March 2007 Archives
Facts:
- My therapist has been telling me for months that I may not really know if I'm over my Fly Girl issues until I get interested in someone else.
- Last Sunday afternoon was what inspired this.
- Last Sunday afternoon I got an email from Fly Girl regarding her going away party.
- My horoscope yesterday said this: Tune in to the subtle shift you're experiencing. You may feel like finally relinquising a loss or forgiving someone for a past wrong. Allow these healthy expressions into your consciousness.
This is totally a sign from the universe. Freaky. Nice.
(click to embiggen)
I know y'all want to know what's the deal with the crush, and lawdy I want to tell you. But I can't. I realize this doesn't help at all. Sorry. But... *grin* Just be happy for me right now, 'kay?
Moving right along....
Been meaning to share these words from Lainie. I keep going back to them.
Don't know why, but I
Always feel prettiest when
I'm thinking of you.
Beautiful. Powerful.
Oooh, I got a little crush, y'all.
!!!
Between that and the weather -- low 70s, sunny, breezy, blue sky -- I'm having a bit of trouble concentrating today.
We're trying to find excuses to go up on the roof. I need to check and see if I can get a wireless signal up there.... Yeah, that's the ticket.
"Better Than Ephedra"
Wow. Not so far off. Freaky.
Looking at the pictures I've chosen is somewhat interesting and might be more interesting to you. Reading the personality types it assigned to me based on the pictures was a lot more interesting to me. The go-getter choice for my mood is enh, but it's closer than the other options. The escape artist (fun), junkie monkey (habits), and touchy feely (love) are pretty close. Freaky.
(via Lachlan)
He wants you to have a good weekend.
Would it be cool if I could include my Twitters here like the inline links?
Or is that overkill?
Actually, not a good idea. Half the Twitters don't make any sense out of context.
Where by "best" we mean "ridiculously offensive."
Sent to me by a co-worker:
A Somali arrives in Minneapolis as a new immigrant to the United States. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr. American for letting me in this country, giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care, and free education!" The passerby says, "You are mistaken, I am Mexican."
The man goes on and encounters another passerby. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America!" The person says, "I not American, I Vietnamese."
The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, "Thank you for the wonderful America!" That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from Middle East, I am not American!"
He finally sees a nice lady and asks, "Are you an American?" She says, "No, I am from Russia!" Puzzled, he asks her, "Where are all the Americans?" The Russian Lady checks her watch and says...
"Probably at work."
On my morning commute, the talk radio station I usually listen to played Vertical Horizon's Everything You Want for one of their bumpers.
Every time I hear this song, it takes me back to a summer evening in 1999, driving up a dark Highway 55 in Plymouth, MN. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about that drive on that evening, but for some reason it pops into my head every time. I associate that song with warmth. I am so jonesing for spring. As inconvenient as all that rain was in Austin, I love a warm spring rain.
My mind is still buzzing from SXSW. I have further thoughts which I've been jotting down as I go through my days. I've been too tired to flesh them out just yet, but I think they need the time to simmer in the background and process in my subconscious.
Clearly the one prevailing thought is that I wish there was a way to make this stuff my day job. It fascinates me to no end. I have plans and ideas that take up more and more of my time. To the point where if I give them all the attention they need to go anywhere, I really do not have time to do anything else beyond what I'm already committed to.
I'm full up.
If there was some overlap with my day job, it wouldn't be such a big deal. The work and the hobbies would each further the other. Not the case right now. People have been asking what I did on my vacation. I try to explain what SXSW is in general and what Interactive is in particular.
But then that leads to the question of why would I go? That's a can of worms that I don't want to open at work. The IT manager is the only person that got as far as that last question, but my boss was sitting next to me when he asked it. I went so far as to say that I publish in various places on the web on a variety of topics and left it at that. Made sure to leave out that word "blog."
I like that I have a hobby that enthralls me so much (several, actually). I love that it's evolved beyond blogging into the ether for shits because I'm otherwise bored. I have goals. I have purpose. Granted, they're kind of vague right now. I know I'm not serving a higher purpose like, say, the feminist bloggers of the world. I know I have no great insights on the state of the blogosphere. But I have my niches, which I like very much, and which I expect to develop more in the near future.
I want to go to a SXSW or a BlogHer and have a little more to contribute than just showing up agog at all the people and hanging out and seeing what happens. I want to be able to take an active role. Or at least be able to actively engage in the conversations. Participate, not just observe.
One of my co-workers took his wife and three kids to Puerto Rico last week.
Of all the places I've visited, Puerto Rico is one of my favoritest. It's gorgeous. There's beaches. There's rainforest. You can do the city. You can do history. You can do wilderness. You can do shopping. The food is wonderful.
