Tag Archives: lj

Well, prop2 is losing a lot of her sympathy credit in the office. She called at 9am this morning (she was due in at 8) and said that the power was out, and that she was waiting to hear back from FPL as to whether or not it was an inside the house thing or something else. What she *didn’t* say was why her jobless husband was not available to do that while she got to work… She never called back to even say she’s stuck at home for some nonsense reason… FPL seldom takes more than a half hour to get on the stick… I can’t say as I remember any time short of a Hurricane that has caused interrupted service for more than an hour. Tomorrow, I visit the neurologist and hopefully get some good, progressive news to counter the lightening strike that’s going to hit at work. I still feel bad for her, and sincerely hope that she finds another gig soon, preferably better suited to her.

I’m going to be in the print issue of December’s Popular Science Magazine! (Well, the letters page.) Continue reading

Put the poodle back in the basket.

A few sites for positive change – None of them cost a penny but can help to do good works.

The hunger site – free food to the hungry
Breast cancer site – Help to fund free mammograms
Child Health site – Help save young lives for free
Rainforest Site – help to preserve our rainforests
Animal rescue site – Feed an animal in need.

Ok.. now that I’ve built up some positive karma, let’s whine a little about whiners.

In The Silence of the Lambs the egregious psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter explains to Agent Clarice Starling why he killed one of his own patients: “I simply could not endure his interminable whining any longer. Besides, his therapy was going nowhere. Believe me, Clarice, there isn’t a psychiatrist in the country who wouldn’t like to refer a few cases to me.”

That sums up how I feel about a lot of the journals out there. I’m glad that I have the easy way out, and can opt not to read them or even link. I feel that a few of the journals I’ve seen (none that I regularly read, though some certainly exist on my friends friends page) in passing are written by “professional victims.” I can’t help but wonder if a daily whiney / angst journal can be good, because they’re getting it out of their system, or if it’s a bad idea they’re feeding that sense of misery and isolation to the exclusion of any other feelings. I suspect it’s more often the latter. I do know that journals will sometimes have hostility, angst and melancholy in them… heck, I do it enough. The flipside, of course is the folks that write that way out of a desire for attention or coddling. “Woe is me, woe is me” loses a lot of its strength after hearing someone say it for a year.

The ones that complain and *only complain* deeply, heartfully about the most non-issues are what get me. If something bugs you, do something, and make a positive difference. The world’s a big place with plenty of room for improvement.

This cartoon sums it up pretty well.

You bleed, Kirock! Behold a god who bleeds!

I thought blogshares would be more interesting than it is. (BlogShares is a fantasy stock market where web logs are the companies. Players invest fictional dollars on shares in blogs. Blogs are valued by their incoming links and add value to other blogs by linking to them. Prices can go up or down based on trading and the underlying value of the blog.) The site is very slow… almost to the point of not being playable. I’ll give it a few days, and see if it shifts in any direction, one way or the other.

I’m ranked as the 9th top player for august 2003 so far. (Scott von Berg 20726.49% growth -Rank: 4208, $104,132.43 current worth / $500.00 start of month)

As it stands now, I’ve only invested in my own… when you register your blog, you get 1000 shares of your own journal, but maybe I’ll expand outward to folks on my reading list as well. Starting with $500 virtual dollars, and the stock value of my site, my portfolio is worth $104,271.60 I set up a goofy little RSS feed (scotto_shares) that’ll tell me when / how the share value fluctuates. Oddly, since my journal can be accessed in three distinctly different links, via http://scottobear.livejournal.com, http://www.livejournal.com/~scottobear and http://www.livejournal.com/users/scottobear, it’s valued in three different ways, depending on investments. s.l.com is currently worth $49.91 each – 249.52 p/e, ~ is worth $34.42 each -172.10 p/e, and users is $19.62 each – 98.03 p/e

Looking at things, I see that chrishaas has already placed a bid on the most expensive of the available shares, but at no profit to me. He’d stand a greater chance of profit by bidding on public shares in the “users or ~” version. For simplicity of bidding, I’ve made those mentioned in this paragraph as direct links to the respective blogshares. If you want to play, I recommend the one that’s going for $19.62 each, rather than the $49.91. (Less than half price, with growth potential. I think the middle one “users” has the most growth possibility, because that’s the default listing.)

