Haven't posted in over a year. Weird. Too much to update, so I'll do it later.

Current reads: "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi. "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson (I think). "Exposure" by TNovan and Fanatic. "Gentle Birth Choices" by Barbara Harper.

I think that's everything I'm reading right now.

Just watched "Silent Running," an old SciFi film from the '70s with Bruce Dern. Hilarious and heavy handed if I do say so myself. Jeez! I hope we don't screw up the earth! Too late. Let's here it for the ice caps that might not be here in 30 years! Jesus, the world I'm leaving to my kids.

Doesn't quite flow the same way. I'm not sure if that song gets stuck in my head because I stare at Schrodinger's wave equations day after day, or if I'm so excited about Quantum Mechanics because that damned video made me laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw

Spending most of my hacking time on MacOSX lately. I'm really surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. Of course, the powerbook is pretty sexy and that may have something to do with it. School is school. This term, I'm still dealing with 2 pre-dept classes, but QM is getting alot of attention. Maybe this is a good time to be taking the class - I'm not distracted by a ton of labwork to be done.

Found out today that another guy I've studied with for years has dropped out of the program. I, however, won't. I'm not stopping until I've got a couple of bachelor degrees, thank you very much.

BSG!! Hope they don't move it to NBC primetime. I just don't trust that TPTB won't start making polite suggestions about plot changes.

Work. Oh, what can I say about work? I have never loved a job so much. I love my job. I don't know if I've ever really said that and meant it before. I love it. My boss would probably freak if he knew how much I love my job. It's almost naughty.

I haven't posted here in months. Maybe a year. Who knows? Maybe this site has shown up under the "assimilated by Borg" lists. Anyway, tonight I was surfing when I should have been studying/working, and came across this gem from Wil Wheaton's page:

BEGIN POST

stone in love

Scalzi on Journey:

[F]or the vast majority of Suburban Americans between the age of 14 and 24 in the early 80s, when it was time to make out and you put Escape on the turntable, you were automatically spotted two bases. Honestly, if you didn't have a hand under a bra or massaging a button fly by the end of "Who's Crying Now," Steve Perry would stop what he
was doing, fly to your house and then beat the crap out of you for blowing a sure thing.

I'm laughing so hard right now, I just peed a little.

END POST

I peed, too.

Back to the lab.

Well, this is still kinda hush-hush, but I'm not getting alot in the way of feedback, so I'll post the info here. This hasn't been announced on most of the major lists yet.

I finished Volume One of DaemonCasts, a podcast about alternative fan fiction and lesbian fiction in general. I'm twitching for some feedback, so if anyone is interested, please give it a listen.

http://daemonkayne.libsyn.com

Blade raised.

The World Question Center asks a bunch of international brainiacs a monster question every year and publishes the results. This year, the question is, "What is your most dangerous idea?"

The answers are all over the place, but this particular one hit a nerve. I've always wanted to do this. I mean, I've wanted to do this for about twenty years, but I've never done it. Guess I better try it. I wonder what kind of ideas would come to my twisted little mind if I unplugged completely once in a while?

Sorry 'bout the formatting. Better to post it crappy than not post it at all.

From the site:

A 24-hour period of absolute solitude</font></p>

Our brains are
constantly subjected to the demands of multi-tasking and a seemingly endless
cacophony of information from diverse sources. Cell phones, emails, computers,
and cable television are omnipresent, not to mention such archaic venues as
books, newspapers and magazines.

This induces an
unrelenting barrage of neuronal activity that in turn produces long-lasting
structural modification in virtually all compartments of the nervous system. A
fledging industry touts the virtues of exercising your brain for
self-improvement. Programs are offered for how to make virtually any region of
your neocortex a more efficient processor. Parents are urged to begin such
regimes in preschool children and adults are told to take advantage of their
brain's plastic properties for professional advancement. The evidence
documenting the veracity for such claims is still outstanding, but one thing is
clear. Even if brain exercise does work, the subsequent waves of neuronal
activities stemming from simply living a modern lifestyle are likely to
eradicate the presumed hard-earned benefits of brain exercise.

My dangerous idea
is that what's needed to attain optimal brain performance — with or without
prior brain exercise — is a 24-hour period of absolute solitude. By absolute
solitude I mean no verbal interactions of any kind (written or spoken, live or
recorded) with another human being. I would venture that a significantly higher
proportion of people reading these words have tried skydiving than experienced
one day of absolute solitude.

What to do to fill
the waking hours? That's a question that each person would need to answer for
him/herself. Unless you've spent time in a monastery or in solitary confinement
it's unlikely that you've had to deal with this issue. The only activity not
proscribed is thinking. Imagine if everyone in this country had the opportunity
to do nothing but engage in uninterrupted thought for one full day a
year!

A national day of absolute solitude would do more to improve the
brains of all Americans than any other one-day program. (I leave it to the
lawmakers to figure out a plan for implementing this proposal.)The danger stems
from the fact that a 24 period for uninterrupted thinking could cause
irrevocable upheavals in much of what our society currently holds sacred.But
whether that would improve our present state of affairs cannot be guaranteed.

I'm a football fan. Yeah, for you folks in the U.K., we Americans did botch the name, and truth be told, feet are only somewhat involved, but I was raised in the Church of the NFL, and I recently became born-again.

My chosen team sucks. I'm a 49er fan, and things have been terrible for awhile. I mean, it's reached the point where we high-five first downs, and we used to only do that when we scored. We have to take what we can get. Still, I love the game. I watch every Sunday, wearing a 49er jersey. And poor Gator now has a jersey of her own, because I'm determined to convert her. (I think she's starting to like it. Advice to my mates: wanna get your girl to love sports? Make sure the food served is *excellent*.)

