I made you an entry!

Dentistry.

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:02:58 GMT

I had a cleaning this morning. I was way less nervous than at other times, for three main reasons:

1) It's right on my way to work, which means both I knew how to get there and I knew exactly how to time it so I got to work on time.

2) The dentist did not harass me about hygiene. I comprehend that dentists do have to come at you about hygiene, but the tone really matters. I did not appreciate the sense of personal slight I kept getting off the last dentist.

3) [Personal reasons.]

She advised that I get an electric toothbrush, so I got a battery-powered one for now, and will investigate costs of rechargeable batteries versus an electric toothbrush.

All in all, no doom at all.

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A quick comparison.

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:18:37 GMT

Death Masks, Jim Butcher:

Kincaid took a couple of steps up and glanced warily around the street. "Make up your mind, Dresden. I'm not keeping her out here for long."

"What about him?" I asked the Archive, and nodded toward Kincaid. "Can he be trusted?"

"Kincaid?" the girl asked, her voice whimsical. "Can you be trusted?"

"You're paid up through April," the man replied, his eyes still scanning the street. "After that I might get a better offer."

"There," the girl said to me. "Kincaid can be trusted until April. He's an ethical man, in his way."

Enchanter's End Game, Book 5 of the Belgariad, David Eddings:

"Can he be trusted?" Droblek asked bluntly, pointing at Issus.

Sadi's expression became whimsical. "Can you be trusted, Issus?" he asked.

"You've paid me for up to the end of the month." Issus shrugged. "After that, we'll see. I might get a better offer."

"You see?" Sadi said to the two seated men. "Issus can be trusted until the end of the month - at least as much as anybody in Sthiss Tor can be trusted. One thing I've noticed about Issus - he's a simple, uncomplicated man. Once you buy him, he stays bought. I think it's referred to as professional ethics."

No real point, just a note.

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Sophie

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:59:05 GMT

Regardez-vous, Sophie's favourite position:

http://static.ow.ly/photos/normal/1JaBO.jpg

She loves putting her head in my hand and her feet on my arm. She is very startled when people touch her back, so when I give her pattins, I try to show her first that my hand is there. She's a doofus and a cutie-pie.

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In search of.

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:56:33 GMT

I'm ISO a door sensor. This would need three things:

1. A way of toggling the active status without having to bend over.
2. An alert sound when the sensor is triggered.
3. The ability to change what the sound is.

Context: Goddamn noisy bastard cats. I want a "door" sensor placed at a certain point in the hallway, where if one of the cats breaks the sensor, there's a sound like a can of air, or there actually is a can of air.

Where do I begin looking?

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Good words meme.

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:59:57 GMT

There's this nifty meme, like a love meme, but more like a useful meme

Link, to my thread.

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Oh kitty.

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 06:32:43 GMT

There are few joys that compare to a stray kitty, that being Sophie, who has warmed up to me enough to demand attention, and who gets all calm and purry when she's got her head in my hand. It's only somewhat offset by the handful of drool I got from that.

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Migraines yay

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 05:25:52 GMT

If I were in a fantasy novel, the pangs I got last night would be indicative of my eventual conversion to an alternate universe. No sleep paralysis, but a whole lot of that clanging on a tin sheet feeling.

Woke up with a band of searing pain around my forehead, from temple to temple over my eyebrows. I took Advil, had coffee and food, and made some caffeinated tea for travel, since today was Sophie's first vet visit. Rose QA'd it a bit, and figured I had a migraine, given the nausea and sensitivity to light. Fun times!

Sophie's first vet visit went well. She's negative for FIV and FeLV and positive for a mild case of fleas. She has a hernia? First time I've ever heard of that in a cat. The vet can't tell whether she'd been speutered, so she recommended that we wait until Sophie goes into heat.

The way the polydactyly manifests in Sophie is, from what I vaguely recall, that she has an extra "finger" between "thumb" and the rest of the fingers. The claws have a wicked chance of curling in on themselves and suffering, and so I asked whether it would be useful to declaw just those two fingers (one on each forepaw).

I am the world's loudest anti-declawing person. I do not hold with declawing at all, for normal cats. However, polydactyl cats are special-needs cats in that regard. I once lived with a cat who was a polydactyl, and whose claws would grow in on themselves, get infected, and fall off like little horrid buttons. Truly needful declawing is its own thing, and this would only be the problematic ones.

In the interim, I'll be doing biweekly checks of her forepaws to see how the claws are doing. I don't want to do any declawing at all if alls it takes is vigilance.

