So, my blog template finally imploded. Okay, it's been imploding for a while. I finally got a chance to put up a quick fix. It was a good thing to work on while watching Purple Rain for about the milliionth time. Alan had never seen it -- another sign of our generation gap -- and somehow I got sucked in during a break from weeding. The music does bring back memories. One of the strongest memories was from my high school civics class. The class itself was boring and was made worse by the teacher's voice which droned on and on in a deep monotone as he repeated everything we had just read from the textbook. One of my friends, Dave was listening to his headphones, a very common thing in a class where a couple people actually spread out on the floor under their desks and slept during class on a regular basis. Class was going along normally and Dave broke the silence with a very loud, "Ooooey, oooey, ooo," complete with Tyme-like arm flapping. When he realized what he'd done, he slunk down in his chair and removed his headphones. The teacher hardly missed a beat. Now, back to weeding.

Via PNN Online

Oxford University Press has teamed up with Book Aid International to provide a $10 rebate on the new Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, if you donate your old dictionary to charities in the poorest English speaking countries. The deal includes a postage paid mailing label. For more details see their website at: NOAD Rebate Program

Wiscon as usual was lovely, far too quick and way too short/just the perfect length.

I woke with a sore throat this morning which is a small price to pay for the activities that filled the last five days. I've had a slightly different Wiscon since I've become involved with the organizational side of things. It's busier but no less enjoyable. I cut back even further this year by not signing up for panels or readings but things seemed to stay just as busy. A lot of the Wiscon concom completely give up their lives for the span of the con to make it work. To those of us on the outside it seems so seamless but it isn't.

Lots of highlights, too many to count, but here are a few:

Singing along to karaoke Centerfold by J. Giels Band with Cliff

Sushi, twice, with Karen

Visiting with Jeremiah and Par, though my time with them was way too short

Sharing stories of convention geeky shyness - you know those times when you find yourself alone and panic and think that no one likes you, knows you, wants to hang with you..

Hanging with Elad and hearing about his life and girlfriend

Seeing Maureen McHugh - actually, walking right past her, gorgeous but hard to recognize with her temporary straight hair - and Bob again

Meeting people at packet stuffing and registration

Finding out that David Moles had been in Tokyo at the same time I was, although he was in high school and I was in college. It was an amazing moment to find we'd both found the best two places for American style burgers, the well-known Hard Rock and lesser known, Homeworks.

Lots of great advice on pregnancy, motherhood, etc. from all the wonderful new mom authors at the con - and no this is not a way to say that I'm pregnant. Sorry Mom and Dad.

You've got to check out the link below to Technorati's Wiscon tag page and check out the photos. There's the one of the cutest photos ever of Alan and the much cuter Meghan McCarron (sp?)

I love hosting the party at Wiscon. Over the past few years, we've kept Wiscon dancing and for the past two proved that a SF convention can handle karaoke. This year, the Speculative Literature Foundation was a co-sponsor and we had a great turn-out. While we were cleaning up and shooing people out of the suite at the end of the party this year (at 3:15 a.m. ) the con party organizers, Scott and Jane, mentioned the possibility of moving the party to the ballroom next year which would allow later nights, less crowding and more room for socializing and watching. We'd be able to bring our beer and cider and other refreshments although there might be a corkage fee. We'd have an actual dance floor and might be able to bring in a real DJ and equipment. All of these are big plusses. The thought of moving off of the party floor makes me panic a bit, though, since so many of the people hang out in the hall outside the party at least part of the time and come and go from other parties. Would anyone come see us downstairs? If anyone reads this, let me know what you think.

wiscon

Dang! Another month had passed...

1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.
   Richard.
2. Total volume of music files on your computer.
   Since going through 2 hard drives in short succession earlier this year we are down to nothing. I don't even have the punk kitties from Rathergood anymore.
   
3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.
   Alan got me a CD of the Von Bondies since I loved the FX show Rescue Me's theme song so much. My husband is pretty much my music source.
   
4. Song playing at the moment of writing.
   No music now since I'm in a hotel room and it's still early. I did spend a lot of the weekend crammed into Alan's office closet doing some emergency work on our bathtub plumbing. I listened to what Alan had in his boombox which included the Von Bondies CD, a southeast Asian hip hop band, MIA, and a funky jazz band, Medecki (sp?) Martin and Wood. I found the first three tracks on the Von Bondies CD the most helpful when I was tearing out the old faucet pipes.
   
