destruction of the vase. You quickly collect the fragments of vase (the dog started slightly at the noise, but otherwise stayed right where it was, across the room, watching you curiously.) When your guest returns from the restroom, she gives no indications of noticing anything about the vase nor hearing any noise. After an otherwise pleasant visit, the guest and the dog leave. An hour later your SO arrives. In breaking the news to your SO about the vase (take it as a given that you would break the news sooner or later), which of these would you do in regards to attributing the breaking of the vase? Poll #1539457 Blame game Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 99 What would you do? I would confess to breaking the vase. 96 (97.0%) I would blame the dog. 1 (1.0%) Other. (Explain in comments.) 2 (2.0%) Would you consider blaming the dog an example of a "white lie"? Yes. 8 (8.1%) No. 87 (87.9%) Other. (Explain in comments.) 4 (4.0%) Tags: ethics, psych/anthro (50 comments \| Leave a comment)
07:37 pm asmodai [Link]	CANCELLATION: The Ides party is OFF Hello Humans, I am loathe to tell you this. The Ides of March party, scheduled for this Saturday at FutureHouse, is canceled. The basement flooded on Sunday, and despite many drainings, water continues to seep in at an upsetting rate. For those who don't know, much of the house's party capacity is in the basement. I would reschedule for the immediate future, but unfortunately I go under the knife a week from Thursday. Therefore, I am choosing *April 24th* as the rain date for the event. Mark it now. *April 24.* Mystery and wonder. I apologize for the delay. -Tristram (Leave a comment)
01:28 pm girlygothic [Link]	Wicked Cool Architecture Concept Yoinked from varianor... Check out the Waterscraper Tags: environment, geekery (Leave a comment)
March 16th, 2010
10:27 pm siderea [Link]	[pshrinkery] Medical Home Note to self: "Medical Home". The radical proposition that maybe physicians and their staff should be paid for doing case management so that, you know, it gets done. That sure would be nice. If it were to become normal, it's not even impossible that I could start getting paid for some of my other 30% of my working time in the clinic. Tags: pshrinkery (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
07:17 pm siderea [Link]	[MA] Looking for recommendations 1) Looking for a commercial house cleaning biz that comes well referred and serves Arlington, MA, for a big one-off job (getting a house ready for sale). I'll be hitting Yelp, but I'd be pleased to get some word of mouth. 2) Any local booksellers buy used programming and technical books? Tags: boston (6 comments \| Leave a comment)
04:15 pm overstim [Link]	Yum Last week in chicago I basically gave up. I was too homesick and too stressed out (and too poor) to worry about eating well. i wasnt TOO bad- I had a nice dinner of spatzle and game meat sausage at the Berghöff, and im now hooked on hot dogs with tomatoes, pickles and celery salt. A.K.A. a Chicago dog without all the gooey crap. i've still been drinking soda too much, but much much less. Probably about 1/4 of the artificial drinks I used to drink. When I buy anything, i try to stick to real sugar, which keeps me honest because its too hard to find and too expensive to guzzle. I want to make a plug: Red Bull cola. NOT Red Bull energy drink, we all know that is poison. Sometimes necessary, but poison nontheless. Red Bull cola, strangely, is quite the opposite: Its a cola made will all-natural ingredients. Cane sugar, lemon extract, lime, cola nut, cardamom, clove, orange mint, and a few others. No Polysorbate 80, no ginko biloba, no taurine, no phosphoric acid or any of that crap. And its really, really tasty. (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
03:39 pm siderea [Link]	[MA] Laying the Bones to Rest (Ride?) It is shaping up that maybe I could use a ride from East Arlington to Brookline Village (Von Huene's, actually) for me and more stuff than I could take on the T, at 2pm (arrive at 3pm) next Tuesday, March 23. I'm waiting on hearing from other people I'm coordinating with, but this looks likely to happen. I don't need a ride back. My plan B is taking a cab, but that will be awfully expensive. Anybody able to help me out on this? Tags: ma (6 comments \| Leave a comment)
01:15 pm cokebottletuque [Link]	Why I love Anime Boston's tech crew; (Leave a comment)
08:12 am jducoeur [Link]	Now where did I put that dove and olive branch? I'm sure they must be around here somewhere... Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com Tags: diary (8 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 15th, 2010
01:41 pm girlygothic [Link]	Something to Make Geek Hearts Go Pitter Patter OMG! This is so freaking cool! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=this+is+so+freaking+cool Yes, it does work with whatever other text you substitute. Tags: geekery (Leave a comment)
10:47 am jducoeur [Link]	Today's prize for unhelpful error message goes to... (drum roll, please) ... Microsoft Outlook, for the following delight: Outlook is using an old copy of your Offline Folder file (.ost). Exit Outlook, delete the .ost file, and restart Outlook. A new file will be automatically created the next time you initiate a send/receive. Okay, points to them for at least telling me roughly what I need to do, instead of simply crashing. But not only does it not offer to fix the problem for me, it doesn't tell me where this old .ost file is. I mean, I've got 150 Gig filled on this hard drive, and probably 50 major directories of Microsoft application crap. So I really have little desire to go hunting for some random file that happens to have the suffix .ost, and I'm pretty sure that Windows Search will churn for an hour looking for it. (Help me, Obi-Wan Google. You're my only hope!) ETA: Having just had a discussion at work about a very similar problem (an error message that said "missing required attribute 'source'" on an XML document, but not saying which node the missing element was on), let's draw a moral from both stories: When you are writing an error message, remember to provide enough context* to solve the problem.* Step back, and assume that you are a user who doesn't know the program perfectly. (After all, if they knew it perfectly, they probably wouldn't have this problem in the first place, right?) Make sure that you include enough breadcrumbs for them to find the solution quickly. Especially for an unrecoverable error, more information is usually better... Tags: programming, technology (15 comments \| Leave a comment)
