Ad hoc research overload. Brain overflowing with trivia on the kanji used in Japanese newspapers and the symbolism of carnations in the language of flowers. Gah!

Hey I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who gave me some feedback on that mock website I did.

This post

So my phone interview went extremely well and he offered me the position of senior designer! I'm very pumped, going to Toronto to meet up with him on Saturday and finalize the details.

This brings me to my first concern. I've never really worked from home before. This position is a telecommuting position. Just wondered if any of you have any experience with doing this.. I'm excited to not have a boss nagging me over my shoulder every two minutes but i can see it becoming very easy to let that get to your head and not be as productive. Any words of wisdom?

thanks guys

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=213627

I always feel a little weird when I see "having a baby" highlighted as the ultimate thing that a woman can do with her life. You know the deal: you may have a Pulitzer Prize, a fine job, wealth beyond measure, but unless you've pumped out a kid you're hollow inside.

I mean, not to bag on babies, but it's the end result of a biological function that most people are drawn to regardless. Not that having a child isn't an ordeal, but barring the barren, bearing a child is something that requires no native talent aside from a fair amount of endurance and a functioning womb.

And yet that's what's fetishized in this culture - HAVE A KID. All your other accomplishments, all that stuff you actually worked to bring about, sure sure - but when you getting knocked up?

If it was "being a mother" that was hammered home on, maybe I could get behind that, but the emphasis isn't generally on the considerable effort that goes into being a kind and loving mom. I know lots of terrible mothers who have done nothing with their lives, but people nod approvingly because they squeezed one out. And thus, the sum function of their lives has been reduced to something their bodies were designed to do anyway.

I envision a world where, for strange and Darwinian reasons, society would reward me greatly for growing a beard. People would stop me on subways to stroke it. Whole movies would be devoted to men's adolescent longing for beards, and the struggle they had because they loved their job, but what really would satisfy them was a beard. Soap operas would revolve around frail men struggling with petitioning beautiful doctors to bring their chin-hairs to luscious fruition, photographing in fine detail each shade of that five o'clock growth.

"That Bill Gates," people would say. "Sure, he's made billions, then given billions to charity. He's smart as a whip, has a beautiful wife and several intelligent children. But - " And at this point, they would lower their voice conspiratorially - " - no beard."

I really want to make a jewelry box for my "earrings." (flares,plugs,tapers,etc.)
I was trying to think of good ideas to try to do this..
I mean if I got a wood box felted the inside and painted the outside.. That would be pretty neat although I was thinking of a way to divide my earrings. Because I'd probably get annoyed them flying everywhere and moving out of place?

Right now I can't think of any other creative way to go instead of a wooden box. :l

Ideas? Please..

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14580

A team of archaeologists from the Institut national des recherches archaeologiques has discovered the fortifications of medieval Paris.

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This entry originated at adampknave.com.

So here’s the deal. My publisher and I were discussing possible contests. We like contests. And one thing led to another and here we are with a copy of the Complete Farscape on DVD on its way. A copy we’re going to give away to one of you.

What’s Farscape?
————-
John Crichton. Astronaut. Flung through a wormhole and lost in a galaxy far from home. He finds himself in the middle of a prison break, surrounded by hostile aliens, soaring through space inside a glorious living space ship called Moya. Hunted by the relentless Peacekeepers, he allies himself with his unimaginably alien fellow refugees and searches for a way home.

So begins the epic sci-fi classic Farscape. A fusion of live action, state-of-the-art puppetry, prosthetics and CGI, Farscape features mind-boggling alien life forms, dazzling special effects, edge-of-your-seat thrills, irreverent humor and unforgettable characters — all brought to life by the creative minds at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. No wonder it’s been called the most imaginative sci-fi series in television history.

Here, in time for the series’ tenth anniversary, are all four Farscape seasons, 88 episodes, together for the first time in one epic collection. These are the adventures of Moya’s crew — Crichton, Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun, warrior Ka D’Argo, azure priestess Zhaan, spritely thief Chiana, Dominar Rigel, Pilot and many others. Like Moya herself, this package contains amazing surprises including hours of bonus materials, making-of featurettes, commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes and much more. Prepare for Starburst!
————-
Here’s how to win it:

I have a book out, Stays Crunchy in Milk. It’s a pop culture road trip, a novel about friendship and growing up. A parable for 30yr olds. Here’s the blurb for the book:
————-
They were four: Wereberry the strawberry werewolf, Choco-Ra the chocolate mummy, The Creature From the Fruit Lagoon (his friends call him “T.C.”), and Cherrygeist the… well she was a ghost. At least, until she wasn’t. One day, she wasn’t there at all. And then they were three.

Three friends who have sworn to search for her to the ends of the world and beyond – to find and save her.

Through familiar lands to places startling and unknown – across looming castles, endless battlefields and simple brick roads – these three friends will hunt and search and scour every inch. Along the way they’ll have to rely on a whole lot of luck and a little bit of charm, but mostly each other.