5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)
   
   • "Cmon, C'mon," Von Bondies
     
   • Any of the music from Deadwood
     
6. The five people to whom you will 'pass the musical baton.' Is there anyone who hasn't done this, yet?
   

It's been forever since I last posted anything and the longer you go without posting the harder it gets to start again. At first I was dealing with a lot of wrist and arm pain from overdoing things and since I couldn't stop using the computer at work, I stopped using it at home. At work, things have been too busy for posting. I love my job but I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get caught up.

This is the last of a series of long work days. We've packed up most of our offices and should be ready for the movers on Monday. I'm stuck here waiting for what appears will be a seven hour long full back-up of our server to end. One of our supporters made a very generous donation of an old mansion a block south of Franklin on Pillsbury for our offices. The move is really needed since we're overcrowded here but I'm feeling a little sad. I've been here for eleven years now and the building feels like home. (I'm also a little sad because we were planning on attending the Nebulas this weekend until I realized it coincided with the move. It would have been nice to be able to cheer Chris on in person. We'll be there tomorrow in spirit.) We didn't always occupy this part of the building. When I first started this part was Southside Family School, one of the first charter schools in Minneapolis. They eventually had to move and ended up at the old St. Stephens Church school. As we expanded, we slowly took over more and more until we had most of the second floor. There are only two of us left on staff that even remember being in any other space. The shelter will stay in the basement so I'll be back here on a regular basis.

Tomorrow a couple of volunteers and I will sort through our computer parts and donations to try to put together three more workstations we need and to see if any of the rest can be given to the families in our transitional housing program. Yesterday afternoon, I finally had a chance to try to fix on old HP LaserJet 4si printer that stopped working two months ago. Right now, we all have access to our wonderful networked copier for printing but in the new place we'll be spread out over three floors. I'd like to have a laser printer on each floor and don't want to spend any money we don't have to. After getting it running nicely on the network and printing without smudges, I noticed I was getting some weird irregularly spaced dents in the paper. I narrowed the problem down to the area around the fuser assembly and decided to try to remove to see if I could tell what was causing the dents. It was surprisingly easy to remove. When I tipped it sideways I could see a lot of brown stuff stuck to the rollers. Replacing it is doable - there seem to be spare parts for the old LaserJets all over the place - but it would be a chunk of change. I didn't know if cleaning it would cause any damage but I figured we didn't have anything to lose. The brown stuff was baked on but it started to come off on the Q-tips I was using with a little anti-static cleaner. Water wasn't cutting it. I had a shop light clipped next to me and when it started getting hot I noticed a sweet smell rising from the fuser. The brown stuff was chocolate. The fuser is pretty inaccessible, buried deep under the closed cover. The chocolate must have been solid when it passed the first sets of rollers and toner, etc. and only melted when it hit the fuser. I was able to remove almost all of it and the printing and paper is now pristine. I would give quite a bit to know how the chocolate got into the printer in the first place. It took a long time to fix. My admiration for the designers of those early LaserJets only continues to grow.

I got behind in everything over the last few weeks. The clutter on my desk has spilled over and is making a bid to take over and force out my two officemates. I succeeded in not adding anything more to the pile but did nothing today to reduce it. I did make progress on the laundry over the weekend, and after tearing more of the garage ceiling out, have determined that the bathtub is leaking from pipes going into the tub and not out of the tub as previously suspected, or possibly, is leaking from both places. Fixing the leak is going to require removing the faucets and pulling off the tub surround, so... Did I mention that I made good progress on the laundry this weekend?

Anyway, I started getting caught up on blogs and e-mails this weekend, and found Gwenda's links on the Dairy Queen Moolatte controversy. I was dismayed at first and then amused. The interview with the Dairy Queen executive was painful to read. Dairy Queen is based in my hometown, Bloomington, so I can understand why he didn't recognize the critic's sarcasm at first. I've never encountered the word "mulatto" outside of books and film. (In this part of the country, sadly, to most people, if you are black, you are black and that's that, there's no need for further distinctions.) Who knows why he didn't seem to get it after a couple of sentences? I have had at least three conversations with African American and other co-workers on the subject of Moolattes and other iced coffee drinks and none of us ever made the connection. I wonder if it's because like me, in their minds, they stretch out the Moo to be a cow sound and are heavy on the -te. I always felt silly ordering it before on my once every few weeks splurge, now I'll feel a little more guilty, too.