09:54 am catullus_5 [Link]	Growth as in cancer News item: Suburbs of Washington, D.C. now make up six of the ten richest counties in America. How, I wonder, did those residents attain their fortunes? Let's see... is D.C. a hotbed of manufacturing? Lots of factories there? High tech perhaps? The entertainment industry? Could it be business and finance? Help me think of a prominent sector in the D.C. area that would employ a lot of people. Whatever it is, it must be a thriving industry, for its employees to end up with so much money. A sector so strong must surely generate a lot of wealth and capital in the economy. After all, an industry prospers only if it is generating benefits for its customers (and hence the economy as a whole). Otherwise no one would be voluntarily sending money to the industry's businesses. There's only one sector I can think of where this doesn't hold true. Only one sector that merely redistributes other people's wealth instead of generating any. That's another explanation for how all that money, all that wealth from other people, could depart the rest of the country and settle in the houses around Washington. Does this particular sector by chance have any presence in that area? (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
09:43 am jducoeur [Link]	The purpose of modern American society... ... is to confuse future linguists. I mean, yes, okay: most instances aren't quite as obscure as the suffix "-gate" meaning "a political disaster". But with "-geddon" now added as meaning "a natural disaster", surely someone is going to wind up arguing that "-g-d" is the underlying root meaning "disaster", and there must be some religious implication of that, right? (This rant brought to you by today's popular Twitter hashtag, #rainageddon, which I believe now officially marks it as a meme...) (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:22 am little_e_ [Link]	Chinchillas! We are now the proud parents of two adorable chinchillas, named Titus and August. Pictures will be forthcoming as soon as I remember where I put the camera. Their previous humans had to give them up because they developed an allergy. Titus is an older chinchilla who was rescued from a bad breeder. He's pretty mellow and is still recovering from the move. August is his best friend, younger, and more inquisitive and sociable. We set up their house on the stair landing in our unit because the toddler gate prevents a certain small child from running up and banging on their house all day. (So instead he stands at the gate and bangs on it and screams for us to let him see the chinchillas. But he is actually learning pretty quickly that this is not getting him anywhere.) Link is actually less interested in the chinchillas themselves than in their house, which has DOORS! which he can OPEN! and CLOSE! and OPEN! and CLOSE! and OPEN! and CLOSE! and so on. (OCD is normal in toddlers.) But today I took out August for a bit, which promptly resulted in August jumping out of my arms and running around the room and hiding under the bed and pooping 7 times under the bed (chinchillas are poop machines.) Which further resulted in Link running around going, "August! Chinchilla! I'm gonna catch you, August!" (approximate chances of toddler catching small rodent: 0) August did hold still long enough to let Link pet him, though, which I am glad to say Link did gently. Link has also apparently decided that the chinchillas are monsters, and ran around saying, "Monster! Hey, monster!" Eventually I caught August and returned him to his house. A little later Link went over to the gate and held up a sock he'd found and said, "Look, August, sock! August, talk to Linky? Talk to Linky?" He was rather disappointed to discover that the chinchillas won't talk to him. It's always delightful getting a look into a small child's mind--and in Link's mind, why shouldn't the Chinchillas be able to speak English? Link has also begun saying "I love you." Today I got an "I love you" while playing the sleeping game (a game where we pretend to sleep and Link wakes us up and we act all startled and he thinks it's very silly and funny.) In other news, Tron started crawling last week. He's gotten very good at it and is now crawling around everywhere. Link is more interested in Tron now that he's mobile--I think he thinks of Tron as 'real' now, instead of just this noisy toy that mommy carries everywhere. About two days after he started crawling, Tron began pulling himself up on everything--he says, "hey, I've mastered this crawling business, I'm ready to walk." I tell him to wait a little bit and enjoy his crawling a bit more. Tron loves eating and at his last weigh in was in the 20th %--big boy! He especially likes bananas and sweet potatoes and puffies (small crunchy finger foods). There is a slightly reddish tinge to his hair that's very pretty. But I think people don't compliment him as much as they did Link--Link was such a pretty baby. I think Tron gets more compliments when I dress him like a girl. But yesterday he was in standard boy clothes at Target and some nice folks thought he was just adorable! So there's some variation. Babies are funny people. They're like us in so many ways, and yet so unlike us in so many ways. They're just themselves. (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
12:28 am siderea [Link]	[MA] The MBTA is Drowning While I Sleep Well, that's new. Not only is the Blue Line down (not without precedent) and the Green Line D Train down (not without precedent -- considering Kenmore Station's true aquatic nature, I'm surprised any of the Green Line is functioning), the Ashmont leg of the Red Line is down due to weather. Holy cats. Tomorrow's commute could be really sucktastic. :( Tags: boston (2 comments \| Leave a comment)

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