Sententiae Draconis

So now I'm back home, lying on my messy bed with my laptop. My laundry in the the drier, and will be for a while yet. I was thinking about getting some more clean on while I was waiting... but then I decided not to. Don't want to get over-stressed after all.

I had three loads of laundry because that was all the loonies I had. I still have a few bits that need washing, but they can wait. (Of course that's what got me into this mess - quite literally - in the first place, this is is besides the point.)

I renewed my paid accounts for LJ and DW today. I resent the fact that I have to have a paid account in order to avoid the adds on LJ that are getting more and more intrusive. I get a paid account for DW because I want to, but LJ is pulling the money out of me through negative reinforcement. And that is balls. At least it's cheaper than DW. I think I might suffer through the adds if it was more expensive. Of course this is also a very silly thing to be thinking, because when you think about it - I spend so much time on LJ and DW that $20-$30 a YEAR is nothing. But still... I miss my old school LJ basic account. Also I disapprove of this changing header business. That is just not on.

Every now and then I get inspired to add a whole bunch of feeds to my DW Reading List. Sometimes this works out well, and I end up finding something that is awesome and interesting. Other times not so much. Recently I added canhascheeseburger - which is hilarious and cute in all the ways that cat macros should be - but it also flooded the reading list like no other. So that went goodbye. The two I'm most pleased with this go round are Geek Feminism and Pass it to Bulis.

I think most of you would understand what drew me to Geek Feminism in the first place, but I stayed because they seem to be good at writing about women being awesome in male dominated fields. Their stuff is really science-oriented, which I guess is to be expected, but I find myself mentally adding Classics to the list and it works out well. I particularly liked in their latest post when they were talking about cultivating a shield of arrogance to combat poor self-confidence:

Think of it as a tongue-in-cheek recommendation: I don’t really think you should all become arrogant jerks, but it’s really handy if you can grin, wink, and say “of course I can do that, because I’m awesome” and then follow through.

Pass it to Bulis, on the other hand, is a hockey blog. A Vancouver Canucks blog more specifically. *grin* Partially I like it because it's about my team and it's always nice to hear from someone else who thinks the Canucks are important. But they don't just talk about what happens on the ice, and they are really funny. There are a few guys that post and I really appreciate how much of a nerd each of them is. One post was all about the trend on twitter where people were casting NHL players as Star Wars characters, and then the writer had to stop himself from going on a wild tangent about the Clone Wars. I think this quote from the latest "I Watched This Game" post really sums up what I like about this blog:

Manny Malhotra had his usual strong defensive game, going an astonishing 83% in the faceoff circle and logging almost 2 minutes of time on the penalty kill, but he also showed some offensive flourish, with 3 shots and an assist. His most impressive moment came towards the end of the second period, just before Tambellini scored, as he split the defense and forced Khabibulin to make a solid save. He just needs a browncoat, pistol, and a more accurate shot to upgrade from Alternate Captain Mal to Captain Mal.

They give stats about what's going on, but in a nice way that's not all about the numbers. They've got a link to video to help prove their point, and provide visual aids. And - most importantly - they've got a Firefly reference, with a link to the best scene from Castle ever.

And they also have some truly ridiculous posts, like this one, where they tell the story of how Daniel Sedin had to help Santa last year. This is of course why he missed five weeks of playing - it had nothing to do with his broken foot. Also found there (but not by them, which makes it even better) was this:



It's a TSN feature that was played at intermission during a Canucks-Blackhawks game a while back. And it's especially funny for that reason because we keep getting knocked out of the post season by those damn Blackhawks. Luongo, our star goaltender, is dressed funny and reading poetry. How could it be bad? And after posting it, I was really impressed that the PITB guys laughed a bit and then talked about how they weren't sure if a grumpier Luongo would have been able to joke about some of these subjects. So hilarity and insight. Clearly I have to keep reading these guys.

Bonus!info - Jan Bulis is a former Canuck. He was good, but never really in the spot-light. Now he's apparently doing really well playing with the Russians in the KHL. Good for him!

