Personal

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

Marriage Equality rally

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Marriage Equality march and rally, Seattle, WA

(Click through for the full Flickr photoset.)

Update: Seattle P-I: Seattle marchers back gay marriage

Hundreds of gay-marriage supporters took to the streets yesterday, marching from Capitol Hill to downtown Seattle in a show of solidarity two days before the state Supreme Court hears arguments on whether same-sex couples should be able to marry.

[…]

Last spring, eight couples sued King County after they were turned down in trying to get marriage licenses. Eleven more couples sued the state in Thurston County, also seeking to wed.
The gay and lesbian couples prevailed in both counties. Tomorrow, the state Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether to uphold the rulings in their favor.
The key question is whether the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, passed by the Legislature in 1998 over Gov. Gary Locke’s veto, is unconstitutional. The law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

iTunes “Master and Servant” by Depeche Mode from the album Master and Servant (1984, 3:48).

Good night tonight

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No particular reason for that, just a good night. Evan (the DJ at the Vogue) was doing quite well, and the club was just crowded enough to be definitely crowded, without being so bad that I couldn’t get on the floor and bounce around.

I’d brought in a CD of requests, but apparently the CD player at the club is picky and wouldn’t read the burned disc. Evan’s got the CD now, though, and he’ll re-burn it to a CD brand that he knows works, and then I might get some of my requests in. Here’s the playlist for the cd:

  1. Depeche Mode: Flexible/Just Can’t Get Enough — a mix of two of my favorite DM tracks from a bootleg CD called the Twelfth Strike.
  2. Psychic TV: I.C. Water
  3. LaTour: Allen’s Got a New Hi-Fi
  4. Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark: Pandora’s Box (It’s a Long, Long Way) (Constant Pressure 12″)
  5. Drum Club: Sound System (Underworld)
  6. MC 900 Ft. Jesus: If I Only Had a Brain
  7. Devo: Head Like a Hole — Yup, Devo covering Nine Inch Nails. From, of all things, the Supercop soundtrack.
  8. 12 Rounds: Pleasant Smell (Rethought by Clint Mansell and Keith Hillebrandt for the Nothing Collective)
  9. Information Society: Going, Going, Gone (Razed in Black)
  10. Propellerheads featuring the Jungle Brothers: Take California (and Party)
  11. Public Enemy vs. Winx: Bring the Higher State of Noise — A mash-up of ‘Bring the Noise‘ and ‘Higher State of Consciousness‘.
  12. :Wumpscut:: Wreath of Barbs (Gray/Scale)
  13. Billy Idol: Don’t You Forget About Me — Billy Idol covering the Simple Minds track from the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club.
  14. Pigface: Mind Your Own Business
  15. The Kleptones: Listen — A mash-up of Queen‘s ‘Radio Ga-Ga‘ and a few different Beastie Boys tracks.

On the way home I happened to bump in to Janice, who I’d met last month sometime at the Vogue. She was on her way home from the Noc Noc with a friend (Tom…I think), so I stopped to chat with them for a few minutes. Last time I’d seen her I’d given her my LiveJournal name on a matchbook (which she got quite excited about…in a world of cell phones and PDA’s, the matchbook technique was very “old school”), so I harassed her about not having tracked me down yet to say hi. Nothing like a little friendly teasing to round out the night!

Earlier today I bussed out to the University Village to stop by the Apple Store and picked up iLife ’05. I haven’t done a ton of playing around with it yet, but so far, I’m liking the changes in iPhoto 5. Poked around for a few moments with the other programs in the suite, but iPhoto’s the only one that I spent any real time with.

New toys, yay!

Tomorrow…well, later today, I suppose (I’m up way too late tonight) there’s a march and rally in support of equal rights in marriage being put on by Equality Now that I’m planning on hitting. It starts just up the hill from my place at Broadway and Pine at 1pm, then goes down the hill to Westlake Plaza. Should be interesting, and hopefully get me some good pictures, too. We’ll see…

iTunes “Going Going Gone (Razed in Black)” by Information Society from the album InSoc Recombinant (1999, 4:56).