Diversicon was a fun, relaxed convention with friendly people and interesting panels. We've decided that this will be an annual event on our calendar and now we hope to draw as many others to it as we can. At about 120 attendees, there's plenty of room and it's easy on the pocketbook. The auction had a lot of great stuff that went cheap. We got a load of books, DVDs and video tapes for only $30. When I was writing out the check, I felt a little guilty, but only a little since we so recently faced one of us being out of work. My favorite item was a video tape of Scaramouche (and also Waterloo) for only $1 (or was it $2?) When Eric announced this pairing, mine was the only bid and my arm (probably the one that sometimes pretends it's accustomed to holding a sword) shot up completely on it's own accord. The auction was followed by a concert by Keg Salad, a band that you need to see, along with its sister band, Mad Melancholy Monkey Mind, if you ever get a chance. In addition, there was scotch, there was beer, there were readings, there were movies, there were books, there was poetry and we were there with 'zines and chapbooks.

A very good end to the day and the week. Alan may no longer be unemployed, I received a promotion, the cats already are starting to get along better thanks to the Feliway, my review copy of the The Anchor Book of New Amercian Short Stories (edited by Ben Marcus) arrived, I received a beautiful box of new managed network cards courtesy of FedEx and 2BuyStore to replace the ones we lost to the lightning strike, and I got the great feeling of accomplishment and closure that comes from solving a nagging tech problem before I had to leave for the day. (I spent the free moments of the day wrangling with one of those nasty browser hijackers on a friends laptop. Stupid little ziphelp.exe file. I'll post details later tonight, since the only full instructions I found on removing it were in German. We love you designers of Hijack This!)

After evening drinks at Kieran's last night to say good-bye to co-worker, former boss and buddy John, I met up with Alan, Mark, Martha and others at Dulonos. We'll be spending the weekend at Diversicon where Mark is the Special Guest. In addition to catching up a little with Mark and Martha, I had a great discussion with Steve and Shari about sleep disorders, met Guest of Honor S.P. Somtow, who is fascinating, and Alan and I signed up for a table at the convention, which will lead to us actually saving money on memberships. Mark and Martha will be playing for us in their Keg Salad incarnation on Saturday, otherwise I have no set plans for the whole weekend. Yay!

It's been a really nice weekend so far. I've been sitting on the couch with my laptop watching the end of Bringing up Baby and catching up on everyone's blogs in kind of a blissful haze. Despite Alan's being laid off earlier this week, we managed a nice birthday celebration for him on Friday. In the evening, we went to see the Bourne Supremacy (I loved the car chase scenes!) which he bypassed last weekend to see The Village as an indulgence for me. It was dinner time after the movie, but we'd filled up on popcorn so we went and did some writing at a local bookstore/coffee shop. Alan is working on an epic poem - I'm not sure that's the right term for it but I mean epic in the sense that it's really long. While I struggled to find some focus, he was writing away and would look every up once and a while ask something like, "How do you spell chrysanthemum?" and then go back to writing. We found a really good book called, cat vs. cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat. Ever since we lost our dog last summer to cancer, our house has been a war zone with our three cats playing the roles of Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. I've only read two chapters but I've already discovered that the litterboxes were most likely disputed territory with the dominant cat sprawling nearby probably preventing access to them when we thought he was just lounging. The man behind the counter at the bookstore asked me if I had cats. I laughed and said I had too many and explained the situation. He looked kind of sad and longing and said, "I love cats." When I told Alan about it later, he said I should have offered him one of ours. We looked at all three and worked through various scenarios. In all three cases, removal of one of the felines resulted in detente, but then we were faced with which one and, of course, that's an impossible question. (Tonight, the two aggressors are sprawled in their favorite spots looking cute. It's a deceiving cuteness, though, since the terrorized one is conspicuously missing. He disappeared after an incident a little while ago that occurred out of my sight but involved a mad scramble and some hissing.) After the bookstore, we had takeout at home and watched Secret Window on pay per view. It was the only movie on at that time and I had wanted to see it after seeing a preview (and for Johnny Depp), but this one was one I should have waited to see on free cable. Today we headed over to my parent's house to say good-bye to the Asia-dwelling contigent of the family. They're heading back to Beijing to get ready for school. My cousin will be starting college at Wellesley and her brother will be back to highschool. It makes me feel so old to think that I was in college and in Tokyo with them when he was born. We had a few good games of croquet, good conversation (including some strong mixed views on The Village), and a great turkey dinner with lots of leftovers to take home. The spooky kitty just came out of hiding to let me know it's time for their last feeding and it's probably time for me to stop rambling and go to bed. First, I suppose I should weigh in a little on The Village. I never really paid much attention to the M. Night hullabaloo, although I've seen all the movies. A trailer of The Village gave me the chills and provided a couple nights of very creative, creepy nightmares, something that hasn't happened since I was young and watching Mel's Matinee, a show that I found out was also an influence on the Coen Brothers. So, while I watched, there was already a fond spot in my mind for the "movie that could have been" which made me a more generous viewer. Occasionally, the "movie that was" tipped its hat to the "movie that could have been" and once or twice it rose above it. Mostly, it was just a very different movie, one that never bored me, had a lot of suspenseful moments, was beautifully filmed and acted, and ultimately, although in my opinion an enjoyable movie, wasn't as good as it could have been.