Afterwards, rosefox kindly went out and bought me ginger ale and chips, and I consumed them, and then I slept for five entire hours. (From around 15 to 20.) Waking up was... problematic. It felt like I had been drugged. I'll sometimes joke about not getting up because it's so comfy &c &c, but getting up today took intense willpower to achieve.

I'm still tired, so I'm going to sleep. I'm annoyed that I missed an entire day of this four-day vacation. Tomorrow had better be better, goddammit.

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New cat alert!

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:36:39 GMT

https://twitter.com/XtinaSchelin/status/281189576800882688
https://twitter.com/XtinaSchelin/status/281239800525234176
https://twitter.com/XtinaSchelin/status/281239998584471552
https://twitter.com/XtinaSchelin/status/281240744608530432
https://twitter.com/XtinaSchelin/status/281241971081748480

Female, tabby, polydactyl, seems in the young-cat range, drools when happy, fucking louder than most fire alarms. I swear, she doesn't breathe sometimes for the meowing. (I got two hours of sleep because of this, so I'm a bit grumpy.) She's quarantined in my room for now, obviously.

She doesn't seem aggressive or fearful when Sam caterwauls outside the door, which is a good sign. She learned how to jump up to and down from my loft bed. (I have bookshelves and bins and boxes and things to create "stairs" for the cats. I am a cat person, could you tell?) This is the only way I got any additional sleep last night.

I am reserving judgment for now because I don't want to get attached and then find that she can't stay with us for some reason. But, so far she's sweet, personable, and loud, so we'll see.

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Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:09:34 GMT

What phrase or term do I mean when I talk about how I live more in my mind than in my body?

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Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:35:54 GMT

I am ISO arms-saving software. Parameters:

- It doesn't block me from working. My issue is not focus.
- I can reset it based on if I stand up and wander off. Using the computer's idle time to do this is fine.

Basically, something that pops up every n minutes and says "yo, rest yer arms".

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ALL THE THINGS

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 07:04:13 GMT

Context 1: rosefox and sinboy collect, to my fevered anti-clutter mind, all the things.

Context 2: This is the first time I've seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Lawrence: Now, all these wines are very old. I purchased them to make certain that they were cared for properly.
Freddy: So you got a lot of wine to drink.
Lawrence: You can't drink them, Freddy; they're far too valuable.
Freddy: So you sell them?
Lawrence: Oh, I'd never sell them; they mean too much to me.

X: *pauses the movie*
R: *already laughing*
X: I hate both of you!
R: *hysterics*
X: You fucking fucks!
R: *dying*
X: God damn everything in the world!
R: *convulsions*
X: Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

...

X: *replays the scene several times to get the transcript right*
R: *still laughing*

...

[much later, post-movie]

X: *pulls up this post*
R: *still laughing*
X: Fuck you both. *cracking up*

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Let's not even discuss the coffee aspect of this.

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:16:23 GMT

rosefox wrote this because I woke up without a brain, more's the pity.

X: *staggers out into the living room*
R: Good morning!
J: There's coffee. Just press the button.
X: Coffee. Yes. Coffee.
J: *presses the button* *makes coffee happen*
X: *stares blankly at laptop*
R: We were going to go into the city but I didn't want you to wake up to an empty apartment. *hugs X*
J: *unplugs his laptop and plugs in X's*
R: See, I give you hugs and consideration, and Josh gives you coffee and power! That is how we do love around here.
J: Symbolic patriarchy!
R: That's right, the power is his to bestow!
X: You just totally plugged your metaphorical penis into my laptop.
J: To be fair, you did that to mine yesterday.

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Oh, kitties.

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 13:12:48 GMT

Most mornings, Java is the one to wake me up with demands for food. He's an 18-year-old hulking landshark of a cat, and he usually meows and nibbles on my hand until I give in.

This morning, Sam, the 8-year-old plush doofus, came up instead. I sleep with my head on one edge of the pillow, and so she sat on the rest of it. She purred, boofed my head, and kept shifting position, and I kept patting her and trying to ignore her. Until she reached out one single paw, like she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing*, and patted me on the head.

* She was the runt of the litter. R tells me it took her a year to figure out how to scratch a scratching post right.

I only got 5 hours of sleep and so I should be grumpy as hell, but that was just the cutest thing.

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ITCHING

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 05:19:42 GMT

Welp. I just took my meds, I'm drastically underslept, things are moving already, and now the itching starts.

Time to go chug a bottle of NyQuil or something. Fuck.

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Ha.

