Brainwaves of Sken

I recently received an email imploring me not to buy a certain "muslim stamp" from the post office. Snopes.com has the original email and the breakdown of what is and isn’t true (please be careful if you don’t have an ad blocker installed, snopes has these crazy popups that are very difficult to shut down on my machine).

For the first time in forever, a giant forward started up an actual conversation in email. The first reply laid out that they may be confusing "muslim" with "terrorist", as well as the countless times throughout history that Christians have been involved in murder and terror. I thought it was a pretty good e-mail pointing out the distinction between an entire religions viewpoint and the ravings of violent lunatics (to paraphrase), and figured that was that.

It so wasn’t over.

There was a reply from someone else on this huge list of email addresses (let’s not get started about forwarding things without using Blind Carbon Copy, or BCC). Reproduced in its entirety for shock factor:

You need to slow down and review the facts of history. Yes, Christians have made some mistakes, but Jesus gave solid guidance for people to live a happy life. Most just don’t want to follow his directions.
So, if you think the Muslim way of life is so good, why don’t you relocate to the Middle East, just buy a round trip ticket, because you will be wanting to return to the good ole USA. The Muslim people have one goal, destroy all that believe in Jesus Christ. If they reach a level of power where they can use force to achieve that goal then they will use force. The only reason the USA exist is because they know the cost for a major strike on our country. They only understand strength, that is why they will agree to almost anything, but do exactly what they had planned to do in the beginning.
The American Constitution was written by Christian people so as to provide for a free place to live and worship or not worship, ones choice. There is not one article based on Muslim belief or practice. It is most important we protect our Constitution even though it is under attach by some in Congress and the White House.
I can not imagine a female thinking the Muslim way of life has anything to offer them. Have a great year and make sure you are getting facts when you are trying to make a decision. Don’t buy the Muslim Stamp!

Wow, really? This was a special, special email. I could sense the spittle on her screen.

At this point, I felt like I had to weigh in.

My reply:

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I’ve flaked on working out for awhile, and I can tell as I haul myself from one building to the other and up 5 floors. Being bitterly cold doesn’t help. I can tell my back doesn’t jump for joy when I spend a lot of time moving about, since the injury – maybe I should look into P.T. This was the year I started to “feel my age”, I guess, and I need to consider strategies (Osteo Bi-Flex, wich my family swears by, P.T., more gym time) to combat that. I do NOT want to be the old man with perpetual back pain.

Work is going well enough. They’re flying us to Orlando for the NADA in a couple weeks (just after SkennCon), which will be very intense. We’re looking at doubling our workload sometime after that, so I’m trying to get all loose ends tied up before then.

I miss some of my more creative work. I need to reserve more productive time on the computer at home. I also need to, I think, buy a new chair, as the old one is probably toast, and the borrowed one (hi rbradakis!) is pretty uncomfortable. Does anyone make reasonable office chairs for elephants who break steel?

Speaking of the office, the computer I put together last april is still screamingly fast, but we’re coming up on the time in which I’m going to have to find an educational copy of Windows 7 and reload it, or I will be a very unhappy camper when my Release Candidate copy expires.

Additionally, despite the extreme measures I’ve gone to in order to replace equipment that might cause sparking, I still have problems with my computer wanting to spontaneously shut down. I walked to the other side of the room and touched the light switch, and my PC shut down. I’m pretty much thinking I have to outright move away.

Fortunately, that is sort of in the works.

Lucy is meeting DJs next week. I should have gotten on this earlier, but I’m too particular for something that doesn’t really matter. We’re still enjoying each other (see GiggleFest 2010 last night) ;). Lots of other things need to be planned and taken care of. If we actually sat down, brainstormed with notes and websites and made contacts, we’d probably be done with the major planning for this thing of ours in a weekend.

I don’t see people as much as I’d like. Sure, part of that could be blamed on WoW, but I think work is wearing, and I’ve just been less eager to make spontaneous calls to people I haven’t spoken to in forever. I love them as family, but I don’t even call my family. :) The lamest thing about getting older is seeing how I increasingly see only the people who I can convince myself are “on the way” to something else or who contact me first. It can be pretty gratifying to get together with people who don’t let that affect your relationship – some people will always be there.

On the other hand, I feel loads of love (hey now!) from the people I -do- get to see. I’m jonesing to see the people we’ll be inviting to the wedding, and just a teensy bit anxious about all the people we can’t invite. In fact, once you include children we’re probably 20 or 30 over where we thought we’d be already. Note to self: stop making friends. Better yet: Announce a “friend cap” – to become a new friend, you must eliminate an old friend. FIGHT! And I’m working on my evil laugh, so I’ve got that going for me.

I’m getting together with a small group of people tonight, catered from my favorite middle-eastern restaurant, and frankly, I cannot wait.

I’ve read more fiction this year than I have in a few – I tend to get caught up in my non-fiction reading, and for someone who loves stories and storytelling, that’s not great. I’ll never be able to devote the overwhelming amount of time I did as a child and teen, but it’s time to get back into it.

On the volunteering my free time end of things, I’ve made a lot of progress on the tech end of the DIY track for Penguicon, though I still can’t figure out where we put the info, since it seems like the database has disappeared. I look forward to helping Melanie with the craftier end, and seeing how they can work together. I think the Sugru panel might be a good start to that!

While I have always (even before puberty) had the understanding that life is short, this year, and my general lack of productivity in the things I enjoy, reinforced that. I’ll never get this year back, so I need to put more energy into making the next year twice as awesome.