Commonly Confused Words answer key

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Given the amount of interest that the Commonly Confused Words test prompted, and after prompting by Royce, I’m going to go back through and re-take it, recording my answers as I go through. At the time I originally took it there was only one answer key (for the “Beginner” section), though now there are answers for section two (“Intermediate”) also, so I’ll take a look at those too once I’m done.

Maybe among all of us, we can suss out where we’re stumbling!

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TechNewsWorld commentary mention

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Just adding another link to the ever-expanding 15 Minutes category here. Romm pointed out a mention of me in a commentary piece on TechNewsWorld that was published a couple of weeks ago. It’s a nice mention, too, as in addition to the standard “another fired blogger” mention, the author also follows up with my reaction to the incident, and contrasts it to Ellen “Queen of Sky” Simonetti’s Bloggers’ Bill of Rights campaign (which I think is goofy at best).

Contrast Simonetti’s response with that of Michael Hanscom. He was on a temporary assignment with Microsoft when he posted a picture to his blog that he took on the Microsoft campus. Microsoft essentially fired Hanscom, telling his temp agency he wasn’t welcome on campus anymore, thus ending his assignment.

The picture showed a pallet of Apple Macintosh G5’s being delivered to Microsoft. Hanscom said he took care not to show anything in the background that would give away Microsoft secrets, security systems or even building locations. But since the picture was taken on its campus, it made public an activity that Microsoft has a right to keep low-profile if it chooses to.

Unlike Simonetti, Hanscom concedes that Microsoft had a right to toss him out. Although he is a blogger, he realized that the normal legal rules apply to his situation. He started blogging back when blogs were just called “personal Web pages,” so maybe he has enough history to see blogging in its proper context — it’s just publishing. It is not private communications among friends.

I just dropped a note to Philip Albert, the author of the piece, thanking him for that.

Another interview

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I just got done with a lunchtime phone interview with Nick Jesdanun, a reporter for the AP. He’s still finalizing his article, and as this is going to be a wire story, there’s no telling where it might show up, but there’s at least a chance that my name will start popping up again over the next day or so (possibly as early as this evening) in the midst of another story about blogging, jobs, and the occasionally unfortunate intersection of the two.

I’ll toss a link up when I see it, but if one of you kind folks happens to catch it before I do, feel free to let me know!

Update: Prairie wins! She found the story first: Blog-related firings focus on policy. Just a small mention, but I’m in there…

In 2003, a Microsoft Corp. contractor was fired after posting photographs of computers from rival Apple Computer Inc. at a loading dock. Because Michael Hanscom had described a building in his posting, Microsoft said he had violated security, he said.

[…]

Microsoft refused to comment on Hanscom’s case, but pointed out that it encourages blogging and has more than 1,500 unofficial bloggers – the bulk on Microsoft’s official Web sites.

Update: And here’s a CNN version of the same story, courtesy of Tim.

Anybody hungry?

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Every Tuesday night, I have about the same routine. I get home from work a little after 5pm, Prairie and I chat via iChat until about 7pm, and I browse through NetNewsWire while we’re chatting. At 7pm, I close down NetNewsWire, order some pizza, and pop in a DVD.

Tonight went as normal, but by 8pm, my food hadn’t shown up. This is rather unusual — I live just a few blocks away from the pizza place, so their quoted 45 minute delivery time is usually closer to 25-30 minutes — so I gave them a call to check up. The girl that answered the phone checked my number, and told me that there was no order in the system for my number. Obviously, someone had screwed up when I placed my order, so she re-placed my order, giving me my dinner for free.

About twenty minutes later, my buzzer rang, and the pizza guy showed up. He handed me the pizza, and then handed me my bill as he apologized for running late. Late? A bill? Interesting — apparently my first order did get placed after all. I signed (since this was the order I’d placed in the first place) and sat back to munch and see if the second free order was also on its way.

Sure enough, twenty minutes after that, there was another buzz at the door.

So now I’ve got lots of pizza. Guess I’m good for a few days of munching.

Hm.

Anybody hungry? :)

iTunes “Pussy (We Want Some)” by Lords of Acid from the album Pussy (1998, 5:39).