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:08:25 GMT

Another day, another LJ release that will leave users frustrated with their utter lack of options. If only there were another service, similar in kind, where the runners of the system don't pull this sort of thing!

Ah well. If folk haven't learned yet that complaining to LJ is about as useful as complaining to one's cat, then alas.

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Seasons.

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:37:25 GMT

I continue to develop my ideas about how I treat seasons. From what I can tell so far:

* Autumn is about change and preparation. One way this happens is I organise the fuck out of things; I get the cleaning bug, as it were. It can be seen as a way of preparing for winter, definitely. Another way this happens is my moods get a bit more erratic, in a way that could possibly be tracked if I gave that much of a shit.

* Winter is about hibernation and indulgence. (Not "indulgence", but I can't think of the right word.) I want rich colours, jewel-tone and such, and fireplaces, and cinnamon nonsense drinks, and burrowing into warmth, and that sort of thing. I actually tolerate gold during these times.

Possible followup later; lights blinking now.

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Storm.

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 06:41:01 GMT

There's this hurricane coming in, but I am not worried, for three primary reasons:

1) It's mostly hitting the mid-Atlantic area, or the DelMarVa area, as I've seen it called. NY is a bit north of that. Here's a map, showing that Pennsylvania is pretty much boned.

2) We-all live in an area that's not even in a designated evacuation zone. We're inland, and we're close to a medical facility, which means electricity is unlikely to stay down for long, if it goes at all. It's all cool hereabouts.

3) I finally live with folk who take my penchant for emergency planning seriously. Like making water jars and everything, which is a great use for that otherwise useless half-a-cabinet space next to the stove. There are three kinds of kits specced out and everything! Glorious. At last, someone who recognises the sheer usefulness and anxiety relief that is emergency planning. (I'd actually gotten out of the habit, which is embarrassing in that "now I want to get better" sort of way.)

The office is closed tomorrow, but our department is still expected to work, because we are all of course equipped to work from home. Not sarcasm at all; one doesn't go far if one is not a goddamn nerd on at least some level. I emailed my boss to say I'd be working from home, here's my status, and so forth.

Living where there's weather is certainly exciting. In Portland, alls we had to worry about was occasional snow and the chances of a nearby volcano waking up. (Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, and Mount Adams.)

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Food

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 02:33:09 GMT

Today, I am having spaghetti, using fake ground meat instead of real meat. I have nostalgia for the texture of spaghetti plus ground meat, but no interest in having meat.

Oddly, I could not find the useful not-meat aisle (that being, frozen bags of foods with what I was looking for), so I'm using some fake stuff that isn't what I would've otherwise chosen. It's not bad. Next time I'm holding out for the better stuff, though.

The likelihood of me experimenting goes waaay up when there's not people relying on me for food. I should talk to R/J about having a dedicated backup plan for dinner, so that the pressure is off me for providing foods. That plus someone along for shopping, and maybe I'd try more often. Something I should consider.

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AB- == greater donationary responsibility.

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 04:53:20 GMT

You know what I totally forgot is a thing I do? Donate blood. I have that scheduled for next Sunday, because one does not simply walk into platelet donation, even though there were probably time slots for tomorrow. (I mean, I can be impulsive about things, self-ambush is sometimes the only way to get me out of the house, but my iron count tends to be low, and there's meal-planning required.)

It was great that I could book myself via the web. It was hilarious that I considered emailing them a link to my workplace's URL.

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Shopping.

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 18:00:09 GMT

We're looking for a good load-testing tool at work. We already have/use these things:

* miniprofiler: Used for checking the load times of a page, complete with what specific SQL is running at each given interval of time. (Only in the test environment; it's not on Production, to my knowledge.)

* Firebug: Great for finding minor CSS issues, major JS/XML issues, and load times of background events. For example, when I right-click on an item that pulls up a specific context menu, I want to see how long it takes to load that particular thing; Firebug is useful for showing the post/response information for this.

What I want is something that combines these things, and also exports or auto-exports things to a file for later comparison. It can be web-based, external desktop tool, internal code-based stuff (like miniprofiler), whatever, so long as it does the above things in a reliable comparison-type exporting-type fashion.

The easiest explanation for why: Comparing load-testing of, say, our most-used web page from an earlier release with our current release.

--

Given that we do a lot of jQuery calls, this tool would also need to be able to track user actions (or user-emulating actions; see Selenium). For example, when I right-click and get the context menu, it should track that I manually did this thing, which triggered these actions.

If this could be something that works with our test cases as well, I... well, I might salivate. It would be awkward, but would also be a sign of my undying appreciation.