I know there were more things I wanted to post about, but this is probably enough for this post. Maybe more later tonight. I'm going to go and fold my laundry and then head back to N's place to hang out with her cats.

Why are all of my friends on it again?

Le Sigh.

Apparently in the Facebook photo uploader when it says "Upload Failed. Please try again." what it really means is "Upload Succeeded! Please try again because we like to fuck with you and make you upload your photos in triplicate! And then we'll be annoying in other ways because we're Facebook." Honestly if all my friends weren't on Facebook I would gladly not participate. But because they are all there it's a great place to keep in touch, and also to share my photos with everyone in a fell swoop.

So I got a few more of my photos up on Facebook for my Italy trip (if you have me there do take a look - some of them are quite funny). I am going to put up a post of the very best pictures and a running commentary about what the hell I did over here, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's on my to do list along with several other things that are remarkably important. (So probably the post will happen before the important things. Ha!)

I've been absolutely terrible at posting lately. I think I generally need a bit of time to get back in the swing of things after I've been away from easy internet for an extended period of time. Which is of course why I'm going to leave the internet again quite soon! (What you thought you'd get to hear more inane things from my life? Wrong!) I'm going sailing for the month of September on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. So you won't be hearing that much from me in the near future either. (Sorry.)

I'm going to be sailing on Appledore V which is a schooner I sailed on two years ago up the St. Lawrence River. So I already know the Captain. I've never sailed in Lake Michigan, and I've only done a little bit in the south of Lake Huron so I'm really looking forward to it. Plus, after this month all I'll need is Lake Superior and I'll have the full set!

In other news I've finally got things set up so that I can post from Dreamwidth onto Livejournal. So I'm going to be working from DW from now on. I'm still going to read my LJ Reading List though, so I'll still get your updates if you are not a Dreamwidth person. Likewise if any of you are Dreamwdith people who are crossposting please let me know (and add me, I'm aderam over there - surprise)! If you're just straight up crossposting I might take you off my LJ so that I don't get repeats, so please let me know what you're doing!

Anyway, more updates soon.

So I've heard some mutterings from people on the old Friends' List about what Dreamwidth is and what their plans are for this new and shiny thing, so I thought I should make my own informative post about what the hell I'm doing and why.

For those of you who have never heard of Dreamwidth, read this. It made me feel all squishy inside (reason number 1 why I got interested in Dreamwidth). It's a little old, and more of a statement of intent than where we are now. But I think it sums things up really nicely, and also they seem to be following through.

Things that I really like about Dreamwidth (currently in theory because I haven't really dicked around with it enough yet):
- They don't have a friends list. They have a Reading List and a feature to grant access to your posts to other users. This is so much awesome, and also really addresses the terrible terminology issue of the modern internet. I have lots of people on Facebook who are not my friends, and that is lame.
- There are no ads and they promise not to put ads in place, unless they really have to. And they will ask us first.
- This seems like an organization that I actually want to support by getting a paid account. I'm not doing so until I get my finances worked out, but I'm reasonably certain that I will in the future.
- I'm not sure how they work yet, but I know that there is a feature somewhere that allows a Dreamwidth user to cross-post to their LJ, and also a feature which allows me to read LJs on my Dreamwidth Reading List. So Awesome.

So here is my plan:

I haven't really had time to move my stuff over to Dreamwidth yet or play around over there as much as I would like. But I think I will move myself primarily over to Dreamwidth instead of sticking around on LJ. However - I will continue to cross-post once I figure out how that works, and I will continue to read your LJ if you don't move to DW. I'll let you guys know how quickly (or slowly) this process takes, since my life is vaguely hectic - it might not even get done until after I get back from Europe.

So for those of you already on Dreamwidth. I am aderam.dreamwidth.org! And I'm going to be moving over there - it just might take a while. And for those of you who are staying here or are still undecided - I'm moving over there but will keep in touch I promise.

And those are my thoughts. I hope they were/are helpful to all of you lovelys.

In other news I hung out all afternoon with E and it was really awesome. We've both been so busy lately that we haven't had the chance to just sit and talk in a long while, so that was really great.

*is happy*