Other folks listed on blogshares that I might look into investing in (- (typed in to the search, many on my list haven’t been listed I’m tempted to post my reading list here, so that they get spidered) edbook (here), flying_blind (here), meredith (here), sweetalyssm (here) and tarpo (here). If anyone else sets up an account, or ends up on blogshares, let me know, so I can invest. 🙂 The above listings were spidered (many from my journal, I’d imagine), and aren’t officially “on the market” yet.

Of course, totally private or friends only-blogs aren’t tradable, nor are “non-indexed sites” as there’s nothing for the public to link to or track. Communities also seem to be out of the action, which is a shame, because I imagine the would do well. Also, Weblogs.com has to be active in your userinfo, I think.

Regarding the Vampire game… they’ve added a new element. Peacekeepers. There are flyers pasted up on many walls in the city, advertising “Peacekeepers Missions”. There are very small quite useless maps scrawled on the poorly photocopies scraps of paper, but the addresses are quite clear – the newbie mission is at Emerald and 67th, while the others are at Unicorn and 33rd and Emerald and 33rd respectively. It looks like ‘mission’ is used in the sense of a building, rather than the sense of a quest, but it’s not very clear at all.

The Expedition Company… seems normal enough for vacations and getaways until you get to the part about the hollow earth expedition.

Nifty sounding drink that I’ve never consumed – Dead Lizard

New Noontime ritual in the works, watching Lovejoy, for later discussion with Danny. A fun show, they break the 4th wall a lot for narrative purposes.

It looks like the interests page has been cleaned up, as well as the user info page… at the end of the interests list, there’s a little blurb that allows you to modify yours. -Via peradouro

Insurance called, and apparently misunderstood about my being able to work form home. I honestly cannot take the bus and train for literally hours every day. Going back and forth to physical therapy is torment enough, thank you. I wish that they’d just talk to the doctor about these things, and get a straight answer rather than just assuming “can continue to work from home” means, “can work at work, if accommodated”. It’s not nearly the same, as much as I’d like it to be so.

Ray Stevens – Mr Businessman
Continue reading

Groceries!

Restocked Freezer!

Grocery fun facts –

  • Publix’s Top Selling Snack – Pringles Original, 7oz.
  • On average, there are eight peas in a pod.
  • Olive oil is made only from green olives.
  • The cashew is part of a fruit called a “cashew apple” that grows in tropical regions. After harvesting, the cashew apple keeps for only 24 hours before the soft fruit deteriorates. The cashew apple is not commercially important since it spoils quickly, but local people love the fruit. To harvest the nut, the ripe apple is allowed to fall to the ground where natives easily gather it. The apple and nut are separated.
  • On the average, each American consumes 117 pounds of potatoes, 116 pounds of beef, 100 pounds of fresh vegetable, 80 pounds of fresh fruit, and 286 eggs per year.
  • On the Italian Riviera in Viareggio, there is a culinary tradition that a good soup must always contain one stone from the sea. This stems from the days when an Italian fisherman’s catch was scooped up in nets; fish and stones frequently ended up together in the same cooking pot.

Hmm.. The bakery didn’t finish the key lime pie for delivery. Ah well… such is life. I’ll get some next time.

Hotty-hot day today, clear skies. I hope that’ll make fireworks that much nicer for the throngs of beachgoers tomorrow… though if recent history is any indicator, it’ll rain.

Bloggers Gain Libel Protection

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can’t be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers. Continue reading

Hm… Net meeting was supposed to start at 10am… but nobody seems to be around. I waited until 11, and then sent out an email to the bosses asking if there is a time that we can reschedule for. I have to be at physical therapy by 1:30. (Which I’d forgotten about until my pop-up reminder this morning.) I hope that they missed the meeting due to some groundbreaking discovery that’ll make us all a gazillion dollars.