We use ASP.NET and jQuery, is the extent of my knowledge there. Further code-based questions can be asked (as to what we're using), so long as direction is given as to how I'd find out. (I can read pidgin code, but not necessarily enough to say "we're totally using C#" or whatever.)

It can be something that needs to be paid for, so long as there's a fully functional trial period beforehand. This is for work; I don't need to rely exclusively on FOSS. (Although I do prefer it.)

( What I've found so far. )

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Relevance.

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 16:21:17 GMT

If you want to add killfile functionality for Jim Hines's blog (it's presumed you know where to put things):

function jimchinesScenario() {
  return {
    commenttopxpath: "//li[starts-with(@id,'comment-')]/div",
    sigbit: "div/span[@class='authorname']",
    __proto__:wordpressScenario()
  };
}
 
jimchines:[{scenario:jimchinesScenario,hrefpat:"^[^/]*//[^/]*/[0-9]+"}],

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Verdict on granola bar.

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:21:31 GMT

* Cohesion: Gooily crumbling.
* Texture, overall: Not bad. I prefer gooey to crunchy, so this is fine.
* Texture, ingredients: Whatever is crunchy here is annoying. It might be the sugar.
* Flavour: Gah, sweet. Gah. This is ridiculous. How would I cut the sweetness of something without life sucking?

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Three things: baking, cooking, and diet.

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:11:22 GMT

Diet like "things I eat", not diet like "I'm on a". I don't go on diets.

1) Baking

I made granola bars yesterday, with rosefox helping. There were one or two things that I literally could not do (or couldn't do enough of), as one with arms that're sore due to work and stupidity. Apart from that, baking was enough of a success to where I actually emailed R to see if we could try doing it more often. With simple things, not like restaurant-grade professional stuff.

That started out largely because I realised at some point that I need to eat better/more, and one thing that helps are the Luna Toasted Nuts 'n' Cranberry bars. So, I figured I'd try making some myself, to see what it was like.

Alas, I didn't bring one to work, because I totally spaced. Maybe I'll try one tonight.

2) Cooking

I made steamed broccoli the other day with use of a steamer. How the hell long have I lived with a steamer on the premises, and never realised that I, myself, I could use it to make food? And then I found other things I could steam, like Brussels sprouts, baby corn, spinach, potatoes, and so forth. Make a mixed thing of that, make jasmine rice at the same time, et voila: actual food!

I can't stress this enough: Brussels sprouts all the time.

3) Diet

I've been considering converting to a vegetarian* diet more frequently recently. This is largely because meat has become really boring lately. Specifically, if I eat chicken even once more, I'm going to die. I can have really flavourful rice'n'beans with green beans, or... chicken? Fie.

* Or "lacto-ovo-vegetarian", I think the full phrasing is.

Note: I didn't ask for ways to make chicken more fun, but thank you.

The things that have stopped me from converting to veggie-cat before: sheer laziness, and health concerns. (There's also convenience, in that I don't care for spicy foods or certain veggies, which will limit me more, but I mean I don't go outside. So whatever.) Steaming takes care of the convenience; if quick-dinner means jasmine rice and baby corn, well, gosh.

For health, there's iron and there's protein. The whole protein and veg*ns issue isn't that much of an issue, apparently. So long as I eat more than crap each day, I should be fine. For iron, I mostly worry because it's not uncommon for me to have to do two rounds of anemia-validating for blood donation, or to have to come back later anyhow. So long as I meat a variety of things, again, I should be fine.

So, let's see how this-all works out.

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I don't write much any more, so alas.

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 06:45:36 GMT

Certain baggage of mine started out when I was a child. Know what else started out when I was a child? Learning English. Childhood baggage isn't "baggage" until that person learns enough to realise it is baggage; in the meantime, it's just as normal as wearing clothes outside. I wear clothes outside, I speak English, I don't ask for what I want. I know how to walk, I know how to use utensils, I know how to treat my body terribly because I don't really live here.

If I moved somewhere and spoke a different language, I would probably always speak with an accent, because I learned the language relatively late in life. Same with baggage: I'll get through most of it, but I'll always have a twitch in certain places.

That's mostly what I mean. Childhood baggage basically was what normal was, until I learned enough to realise that what had happened wasn't okay. Some things I didn't fully realise until I was in my late 20s, even. Because I learned that shit alongside learning how to read, and one was bad and one was good, but how the hell could I have known the difference?

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Atheism, plus.

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:23:15 GMT

I made a new icon, due to this post. Credit goes entirely to someone in the comments there.

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