Happy Birthday, Alan!

I noticed recently that time lags in my blog directly relate to increases in workplace stress. It has been a stressful month, even with a vacation thrown in the middle. Anyways, this made me angry enough to interrupt work to post.

Asian American Journalist Association's Statement on Cheney Campaign Background Checks

It's the tail end of a tough series of days strung together with wonderful little moments like Kelly Everding's release party for her wonderful poetry chapbook (which I'll link to when I find it), a beautiful Sunday in Wisconsin at the cabin with my family, trying Moolattes at different Dairy Queen's (they were all different thicknesses, tastes, all good, but the local Oakdale DQ makes the best) and lots of great reading. I'd gotten spoiled at work with our little patchwork network of donated and cheap components working pretty well lately. We lost remote access from the Women's Shelter a few weeks ago and it took me two weeks to trace it to a malfunctioning network card in the server. TECHY STUFF FOLLOWS The card was pingable right up until the very end when it finally died and had earlier passed the manufacturer's diagnostics. I was mostly focused on the firewall and VPN configuration because I'd installed a software upgrade about the time we lost the connection. I had just fixed the problem and had started getting caught up on other things when we got hit by lightning Sunday morning when the big storm rolled through the Twin Cities. It brought down part of a plaster ceiling in the closet next to my desk and burned out a switch, a hub and most of our network cards, thankfully only appearing as a power spike on our server UPS log. I ran out right away to get a new switch which was the first piece of equipment along the path of destruction, trying not to be too crabby with the snobby sales clerk who said I should have had it plugged into a surge protector. (It was - and they're not a whole lot of protection when it's a direct hit.) Because I've learned to hoard things, I was able to switch out all the burnt out cards with their slower 10 mps siblings. At 8 p.m. that night I pretended to myself that I'd stop and get something from Dairy Queen as a reward for myself when I finished work for the night. At 9:30, I realized that DQ was just a pipe dream and dinner was going to have to wait until I got home. As I moved down the line of PCs, I raided everyone's candy dishes and scarfed down half of the bag of BBQ chips left on the table. Is it just me or do BBQ chips eat the roof of your mouth, too? By midnight, I'd found the burnt out hub and could go no further down the network line until I picked up a new hub the next morning. I had only one NIC card (one which failed to register on 2 different PCs) left when I reached the end of the damage. I think someone up there wanted to remind everyone just how valuable a staff person I am without diverting too many funds away from our services. Does anyone know if I have to switch out all the surge protectors now? END OF TECHY STUFF Last week, one of the women from the shelter was killed when she wandered away from her group of friends and fell asleep by a car in a parking lot and the poor owner of the car drove over her as he was leaving to meet a friend for breakfast. She had been drinking and had recently relapsed after a seventeen year period of sobriety. It hit everyone at the shelter pretty hard, and was made even harder by the fact she was encouraged not to come in that night when she called for a bed because it was obvious she had been drinking and would end up turned away or worse, barred from the shelter. The staff was trying to help her keep her bed, the shelter is sober and she had caused trouble in the past while drinking, but right now it feel to them like they sent her to her death. You do this type of work long enough and it happens to you, too. You can try to convince someone to go to detox or another safe place when they've had too much to drink but they mostly refuse. (It's amazing how fast someone can move if they want to avoid detox!) Over time, you might be able to get them to look at supportive housing or treatment, if they still qualify, but mostly you just hope to be a positive force or a safe haven. Tonight, I was down checking on the volunteer desk computer and chatting with some of the guys. One of them mentioned that Keith, a guest I knew quite well, had died of pneumonia a couple weeks ago. Keith was in his late forties, and had had a very tough life. Depression had hit him hard and I'm not sure he ever sought treatment for it, although I had enoouraged him to and I'm sure others did, too. He was always very sweet to me and would talk often about his lost family and life. I can't help feeling like both of these people were allowed to slip through the cracks.