So I asked him how his trip was. And was subjected to a five-minute rant on how much the driving sucked. They stayed at a resort on the southwest end of the island. And they didn't like it. Because the driving sucked, and the service was a little slow at one roadside store they stopped at.
If you specifically chose to go to a less-populated portion of the island, what the fuck did you expect? It should not be a surprise that there's little more than a narrow, hairpin road up the side of a mountain.
We didn't go on vacation much when I was a kid. Couldn't afford it. When we did go, we drove. If we had been lucky enough to go somewhere like Puerto Rico, I like to think that my parents would have tried to make me appreciate it.
I realize that managing a trip with five people, three of which are your kids, can be stressful on people. But how do you expect the kids to appreciate it if you're bitching about the perceived lack of conveniences the whole time? If you want all that shit, stay home.
What a waste.
I knew I wasn't going to any of the first panels of the day, so I slept in. Leisurely checked my email and Twitter (instead of frantically doing so). Actually it was my normal morning SXSW routine of brief internet check, shower, and off to the convention center. I thought about a run, but it was humid as hell and on the verge of rain. Would have been really uncomfortable.
outside my hotel
Got all the way to the Convention Center this morning before I realized I had forgotten my badge. Dang.
The view from a balcony at the Austin Convention Center
First panel: Digital Ethnorati. Ethnorati = Colored (by race/ethnicity and by socio-political identification) + Hip + Wired. Pretty high-level discussion. The best but unfortunately shortest part of the discussion was the three high school students (one via webcam from Brazil) talking about their online textbook project through the Center for 21st Century Skills. These young ladies were so smart and so well-spoken. Just amazing. Renews my faith in kids today.
(click to embiggen)
(click to embiggen)
(click to embiggern)
Man, it is humid here in the morning. 65° and 65% humidity and 9:30 this morning. Ugh. Turns it out rained all day, but it has been equally as humid every morning so far.
My camera is spazzing.
As I was sitting at The Hideout yesterday with six other grown-ass people whose heads were buried in their laptops, I succumbed to the massive peer pressure and joined Twitter. I'm thinking Twitter has seen a spike in registrations coinciding with the start of SXSW.
I'll spare you my personal analysis of how to use it and how it is used because a ton of people have already talked about it. And I've only been using it for about 18 hours.
I went ahead and signed up for it because people are using Twitter at SXSW to keep up with each other. It's the best way for me to know where people are. As an added bonus, I also know what they're doing/thinking, and it's way more flexible than Dodgeball. It's part blogging and commenting, part chat, part brain dump, and restricted to 140 characters at a time. And "twittering" is a fun verb.
It will blow out your text message plan if you're not careful. So manage that, or upgrade your plan accordingly.
I think once I leave here, my interest will wane a bit. It's serving a purpose for me right here right now. Unless you all sign up. (Do it do it do it do it!) Now that I can actually Twitter, I will definitely stay away from using Dodgeball in a Twitter-like fashion.
UPDATE: Look at March 9.
I had on my "I Love Minneapolis" t-shirt on Friday. A number of people asked me throughout the day what "MPLS" stood for.
I totally get that if you aren't familiar with the area, you might not know that "MPLS" is a common abbreviation for Minneapolis.
I was not anticipating Elisa Camahort asking me if "MPLS" stood for "Multiprotocol Label Switching."
A little tired today, but still determined to get up and run. Albeit a short run. Went out and found a full-blown college regatta going on! The minimal signage I saw yesterday led me to believe that it was a high school or maybe a rowing club event. Nope. Colleges and universities! Pretty cool. Thought of Fly Girl the whole time (she used to row).
Managed to get up, run, check e-mail, pack, walk, eat/drink, and make it to the first panel in time. Go me!
Went to Emerging Social and Technology Trends. Got bored and walked out halfway through. Hung out at the Day Stage Cafe where they were showing trailers for films showing at Film. Fantastic stuff.
I slept until I was rested, then got up yesterday morning and went for a run. Words cannot describe how glorious it is to run outside in 70-degree temps when the day before it was in the 20s.
My hotel is situated right on Town Lake, a section of the Colorado River. The Waller Creek Trail runs along the river just outside, so I decided to hop on it and see where it took me. Fortunately it took me directly to the Austin Convention Center. Turned around, came back past my hotel and went a little farther down the other way where I passed some folks setting up for a regatta. Cool!
The short of it is I got up Thursday morning in what I thought was plenty of time, but I didn't get to the airport in time.
I'm notating as I go along, but I'm trying to do more talking than blogging. If you want to follow along, photos will be trickling in.