So I'm about to get up on my high horse and talk about something that's been nagging the f&&k out of me for the last two weeks. Terrell f&&&ing Owens. This guy is an asshole. He was an asshole when he played for the Niners. He was an asshole when he signed on to the Eagles. He was an asshole when he wanted to renegotiate a $48+ million dollar contract only one year after signing. SIGNING. A CONTRACT. Used to mean you had to, cough, KEEP YOUR WORD. Not bitch to everyone about how you're not getting a fair shake. Hint: if you're pulling down more money *per game* than most folks in the world will ever see in their entire lifetimes, you really need to not be an asshole about it. Be polite. Have a little class. Show a little respect for the game. Hell, show a little respect for the players on your team.

But, no. This prick insults his teammates, insults his team, practically insults the sport, and then he's surprised when team management suspends him. Well, he had it coming. You can't slam your team and teammates - and take the focus away from the game just to try to push your personal greedy media-hogging agenda - and then act all surprised when you get canned. Sit down and shut up.

Then he issued an apology that pretty much translates to "I'm sorry you can't see that I'm right" and doesn't understand why the team won't put him back in the game. This guy went to college, right?

But what REALLY pisses me off is that now he's got big name politicos on his side. Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader came out of political obscurity to say that they think his punishment was too severe. WTF? Do you guys even *WATCH* football? Have you noticed this guy's track record? He's got a detailed history of being an asshole. It doesn't matter that once in a while, when he actually focuses, he plays a decent game. He doesn't have a single bit of social decency to back it up. Nobody can actually appreciate a player who whines - loudly - all the time about how he is under-appreciated. Schmuck. And yes, if I met him, I would politely tell him the same thing. Don't want to screw up my karma too much.

GRRRRRRRR. I'm giving this *way* too much attention, but he pissed me off. And that's what blogs are for.

heh.

Help me out, folks. What's the german term for "thought problem"? I think it starts with a "g". It's driving me nuts that I can't remember the term. Plus, the guys at work think I'm making it up.

I was a very bad girl this year (or very good, depending on your standards) so I would please like the following gift for Christmas/Yule/Kwanzaa/Hannukah/WTF-haveyou:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/hoodies/7c6f/

Oh, oh, oh, sweet ROC's blessed black boots, I really really want one. Maybe two - one in dark brown, one in navy blue. Sigh.

Gator would just shake her head at me if I bought it myself, I think.

Why ask why? Too much time thinking about neuro-associative conditioning, I guess, wondering when I associated pleasure to things technical.

Why do I feel a sense of peace when I pass the data center, and see a darkened room lit only by green LEDs? Why am I elated when the math on both sides of the equation balances out, when I have the right answer to four significiant digits exactly correct, when the constants come quickly to mind when needed ?

Why does my heart fill when I look at the stars, and wonder what it would be like to float among them? You couldn't pay me to watch most horror films in the theatre, not even the good ones, but I'll shell out hard-earned cash - of which I have none to spare - and stand in line in the rain to watch a mediocre science fiction film, then come back in after it's over and pay to watch it again.

Why does it make me so happy to work all alone in the circuits lab, trying desperately to get stupid screenshots of fourier transform data on the oscilloscope in comma-delimited format? What is it about scifi and fantasy novels that make me want to lie down on the couch, with some Radiohead playing in the background, and read entire novels in one sitting?

What makes me want to build robots, and draw unit circles, and design podcasts, and digitize music, and sweet ROC's blessed black boots, *write code*? Do sane people want to do that? Sure, I bitch about it, but secretly, I think I believe that the keys to the universe may be locked up inside some penny-ante C++ program I write in my basement while watching "The Core" or "ST:Insurrection" one more time.

I'm joking about some of this, but mostly I'm not. What is it about my brain that thinks these things are so beautiful?

Sometimes you're the windshield; sometimes you're the bug.

I was actually doing pretty well until I found out I failed my Physics midterm. Nothing worse than getting caught with your pants down. The professor told us that if we were caught up on the homework we'd be well prepared for the test. Then he tacked on 40% worth of stuff that wasn't on the homework. So, I got a big fat 59%, which, last time I checked was an F, F, F. Needless to say, I'm plenty pissed. It's my own fault, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I didn't prepare as well as I could for the exam; I just reviewed the damned homework material. Anytime a prof tells a student what's going to be on the test, it's a grand courtesy. He doesn't have to tell us squat. And my job was to be up on everything. I wasn't. Phuck. And that big fat F is 30% of my final grade. I Will Not Drop The Class, as I'm a stubborn cuss, so I'm just going to have to be Physics' bitch for the next six weeks. Damn. I was so looking forward to pretending I could have a life.

Onward.

Finishing up final notes on the first Fiction Review Podcast. It's not as time consuming as it would seem, but my time has been better spent prepping for midterms, encouraging teenaged girls to respect themselves, and watching "Firefly". We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping to post it this weekend, and I'm searching for a host. I may need to resort to begging for charity bandwidth, as I have none, and no dedicated server upon which keep the data. Hmm.

Gator is well. Her birthday's coming up, and I'll be damned if she didn't guess her present already. Curses! Foiled! Well, maybe I can come up with another surprise in the meantime.

I'm working on a short for a weblist I'm on, and I'm having a little trouble with it. For the first time, I'm submitting a piece that has no sex in it. None. Zilch. Not even 2nd base, and it's tough to find the passion of the characters. I need to describe that passion without writing the act. It's a challenge, but a good one, I think. I deliberately chose those parameters to give myself some practice writing emotion without action. Careful what you wish for. Fuck, again - does what I said even make sense? (g)

Back to work. Life continues.