Golden grahams with marshmallow fudge are not the best breakfast, and it was so rich I could only eat about a 1/2 ounce of it with my cereal. Smores-y good. . I think that riblets will be supper tonight… a little high in sodium, but delicious and otherwise very healthy. Lunch, I don’t know…maybe some green beans and enchiladas. Those things are yummo!

Users on the cartman cluster will be unable to update their journals as we work to repair it. You can find the cluster you are on here. Hm.. It think that’s the first time in local memory that it wasn’t the chef cluster (my cluster)

Talking to Ray, I hear that Austin is supposed to be some sort of Mecca of sanity in the Madness that is Texas. (A large University Town?) Maybe I can get Juliabee to elaborate.

My creepy neighbor commented on stuff that I throw in the dumpster. It’s really none of his business that I like to eat much the same thing every week. Pretty weird that he noticed cans of peas and green beans.

a year ago – wonderful dreams, learning the neighborhood, notes never followed up on.

two years ago – saw Ornj off on her trip, bro’s got a win 95 box, monkey fishing a fib, due amici sub, leaves of grass, database link access to web, Kneel before zod!

three years ago -nuthin’.

The problem with having a lot of photography journals on your friends list is that some folks just don’t lj-cut images that are extra wide.

Interesting new feature on lj… a list of folks popular with your friends. Who you might be interested in…The following friends are listed often by your friends, but not by you…

Hmm… certainly a little accounting for taste, there. I’d say that there are about three people on that list that I enjoy seeing “around”… and there are about fifteen people on there that I’m not crazy about… had on my list for a while, or know by indirect connection. There are a few wildcards though. Some folks I don’t know at all are – debby, rillifane, thistimearound, coutlaw, gozar and beckmermaid. Oddly, the only community was … I’d have thought that there’d be more. I’ll peek in on them when time avails itself to me. Probably sometime in November. Thanks to latraviata for the linkie.

I’m glad that it seems that the snipers in Maryland have been caught… I hope that’s the end of that horrible stress. One less thing for folks to worry about. That’s a layer of the onionskin I can peel off. I hope that decompression continues… I feel a couple of weights remaining to be lifted.

I really like the Salem police department’s shoulder patch. That’s the real logo.

Random Scotto factoid – I associate scarecrows with ghosts, but I don’t think of them as frightening. I feel that it’s the arms outstretched perpendicular, strikes me more like a waiting and friendly embrace rather than something that’s been crucified. Perhaps the ghost vibe comes from the old clothes involved in the production I think. The last costume I wore was a scarecrow, going to see Lenny Kravitz with Nicole and Heather… (They were The Wicked Witch and Dorothy, by the way… Both looked outstanding. I still have the floppy hat that I wore, somewhere.) I got some nice compliments when I went out with those two…”Way to go! Lucky Man!” People tended to assume I was dating one or both of them. They were funny… they’d make up stories about me, and then start to believe them… because of something I might have said offhand. I’d feed their imagination by never confirming or denying anything, instead, just leaving open-ended questions with replies that instead raised more queries.

punkinhaid scarecrow

Sweet dreams, dear journal. Or in the words of my pet skeleton…

and when I say good night
the pictures in my head
will dance around the room
and frolic in my bed
and when I say good day
they hide behind my eyes
waiting for the dreaming
to bring them back to life

D’oh! I left my camera at work! How’d I do that? It must’ve been because I had my handspring in my pocket. Looks like Bonbon spawn#2 got a talking to for drag racing on company time…not to mention Buddha, Sissy-Greg, and Buddha2 got in trouble for sleeping on the job. Second time in two days. I’m *very* surprised they didn’t get fired… just a suspension for a day.

Wachovia now has my proof of residence… I’m probably going to get a call tomorrow, confirming that I can open the account.