Bambi turns into Jaws as investigators look for the perpetrator of chick decapitations on Animal Planets's Unexplained Unexplored.

Also, at withboots, Alan points to a collection of posters and other found messages at UbuWeb.

A co-worker forwarded this link from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a Tour of Poverty. Their Poverty USA site, a great resource for education and advocacy, also has an interesting poverty quiz. One little fact from the quiz, "In fact, the U.S. child poverty rate is two-to-three times higher than other major industrialized nations."

One of the best parts of working for a small nonprofit is the outside our normal duty activities, especially when they involve the kids from our transitional housing program. Wednesday, I spent the day at the Twin Cities' amusement park Valley Fair with a group of kids to celebrate their perfect or almost perfect school attendance. Last year, I accompanied four teenaged girls and we went on all the scary rides (which I love), so I was expecting to be with much smaller kids this time. The girls this time were aged 10-12 and alternated between delightful and frustrating. They were still young enough to want hugs and sometimes reassurance before scary rides, but were also old enough to be stubborn and bicker when the afternoon crabbies hit. Once again, I rode all the scary rides (except the Steel Venom ride kicked my butt last year - I'm looking forward to a rematch) with multiple trips to the water drenching ones and the bumper cars. What ride did the four girls think was the scariest? The ferris wheel - the only ride I remember all four of my grandparents riding when I was a kid. This isn't even a normal two person ferris wheel, it fit all six of us (two adults, four girls.) I have to admit, though, the shrieking made it a lot more exciting. Anyways, how does this relate to the above post about poverty? At $32.95 for anyone over 48", this is one of the things that most low-income families would have to do without. A summer without at least one trip to an amusement park is a sad summer, indeed.

My new favorite make a bad day a good thing: Moolattes at Dairy Queen. Doesn't that just roll off your tongue? Full of ice cream goodness with just the right amount of icy crunchiness and, of course, coffee.

Why I will no longer leave the house with a pony tail and no makeup (except for jogging)

I rolled out of bed this morning, late, and did the typical "I'm going to be cleaning the house and gardening today" hair pulled back in a ponytail, quick face wash. Before buckling down to work, I had to run out to return some library books and do a few errands. While I was backing out of the driveway, I noticed that my bangs were standing straight up in the air. Since my contact with the public was going to be limited, I mushed them down the best I could and continued on my way. At Walgreen's, I was studying the frozen pizza selection when I noticed a young man standing a little further down the refrigerator cases, staring at me out of the corner of his eye. I assumed he was staring at my bangs, so I mushed them down again, grabbed a pizza and smiled. He sidled over to me and asked, "So what high school do you go to?" I almost dropped the pizza. I mean, come on! It's been 20 years since I was in high school, 20 years exactly. He saw my face and said, "Oh, you're in college, aren't you?" I didn't know whether to be flattered, to be offended or to recommend he consult an eye specialist.

I spent the afternoon in the shelter computer lab playing Big Brother, again. I'd removed the filtering by word part of the internet filtering software because people were complaining about how slow the browsing was. I figured everyone using the lab knew by now that most prohibited (porn, adult, and gambling) sites were blocked (and the list of blocked sites on the software's block list was always growing) so no one would spend much time searching for ways to get around it. I was wrong. I haven't decided whether to enable word filtering again, so, in the meantime, I sent a large number of updates to the blocked list. I also have another, longer list of sites to check because they are in other languages or their content is unclear from their URL. I have to admit that although most of the sites were simply and unsubtly named, some of the URL's were very original and pushed the limits I've seen on character length. All of this is the price I'm paying for working for a nonprofit with no money budgeted for a computer lab. I shouldn't complain too much, though, because 99% of the browsing was completely innocent and I hadn't checked the logs since mid-May.

My favorite line from Song for Alan De Niro by Tony at Geneva Convention

"Frothy & out of print in the way most best girls are"

For the past couple of days, Alan has been slowly sucking people into playing The Kingdom of Loathing which he was introduced to at the dessert function at Wiscon by Susan.

Back in May the World Wildlife Fund reported on a mother bear and her cubs that were stranded on an artic island when the ice receded before she emerged from her den. The really chilling part of the article was the speculation that this was a sign of global warming. Woo hoo, politicians, Kyoto Protocol?! WWF reported this month that the stranded mother and cubs are doing fine.

Too good not to share. Terry Jones on torture via Bill Shunn's newsgroup sff.people.wpshunn. (I would have just linked it but don't know how to do that for newsgroups.)