Just stop talking

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Many years ago, I went to a summer camp in which one of the activities was horseback riding. This ended up being a less-than-successful experience for me, though, as as soon as I got up in the saddle the horse reared up, dumping me rather unceremoniously on the ground as I slid off the saddle and over the horse’s rear end.

Last night, as I was talking to Alicia, Laurie and Robert outside the Vogue as I was preparing to leave, I started to try to relate this story after Alicia mentioned that she has four horses at her place out in Snohomish.

So what words actually managed to fall out of my mouth?

“I was on a horse once…it got me off. (pause) It threw me off…aw, dammit….”

And much laughter ensued, along with Laurie’s observation that, “So this must have been bareback, I suppose?”

Some days, I really should just keep my mouth shut.

iTunes “Smear Body” by Nitzer Ebb from the album That Total Age (1987, 5:49).

Critical Mass

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Critical Mass, Seattle, WA While I don’t currently own a bike, so I couldn’t join in the ride, I did wander down to Westlake Plaza today to catch the gathering of riders for this month’s Critical Mass ride.

I got there a bit before the official 5:30 gathering time and spent the next half hour randomly walking through the assembled bikers, snapping shots as I went — here’s the Flickr photoset.

One of the guys there had an LED messageboard bolted on to the back of his bike that scrolled the message “CRITICAL MASS www.seattlecriticalmass.org We’re not blocking traffic. We ARE traffic!” as he rode along. I thought this was pretty nifty, so snagged a quick video of it while he was talking with a couple other bikers.

Problems in Critical Mass?Interestingly enough, when I got home, I spent a couple minutes working on cleaning up the audio of their conversation. Apparently there’s been a bit of dissent in the ranks, with a few different factions (with only a 23-second audio clip, I don’t really know what the dispute is about), and these guys were egging on the guy with the sign to step up and take control. Click on the picture to the left to watch the video (704kb QT .mov or 2Mb higher-quality version) and hear their conversation.

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Etch-A-Sketch Tech Support

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Thank you for calling Etch-A-Sketch Support!

Tech Support for Etch-A-Sketch

Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has a distorted display.
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny little lines all over the screen.
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has lines that prevent me from doing my art project.
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I keep from losing my Etch-A-Sketch documents in the middle of my work?
A: Stop shaking it.

(from the OxDEADBEEF archives, via MeFi)

Jim Steinman

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A few years ago, the radio at work was tuned into one of the Anchorage “adult contemporary” stations — brainless background work-safe music that I wasn’t really paying much attention to. One song came on that caught my ear, so I stopped to take a closer listen to it. I had no idea what it was or who was singing, but the more I listened to it, the more a certain suspicion grew.

So I called up the radio station.

“Mix 103.1, what can I do for you?”

“I just need to know what the song you just played was — but before you tell me, I want you to check something out for me. By any chance was that song written or produced by Jim Steinman?”

“What? I haven’t got a clue.”

“Could you check?”

“Um…sure, hold on.” The DJ must have thought that I was nuts. A moment later, he got back on the phone. “Actually, yeah, you’re right. Written and produced by Jim Steinman. How did you know that?”

I laughed. “It just sounded like him. He’s the guy who wrote and produced both of Meat Loaf‘s big albums, Bat out of Hell and Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Whatever that song was, it sounded like a Meat Loaf song, only it was someone else singing, so I figured it was probably Steinman.”

“Not bad.”

“Thanks. So who was it?”

“Celine Dion. It’s All Coming Back To Me Now.”

“Oh. Crap, I just liked a Celine Dion song?”

(Sigh.)

So, yeah. There’s one Celine Dion song that I do have to admit to liking. In my defense, though, it has nothing to do with Celine — it’s all about Jim Steinman. Overproduced, bombastic, and very often tongue-in-cheek rock and roll. I love it when Meatloaf’s singing it, and I even like it when Celine’s singing it.

Just another addition to my many guilty pleasures.

(This confession inspired by a MeFi pointer to this list of parody Steinman song titles, which isn’t really as amusing as I’d hoped it would be.)

iTunes “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” by Meat Loaf from the album Bat Out of Hell (1977, 5:05).