One of my dollars made it to Scottsdale Arizona! Ito only took 2 yrs, 238 days, 22 hrs, 19 min to get there… traveled 1963 miles (or an average of 2 miles a day)

I registered years ago with Where’s George, and forgot about it about six months later. I registered maybe a dozen bills, and grew bored when none came back. Now that I’ve finally gotten some confirmation, I’ll start registering more, just to see where it goes. I think that I first found out about Where’s George via Ana cam, just like I found LiveJournal, though I haven’t really been to Ana cam in ages. Danny still has a T-shirt from her site somewhere… it’s a great shirt.

I’ve just found an interesting element of the magic levitation rules…Dave’s going to get it, next time we play. Mage knight rules stuff

Ok, tomorrow through Tuesday, I do the 9-5 gig, covering for Dale. I had to today, too… because he had to swing by the school and pick up his son for medical reasons… I don’t know how serious it is yet.

I’m going to be a busy little bee, doing my own gig and his, but it’s certainly not breaking rocks at Leavenworth. It’s good that we have redundant skill sets at work, or nobody could ever take a break.

I’ve finished part C of my sweetie’s birthday present…. I think she’ll like ’em.

Lazy Man supper tonight… junky comfort food. Irradiated bean and cheese burritos, with a gentle sprinkling of tobasco…just like the kind I ate back in college.

Hey, darktrain! Moon Pies are 100 years old! To celebrate, they’re having a Moon Pies memory contest, and the grand prize is a three day / 2 night trip to Chattanooga, TN, $1000 cash, and a tour of the factory…Heck, I’d just be happy to get a T-shirt.

100 words or less… maybe I’ll enter a couple of times, with different memories. I wonder how fanciful we can get? “The Year was 1908, and this is how my Grandma said that she used moon pies to get women the vote.” or maybe “I am Zarkon, a humble and simple time-traveler. My Memory of Moon Pies takes place four hundred years in your future, from which I have just arrived. Without your magnificent confection, the world would not exist as I know it.”

Class 5 free-floating vapor.. a real nasty one too…

why does this auction for hair dye have a picture of a lonesome waffle in winter?

wOoooooOOOOoooFriday 5 –

1. What size shoe do you wear? 15… Don’t call me yeti fer nothin’.

2. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 3, four if you count my Godzilla slippers

3. What type of shoes do you prefer? off, and in my closet. If I must, sandals. Hiking boots if doing anything challenging.

4. Describe your favorite pair of shoes. My brown birks. Worn to death, and I’ve cherished every step in ’em.

5. What’s the most you have ever spent on a pair of shoes? $250ish… Custom Shoes for giant-feet can be a pain when getting dressy stuff.

Random Scotto factoid… I like the old cartoon cliché of capturing mischievous ghosts with vacuum cleaners.

There’s more to Florida tourist traps other than Walt Disney World, Busch Gardens, and Sea World… there’s a boatload of lost and little known second-string tourist attractions. Man… I’m about thirty years too late for pirates world., right around the corner from me… along with Pioneer City.

The locations of the shootings yesterday in Montgomery County. Yikes.

On that note, I think it’s time for a refreshing shower, some nag champa, and a nice book…. Fuzzy Newt-nuzzles, and my sweetheart in my heart as I read to her.

Nighters, if I don’t see you beforehand, dear journal.

p.s. – New Semagic. – (thanks for the clue-in, annalytical!)

I just did some maintenance… deleted about 40 members who had removed their journals, and unlinked two communities. A lot of lj folk really don’t get basic etiquette…communities shouldn’t recruit members without asking them. I’ve been “joined” to a few communities over time, and the hut’s been hit by about maybe a dozen… most not even remotely related to the topic at hand. People linking to you is one thing, but communities making it look like you’ve joined them is another thing entirely.

In naughty-ish news…

Fresh from the Cruel Site of the Day, this link to the PBS website.

Scary/Wacky marine flatworm sex footage.
Cut for people with some sensibility