For remembering
•April 27, 2008 • 50 CommentsMy history was different from most, between the absence of TV and abundance of books for the first decade of my life to the independent, strong, single women who made up my family. My family often told me that I was an exception amongst men, and it was a struggle to decide whether to be proud of myself, individually, or ashamed of being male. As you might imagine, the truth was a little from column A, a little from column B. Though I make friends easily, I am close to few men, because they’ve got to be exceptional – in order to come to terms, I had to come up with my own definitions of masculinity (a few of the corny results are found on my dusty old web site).
I’m not really going to go into the abuse and coersion I dealt with, both as a kid and a young adult – too many people don’t understand the difference between “I’m sharing myself with you” and “I want you to fix my problems” or “I’m begging for sympathy”.
I try to remember that I am, first and foremost, me, and that I am defined primarily by my actions and secondarily by my experiences. More instrospective bullshit
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•April 25, 2008 • Enter your password to view comments.Last month, I celebrated my seven-year LJ anniversary.
•April 24, 2008 • 36 CommentsYou’ll have to forgive me for not having noticed. :)
Journal entries: 3,489
Comments
Posted: 21,309
Received: 22,029
In honor of that, I will use the oldest “default” icon that I still have in my icon list.
One of these days I’ll have to finish my LJ “review” of LAST year and catch up for THIS year – my yearly summary of posts has been very useful for me to see what significant events have transpired in my life over the years, and is much more manageable than wading through my posts every time I’m curious.
In honor of my anniversary, I offer you something meaningless: Which icon is your favorite? And moreso, is there something you’d like to see in my icon set?
There’s, like, a meme out there somewhere, and it went something like this.
•April 24, 2008 • 70 Comments10 weird things about the sken.
1. I have weird vegetable interests, if you know what I mean. I like raw carrot, but not cooked. Prefer canned peas to frozen. Whole spinach to chopped. No onions, but I’ll eat french onion dip or salsa (sort of, more like salsa sauce).
2. My memory is the epitome of sporadic. I might not be able to remember what I planned to do next week, but I remember the first time someone told me they were falling in love with me, I remember the smell of the playground in kindergarten, and nearly every song I’ve ever heard (I’m a whiz at name that tune… though sometimes I have to sing it, ’cause I forgot the name). Context is everything
3. I was raised by women, which I like to say is kinda like being raised by wolves – different language, vicious culture, pack mentality.
4. My closest relative is my grandmother – I speak of her all the time, and her boring lectures became the seeds of important lessons as I got older. During the first 16 years of my life, she lived with two women who detested each other so much, they wouldn’t be in the same room with each other. My grandma asked if I understood that she dated women when I was six or so, and my response was, “… duh.” Saturday mornings consisted of leaping into bed with her and Carol until my cousins woke up.
5. I’ve never broken a bone, but I have lost a fingernail to a sliding van door, and much skin to road rash as a kid. When I was in preschool, I did major (skin) damage to my chin on the merry-go-round, and insisted they put a mirror up so I could watch while they sewed me up.
6. When I started speaking, it was in full, concise, clear sentences. It took elementary school to make me slur my words like a normal human. ;)
7. I started reading before preschool, and have a story about it that defines my relationship with my mom rather well.
8. Most people have a code-word or something they use with their partner that says “I love you”. Mine is more a, erm, squirrel face.
9. I keep my fan on under my desk every single day. It’s not about how warm or cold it is, it’s about airflow. Between that and taking off my shoes, it keeps me awake and feeling less, y’know, trapped by the cube walls.
10. I was that kid who kept his food separate, but I love to try mixing things now. When I was a teen, I tried a hot dog with peanut butter, which wasn’t that bad, and I once cooked summer sausage bits on a bonfire with bits of hershey’s chocolate on it. It’s like a s’more for carnivores! My patented Curry Kraft is my favorite concoction, though my pizza is a close second.
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•April 24, 2008 • Enter your password to view comments.Penguicon Love
•April 21, 2008 • 70 CommentsAfter Vegas, I stayed up all night trying to reload my laptop in prep for Penguicon – it was a big bag of FAIL, and I had to start it over on Friday. I also missed the InstallFest – good news though, I did get an official Ubuntu CD for installation on my own time. Anyone wanna come help*?
Fortunately, I convinced the boss that it was best I work from home, which meant I could catch a little nap here and there so I wouldn’t be shit on toast at Pcon. Instead, I actually found myself on the grounds before 5pm, something totally unprecedented in the past three years!
I couldn’t make it five feet without running into someone worthy of a big tackle hug. It took me ten minutes just to get to the front desk and check into my room.
I met up with Clan Bradakis and we were thick as thieves** for the rest of the con. I hit up a panel and watched The Tesla Coil experiment outside, but otherwise abandoned all pretense of Officially Sanctioned Behavior. There was dogpiling and The Open Source Boob project, and I finally met yakavenger, blazepoet, yuki_onna and justbeast for the first time ever. Lucy arrived, so the party could begin in earnest.
Okay, this method will take me forever. Let’s try something different!
I am waaay behind on posting.
•April 21, 2008 • 4 CommentsI never finished talking about my Vegas trip, so I’ll pick up where I left off.
The Fujinon company appreciation party was held at The Four Seasons. I snuck in through my connections who cautioned me not to ‘blaze past’ the outstretched hands of the hosts (as they’d done the year before). Having some decorum, naturally, I shook the hands of a dozen Fuji executives, including the President. I somehow refrained from saying something totally dorky like, “I, er, love your film. Good stuff, there.”
There was incredible sushi, crab claws, and drink to be had, and a passable Rod Stewart.
Updatorz
•April 13, 2008 • 6 CommentsDespite the 9 am walk-around by someone at Hard Rock coming up empty, I decided to stop over there on my way to the conference. My diligence paid off, as it had been stuck behind a flyer in the bill book.
So! All’s well, folks.