Over the last couple weekends I shot some scenes for Chasing Windmills. The ep posted yesterday. Whee! I might have a small showing in one more. There's a little more background and stuff at MBTC (I'm too lazy to retype). The one piece of info to add is that CW won a Vloggie last year. They're awesome. And everyone's super nice, too.
I'm more excited about this than I have the energy to convey at the moment, so trust me when I say that it was pretty sweet and I'm really grateful to Cristina and Juan Antonio for letting me participate and to Taylor for putting in the good word.
I was a little stressed last night. Didn't sleep well. I was a little stressed this morning. Had to cram some work in. Had to let go of some things and acknowledge that it would make my day better if I didn't do them, my trip will be fine if I don't do them, and everything will still be okay when I get back if I don't do them.
I've got almost everything laid out. Just need to decide which bags to take. And let me take this moment to express my extreme displeasure with the TSA, because even though I don't have that much stuff, I'll probably have to check a bag because I don't have all my toiletries in sufficiently small packages. Stupid TSA.
For some reason, even all of the electronics and accessories seem to be taking up less space. I may only be thinking this because I haven't had to carry all of this stuff around on my back yet.
My flight's not until 10:30 am, so I don't even have to get up all that early.
Easy peasy. Austin, here I come!
But first, Happy Birthday, Lachlan!
- Andy rounds up this Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot ridiculousness.
- Four new authors forthcoming over at Ye Olde Metblog. Sweet!
- I met Jeremy on Sunday. Hilarious. And a pretty nice guy, too. We were filming scenes for that thing I mentioned before that I might have a cameo in. (Except, unlike the last time, my scene won't get cut and you'll actually be able to see it. Details to follow.)
- I keep thinking I'm leaving on Wednesday. I'm leaving on Thursday. Except I'm busy tomorrow night and Wednesday night with choir stuff and I really should be cleaning and packing instead of watching a movie and/or blogging.
- The torrent for The L Word is usually available by early Monday. Monday night and it's still not out there! Come ON already!
- Jim talked about his banana dessert, and now guess who's been on a banana kick? Yummy with vanilla yogurt. Yummy on my Honey Nut Cheerios. Yummy with Edy's peanut butter cup ice cream.
I'm watching the Red Wings/Avalance game which is in OT and I think Colorado just scored the winning goal, but I can't tell for sure because just as the goalie went down, NBC cut away to commercial break! And now that we're back, the game is over, so I guess they did. Too bad I didn't fucking see it! ARGH! *shakes fist*
Since we've gotten about two feet of snow in the last week, I'm soooo glad to be going to Austin on Thursday. Six days and seven nights of daytime highs in the 60s to low 70s and evening lows in the 50s. Perfect! Warmer than here, but not too hot.
As a northerner, I will probably sport some shorts at least part of the time, while the local Texans look at me curiously and wonder what's wrong with me. Which is fine, because I'll be looking at them the same way, with their hats and boots and driving their doolies. Actually, I probably won't see many Texans at all. I'll be surrounded by imported nerds the whole time.
Searching through the list of SXSW Interactive attendees from MN, I appear to be the only person going that's not affiliated with a company or publication. Which sort of makes sense considering how spendy it is. I think most folks, if they're going to plop down the money, would probably rather go to the music festival. Point being, I think my experience of this conference is going to be a lot different.
But it'll be warm. That's all I care about right now.
I win! I win!
As sung by comedian Maxine Lapiduss. Heh!
(via AfterEllen)
I fail to see how the fact that Barack Obama's great-great-great-grandfather owned slaves has anything to do with anything. This is seriously pissing me off.
It pisses me off even more that the media keeps freaking reporting on it! Don't keep putting that shit out there! They read through the whole thing about these stupid ass genealogists and give it a good 5 minutes, and then spend another 30 seconds weakly stating that it shouldn't matter. They halfheartedly condemn the folks who did the research and made it public, but they keep giving it a voice.
IF IT DOESN'T MATTER, STOP REPORTING IT.
!!!
It has zero impact on how he grew up or who he is as a person. He's under no obligation to "address the matter" as if he did something wrong. Hell, he probably didn't even know that until just now when this report came out.
Gah!
Woo! Flak Radio!
Taylor asked me if I wanted to sit in and I was all "OMG OMG OMG!" on the inside and "Sure!" on the outside. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.
You can download the whole show, or you can pick and choose segments if you're finding yourself lacking in attention span. If I had to recommend one segment to listen to, of course I'll point you towards Part 2 in which I talk about Metroblogging. If you decide you like it, you can also subscribe via iTunes. The web extra is only on the web. (Duh.)
UPDATE: I thought maybe I should actually talk some about the whole experience....
Now I'm on a haiku kick.
Winter storm warning.
Can I go home early, please?
I'll work, I promise....
Snow emergency.
Not done plowing from last time.
Where will I park now?
