My Commonplace Book

Originally published at Enemy of Entropy. Please leave any comments there.

This is truly cool. It’s a limited edition, hand-printed “knitting tarot” deck. I learned about it via new LJ friend ciannait.

They aren’t releasing many images, apparently, unless you’re a friend of theirs on Flickr. What I can see looks very clean and simple.</lj>

( Посмотреть в полный размер, 139,01 КБ, 650x434 )

Ваня

американский бульдог(3 месяца)


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I thought it would be nice to post on here.

So, do use staples?

http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=420896

Swiped from shadowhelm:

What Your Taste in Chocolate Says About You

You are sophisticated, modern, and high-class. Your taste is refined, but you are not picky. You are often the first to try something new. You are dominant and a bit overpowering at times. You're so brilliant, you have trouble letting anyone else be in charge. While people respect you, they find you to be withdrawn and aloof. You love being around people. Friendships are important to you. You feel lost when you're by yourself... so you tend to avoid being alone.

Hmmm... about half right, I'd say. If I change the second question to my 2nd-choice answer, the middle section changes to:

You are mellow, spiritual, and philosophical.
You are a true humanitarian. You enjoy helping people.
Your heart can be too open at times. You sometimes over-extend yourself.

which isn't much better. If I change the third question to my 2nd-choice answer, the bottom section changes to:

You love to be the center of attention. You enjoy entertaining your friends.
You feel lost when no one is interested in you... You're too interesting to be ignored.

which is almost completely wrong. I think someone was being awfully random in their choice of attributes to attach to the answers.

Greetings all,

My name is Sean-Michael and a friend of mine referred me to this group. I'm 36 and have had Fibromyalgia Syndrome since I was 19, tho I wasn't diagnosed until 24. Yup, it took them 6 years of trying to figure me out before they gave me a diagnosis. My fibro onset seemed to be right after a car accident. I got side to side whiplash when the sports car I was riding in was plowed into at 45 MPH on the passenger side. Car was totaled, and I walked (well stumbled) out with hardly a scratch. Just a bump to the head, and pain everywhere.

17 or so years later... the pain is still here, but of course it is worse some places than others, and varies from tender point to point over time. Lately I've not been budgeting my energy very well, and have sort of burnt out. I'm about to go on a vacation to lay around at my Dad's house for a week near Laguna Beach, and honestly I think that will be the best thing for me.

Oh, I live in Phoenix, AZ in case anyone else is from around here, and I currently use a manual wheelchair for distance and a cane for short distances... except at home where I furniture walk (you know, walk from chair to couch, couch to bed) So I'm doing TONS better than I was 10 years ago when I was only able to get around via electric wheelchair and couldn't even transfer to/from the chair by myself.

When I was diagnosed there was no FMS real groups to speak of, the one FMS newsletter/zine that I found was something which appeared to be typed up, printed out, and xeroxed at Kinkos or some such thing. Now it's a full magazine. TImes have changed, so I figure more is known and maybe I should look back into things. After all, nothing they've tried has worked, but maybe now there's new stuff. So yesterday my doctor put me on Lyrica, and we'll see how that goes.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=157

There was a huge one thing going on in Grand Rapids, Michigan today. You know, one. Small step, Giant leap, Unity, Togetherness, Indivisible, all that stuff. This guy John, bit of an also ran, but real nice, he was like

There is one man who knows and understands that this is a time for bold leadership. There is one man that knows how to create the change, the lasting change that you have to build from the ground up. There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to create one America, not two, and that man is…

You know what? The guy who it was, he was right there, and obviously a bit puffed up at that point, so he kinda did this

John Edwards and I believe in a different America. Hillary Clinton believes in a different America. The Democratic Party believes in a different America.

which, you know, sounds to me like at least four different Americas, but apparently it's just

One America, where we rise and fall together as one people and that’s why we are gonna take Washington by storm this November.

Oh, so that's why we're gonna take Washington by storm. Right, I got it now. One man. One people. One America (different).

Sonja

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080514.html

Looking out a window of the International Space Station brings breathtaking views.

Today someone bought me cupcakes and I went photo-crazy.



