Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

June Meetup

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Fun conversations and gadgetry at the Webloggers Meetup last night.

Apple eMate, June Webloggers Meetup, Ralph's Grocery, Seattle, WAPhillip Torrone brought a bunch of old and new hardware, gadgets, and toys along, including an Apple eMate, a Newton, and his cell phone — which is actually an old rotary phone that he’s hacked the cell phone hardware into. Pretty impressive!

Chas and Pops and I spent some time talking about Podcasts, and the possibility of my turning my dj mixes into a podcast stream. I’m still not entirely sure if I’m going to move that way, but I’m at least running it around in my head.

June Webloggers Meetup, Ralph's Grocery, Seattle, WAJake was wandering around interviewing anyone who’d sit still in his vicinity for more than a minute, and tossed a few questions my way. Look for some rather brainless-sounding pauses, “um”s and “aaahh…”s from me in an upcoming podcast from him at some point, if he doesn’t edit me out completely. ;)

As things were winding down, I spent a little time chatting with Kristin and Ian, both first-time attendees. Much enjoyed were the possibilities of answering Jake’s “What tech issue would you ask your state representative about if you had the chance?” question with “Teledildonics“, and Kristin and Ian’s picture outside the local Department of Homeland Security office.

A walk home afterwards, accompanied for a while by Jake and Chas until they went off their respective directions, and the evening was done. Not bad at all.

iTunes “My Weakness” by Moby from the album Play (1999, 3:37).

I can dream…

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Today, one of Seattle’s newspapers (I don’t remember which) had a huge headline across the top of the page:

JACKSON FREE

My first thought on seeing that was wishing that it was a declaration of content, not just a news story. I’d be thrilled if everything I read was “Jackson Free”.

Maybe now that the trial’s over, we’ll get a bit closer to that oh-so-happy day.

iTunes “Mr. Angry” by µ-Ziq from the album In Pine Effect (1995, 5:36).

Less nudity, more polka

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Saturday, Prairie and I went wandering around downtown, hoping to get a glimpse of Seattle’s World Naked Bike Ride participants. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, as they changed their route due to the temporary closure of the Seattle Center’s International Fountain, and we missed seeing them.

It sounds like the ride went off well enough, though, according to the Seattle Times.

Seattle police kept an eye on yesterday’s ride, but there were no arrests or citations, and nobody called police to complain, said police spokesman Sean Whitcomb.

Seattle’s laws on public nudity are somewhat vague and open to interpretation, Whitcomb said. Being able to charge someone with public indecency depends on someone else feeling victimized, and on the actions of the nude person, he said.

There is no clear-cut language in the law to say when being nude becomes offensive, Whitcomb said. “What’s offensive to one person may not be offensive to another.”

Still, the day wasn’t a total loss. On our wandering we went through the Pike Place Market, and as we were in the lower levels, something in the bins of a used music store caught my eye. I stopped, backed up, pulled the record out of the bin…and started to laugh.

“You’re thinking about getting it, aren’t you?” asked Prairie.

“You know it! This is too good to pass up!”

She laughed. “Well, it’s only two dollars….” We headed in to the store. The clerk we dealt with was rather oddly bland — most music store clerks I’ve seen tend to take some amount of interest in what the customers are buying, but this guy had no reaction whatsoever — but one of the other employees saw what I was buying and complimented me on my choice.

Discotheque for Polka LoversAnd that’s how I became the proud owner of Discotheque for Polka Lovers, featuring Johnny Vadnal and his Orchestra.

The only downside is that I don’t currently have a turntable, so at the moment, I’ve got no way to actually listen to this treasure. Still, one way or another, eventually I’ll have one again (I’ve got a bunch of records I’d love to hear again, and there’s a family collection that regularly moves among myself, Kevin, and Dad).

It was just too good — or too bad — to pass up.

Prices keep going up

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On my way home from work, I stopped off at the corner market, grabbed a 12-pack of Cherry Coke and a bottled water, and put them out the counter. The clerk scanned the soda, then the water…and then we both started laughing when the register displayed a total of $520,007.00.

That’s some expensive groceries.

Turns out the soda wasn’t in the computer yet, so after being scanned, it had asked for the price — and when he scanned the water, it read the UPC code as the price. Easy enough to fix, but it was a nice laugh at the end of the day.

iTunes “Happy Rave ’95 (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album Happy Rave ’95 (full mix) (1995, 1:10:03).

A blast from the past…

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Just a little something that amuses me. Though I’ve been posting regularly since November 2000, and have a few old weblog-style posts going all the way back to December 1995, it wasn’t until February of 2001 that I actually stumbled across the term ‘blogger’.

So it appears I’ve (without really knowing or planning it) become one of the growing number of ‘bloggers’ on the web. Blogger? Well read on…

It’s kind of fun to be able to pinpoint the very day that I realized there was this “weblogging” thing going on…and to know that I’d been doing it for a good while before that.

Yeah. I’m an old-timer. :p

Seattle Polite

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Sometimes the Seattle Polite attitude (mentioned at the beginning of this article about its flipside, the Seattle Freeze) really amuses me.

On my way home for lunch, I was just standing at the corner of Pike and 8th by the Convention Center waiting for the light to change. As I stood there, the car coming down the hill slowed, stopped, and the driver nodded for me to cross. I pointed at the light — “You’ve got the green, buddy…” — and he just waved me across.

Well, whatever. I crossed, and he went on his way. His good deed for the day, maybe?

iTunes “Tomorrow Wendy (Green Eggs and Hammond)” by System Syn (2002, 5:12).

100+ Things Meme

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I picked this up from Terrance.

I’ve always wanted to do one of those “100 things about me” posts, but I’ve never been able to think of 100 things that I wanted to list. This seemed like an easy way of doing it.

If you want to participate, here’s what you do. Copy this list to your blog. Bold the ones that are true for you. Add something that’s true about you.

(I’m also italicizing things that are ‘somewhat’ true, and including an explanation below. That’s not part of the original instructions, though….)

Here goes.

Read more

In Search of a Sugar Daddy

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Y’know, all I need right now is for some kind wealthy benefactor to drop about six grand in my bank account. That would essentially cover my income through the end of August, allowing me to quit my job and spend the summer working on my writing and photography, apartment hunting for the upcoming move, and investigating grants and loans for my eventual return to school.

Of course, that’s not exactly likely. Possible sure…but improbable enough that as I don’t have easy access to the Heart of Gold, I don’t expect it’ll happen.

Pity, that.

iTunes “Talk on Censorship/Letter to Tipper Gore” by Biafra, Jello from the album No More Cocoons (1987, 26:04).

DJ Humor

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Two DJs were talking. One of them says “Hey, you should see this movie I saw the other day! It’s GREAT!”

The other one replies, “Oh, I don’t know…Who’s the projectionist?”

(via underbunny and wirehead)

Catch up? You’re kidding, right?

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3528 Unread ItemsSee this?

This is what happens when I spend an entire weekend out running around and having fun, stopping by the computer just long enough to import, prepare, and upload photos.

Three thousand, five hundred, and twenty-eight unread items in my newsreader.

I’ve got a hunch I’m going to be doing a lot of skimming over the next few days.

Given that there’s more coming in every four hours when NetNewsWire refreshes, I figure I’ll get it knocked back down to zero just in time to go out and find something else to do that keeps me away for a few days…and it’ll all start over again.

iTunes “Stories” by Big Hat from the album Inamorata (1992, 3:38).