A good friend asked me what weekend might work good for me between now and the end of July for a wedding, and I said “Hmm, I think the second two weeks of June might be open.”

Speaking of, no one plan anything important for the first week of June – you can’t come on my honeymoon, and I don’t want to miss a thing. :)

Here’s to life.

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earthenwood, rbradakis and I went to i3 tonight to discuss possible classes for Penguicon, and I have to tell you that I’m pretty geeked at the possibilities.

We’re looking at a number of potential panels, including make-and-take projects (arduino, open source router software), electric car conversion panels, and possibly an open podcast station. They’re looking to hook up with other hackerspaces from around the region to talk at penguicon about what a hackerspace is and what ie means for the community.

There’s also some good news that I will wait for rbradakis to announce, but it’s pretty awesome.

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Being at work the day after a busy con that involved little sleep isn’t ideal, but things are changing here rapidly, so I’m glad I’m here to lay out my ideas and the challenges, and hopefully see them resolved.

I brought a camera or two, and I’m excited to see some of the hilarious video captured therein. I don’t plan on editing it, I’ll leave that to Nuri, ’cause I have ten bajillion other things in the works.

I had a really good time over-all. As usual with ConFusion, I wasn’t incredibly excited with the panels, but I had fun with the Improv group, and I was really glad to see the ion drive panels, though I didn’t make it to them. I didn’t make it to either of the dances for even a moment, alas. The masquerade seemed pretty small this year, but maybe that’s because it didn’t have the same draw for the pre-show, or the theme didn’t thrill people.

The TV channel was awesome! I really hope to see it used even more in the future to lay out advertisements for dealers/art alley, information straight from Ops, a map of the hotel, calendar of events, and more. I’m really impressed with the work Nuri put into it – it’s really just amazing, amazing and totally the direction cons need to head in.

I didn’t take any still photos ’cause I was behind the video camera, but that’s alright, there’s always plenty to go around.

My apologies to the people I didn’t see as much as I wanted, and those who saw me more than they wanted *winks*. I loved meeting Peter Beagle and talking with his assistant, Connor! They were too kind – when they found out we’re hoping to do some readings from sci-fi authors at our wedding, they offered a piece Mr Beagle created for his 52/50 project, which they emailed to us last night. How cool is that?

There was also the briefest of conversations with a number of the authors attending. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.

I was really touched with what our Hotel contact had to say at closing ceremonies about how the entire staff loves us and feels protective of us when they think we’re being abused by the hockey dads also at the hotel. I was also stunned when she said they had a petition amongst the staff to eject them for good – if they can afford to do so, they will.

Next con, though – more dogpiling. A distinct lack of dogpile was felt.

The best part of the weekend, ’cause I’m such a nerd, was Lucy coming up on Saturday. She’ll be staying at my place for the next week, and nothing helps my day fly by like knowing that I’ll get to see her at the end of it.

If you were at ConFusion, how’d it go for you?

PS If you’re looking for photos from Confusion 2010, try this flickr slideshow! If you upload your con photos to flickr, please tag them with Confusion 2010 so we can all find them. :)

PPS Ahahaha, that was total fail. See, Further Confusion happens the same weekend, and that’s a furry convention. Whoops! Man, how do we differentiate? Try looking here and here for a few.

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I spent the evening helping Nuri set up video for the con – we’re going to have channel 20 all to ourselves for the duration of con, in all the hotel rooms, and that is sweet beyond belief.

Dinner was excellent re: company … a little more expensive than I was expecting, but then I’m not a heavy sushi eater either.

Now i’m prepped for tomorrow – vidcam is emptied and charging, head’s finally shaved again, and I’ve totally not packed. :) I do have to work tomorrow, alas, but I’m going to bust ass and see if I can’t get out on time for once.

For some reason I have one of the peanuts christmas songs stuck in my head – I take that as a very good sign, as I associate that entire album with feeling loved. :)

See many of you fine folks in a few hours!

PS if you need to reach me during con, email me, my gmail address is the same as my LJ name.

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They Might Be Giants of Science

I guess it probably reveals what I think about science and how people treat it these days that I teared up when one kid says ‘I want to be a scientist” and his younger brother says “So do I!”

I can’t wait to steal the album away from Lucy (I gave it to her for christmas) so I can listen.

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I canna wait to get home and do some serious sleeping.

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(for those who can’t watch video, here are "ten other quotes from MLK Jr.")

• Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted
• Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better
• An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
• We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love
• Every man must decide if he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness
• A riot, at bottom, is the language of the unheard
• Don’t let anyone make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force – to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.  I can hear God saying to America, "You are too arrogant, and if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name."
• I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours – the initiative to stop it must be ours."
• A nation that continues, year after year, to spend more on military defense than on social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
• What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

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I haven’t been in there in awhile to play, but I’ve just added a bunch and I’m excited to see how they work.  Some of these add surprising depth to Gmail. There are even more that I’m not currently using that are all about anticipating your needs, such as automatic language translation.

YouTube previews in mail

Picasa previews in mail

Navbar drag and drop

Forgotten Attachment Detector

Inbox preview

Create a Document

Authentication icon for verified senders

Send & Archive

Undo Send

Title Tweaks

Search Autocomplete

Google Calendar gadget

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The conservative case for gay marriage – includes video by one of the lawyers for the California Supreme court case. He defended Bush in Bush v Gore, and makes the case that this is not a conservative or liberal issue.

I welcome your comments (if you read the article). No being douchy, please, I’d like to hear the viewpoints of everyone here.

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