( YUM" )

So I've bitten the bullet and done a self port and for once I actually like how I look. It was part of an assignment for class where we had to copy an image. I decided I'd use myself as a model, but I didn't have a dog to use, so I've used a toy instead. Cookies if you can guess what it is!

I've been stalking this group for a long time, and never posted anything... I don't think, so... first time.
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The story.

I'm sure that many of you, like me, were crying from this story on your evening drives. In fact, I hesitate to call it a "story" - the real force of this radio piece, I think, was that it made real (visceral, even) the results of an act of nature on the other side of the world (the recent Chinese earthquake).

It seems that not a week goes by without at least one natural disaster that leaves "thousands dead." For me (and probably for many of you), such information, such news, is easier to swallow down when it is on a grand scale, because it's difficult to connect something that affects so many people to individual loss. This piece, in a gut-wrenching way, dared to make the listener experience this disaster on human terms.

Throughout the earthquake coverage, I've been moved by the emotion audible in Melissa and Robert's voices. Indeed, rather than the monotonous stoicism its reputation would suggest, NPR has made the "news" of the earthquake more relevant to American listeners by connecting common feelings. That it was impossible to hear Mrs. Fu's sobs and not react empathetically shows, to me, the indivisibility of the human experience.

Anyway, this piece, and the earthquake coverage this week, in general, has been so outstanding, that it definitely warrants a post. How has the experience of listening to these very in-the-moment stories been for you? Do you think it's been different from NPR's usual coverage of disasters (and so forth), or no?

http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2008/05/worldwide_teles_3.php

Ogle Earth's Stefan Geens, normally a (fellow) Mac user, borrows a Windows machine for his in-depth review of WorldWide Telescope: "My initial impression stands: WWT is a wonderful piece of software that excels at rendering Earth's view of the universe...

http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2008/05/yahoo_maps_traf_1.php

Yahoo announces upgraded real-time traffic coverage: more cities, more detail, more roads....

Normally my father and I don't get along very well. However I called him this evening and we agreed on a sacred pact: If either of us ever mentions the words "Nigeria", "Investment", and "money" in the same paragraph we are to immediately be chained to a bolt in the floor of our basement and left there, in the dark until at least three weeks have passed since last we uttered those words.

Why? Well I have a friend who lives out west. Really nice guy actually, has a wife, two kids, and used to run a solar power business. Well it turns out that about a year ago he was telling me about how he was going to be investing in Nigeria for solar power projects.

NO! I said: For I knew that Nigeria is nothing but a hole of thieves. Yes I'm sure it has culture, art, and great people. Fuck that.

But he explained that this was different, it was with the Govt, and he had already flown out to meet some of the people. I do believe that people should know their own business, so I let it go...

This evening I heard that his company closed, he left town, and was being sued by a number of people for apparently taking deposits then not installing systems. According to the article it was 8 people, 20k each. Now 160k is a lot of money, but it's not worth closing one's company. So I'm wondering: What the fuck happened?

He's been in the business for years, you don't just walk away from that. He had a beautiful house, you don't just up and leave like that. And he is an honest type of person, they don't turn that quickly. So what the fuck?

And I'm looking around Boo Manor and am really happy for what I have. Sometimes I do get somewhat envious of other people's successes, but I have to remember that the only person who I really know what's going on is me. I don't know the inner lives of other people, they might seem to be doing well but have massive problems in the foundations of their lives. The only person I really know is me, and the only family I really know is mine.

I should remember that. And trust my inner light for direction and such. When he chatted about me becoming a distributor or manager of crews a little light lit in my head saying "danger". It's the same light that lit at Counterpane. And other times in my life, even with Digex. So I stay the course I have laid, and it seems to be a good one overall.

I always like to remember when I had the option of expanding crystelcom by investing in T1's, staff, and a bunch of things. Go into debt to the tune of a half million or so for starters. I decided instead to close the company because it had achieved it's purpose: It allowed me to pay the down payment on Boo Manor. CrystelCom made a profit, Digex never did. That's my measure of success, it looks at the whole picture, not just a fragment.

Just... interesting.

CZ