A fairy tale for the super-sugar generation, Stays Crunchy in Milk is a road novel packed with 100% of your recommended daily allowance of essential action and adventure. And it’s a delicious part of a nutritious breakfast.
————-
Here’s what you need to do, now, to get this ball rolling. Follow this link to the book and buy a copy. Take a picture of yourself with the book. Leave the picture, or a link to the picture, as a comment to this entry [For those reading on LiveJournal THIS ENTRY on Adampknave.com not on LJ. LJ comments will NOT COUNT].

On December 18th we will randomly pick one person and then we will mail out a copy of The Complete Farscape to them! That’s it. Buy a book, take a picture, win a set of DVDs.

And now some fine print: Make sure the email field in your comment is correct, because we will need it to contact you if you win. We will not keep your email address or use it for anything other than winner notification. This whole shebang is only open to residents of the U.S. and Canada, the DVDs will be Region 1 encoded, keep in mind. Henson and A&E have nothing do to with this madness. This contest is sponsored by Creative Guy Press.

Of the dozen or so clients I work with throughout town who offer their WiFi for me to use, only one doesn't let me check my Apple Mail. I have to go through my MobileMe account to retrieve and send email.

Anyone know why this is the case, and is there any workaround other than using MobileMe? Could I try using different port settings maybe?

(Apple Mail v4.2, IMAP retrieval, OSX 10.6.2 on a 2.5Ghz Macbook Pro)

Thanks in advance.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/C9S40-TGRb4/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=212798

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/3AYyBygknEY/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=218052

Seriously. The code is latimesdisney.

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14537

In an article for the Chow website, Lessley Anderson and Roxanne Webbe review 10 Meads You Should Try. The American meads range from peucts produced in Portland, Maine to Anchorage, Alaska.

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So, here's today's bento.
As we have december now, there are some self-made cookies and christmas-tree- and star-shaped- carrots.



The smaller box is left over noodles with carrots and zucchini.
The bigger box is salad with a dressing pig, fruit salad (physalis and grapes) and the cookies.

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I've become enamored with a type of ribbon, but my google-fu is failing me! I can't find it anywhere. But, I think the problem lies in me not knowing the proper term for it.

Can anyone tell me the name of this ribbon? I searched for a number of things and nothing came up with ribbon like that.

Found! It's called Jacquard ribbon. Thanks a bunch, ladies :3

This is probably incredibly stupid, but I want to make cinnamon dough ornaments before Christmas and am wondering how far in advance I can make them without losing all that cinnamon goodnessy smell before Christmas day? I know, I know, I could google it or call my Grandma, since I have HER recipe, but it's so early I don't think I can be a real person over the phone yet & I was already signed into lj...so, anyone have a clue?

Thanks in advance!!

I am trying to find a diagram that I saw that was about what cats do to get out of someone's way and then what cat's should do to get out of someone's way, with two non-overlapping circles.

Does anyone remember this?

Anyone who has an iPhone or iPod touch (i.e., not me): There's a free Starbucks iPhone app that allows you to check balances and reload your card, and if you use it to add $25 via Visa, they'll add another $5 for free. Also, if you live in Seattle, Cupertino, or Mountain View, you can use it in lieu of the physical Starbucks card to pay.

I feel like it shouldn't matter that I've lost half my hair. I feel like feeling wounded over this is a vanity thing that I should be able to suck up and get over.

But it matters. Because, as I posted not long ago, my hair is a big part of my identity, and it's one of my favorite parts of me.

35 pounds down in a few months = losing half my hair. And when I realized how fast I was losing weight again, I tried hard to slow it down, but to no avail.

My hair goes in layers from the bottom of my bra strap to midback. When I get my first paycheck, it will be cut to maybe shoulder-length, so when it grows back it won't be all thick on top and thin in the middle and ends. And, like in 2003-4 when this first happened, I will spend some time not looking like myself.

I wish I didn't find that quite so unsettling.

Whenever I write about the plight of the poor and how it might be possible to improve it, I invariably get two types of polarized reactions:

One side informs me that the system is utterly broken. The odds are stacked so high against the downtrodden that there is nothing to be done. The poor are no more able to affect their fate than a stick floating in a river, and the only action they need take is to wave their arms and hope that someone in power comes and helps them.

The other side peppily chirps about how the poor are just durned lazy! If they had the gumption that their betters did, they could all break the laws of physics and escape the gravity well of the Earth via willpower alone.

And I find myself wishing both types of commentors understood more about incremental advantage, and how it can be used as a force for good. Because really, life is like a game of Magic: the Gathering.

Bear with me. I am fully aware that is one of the nerdiest statements I have ever made... Yet it is true. And let me explain why, without getting too much into the details of Magic, how a stupid game about dragons and big-boobed angels tussling in the sky applies to - well, to a lot of dealing with life.

See, when you sit down to play a game in Magic, each player brings a deck that they built themselves. Some of these decks are massively overpowered; you'll have times when you face a deck that's engineered specifically to destroy your deck, or a deck that has a lot of expensive cards that are hard to beat, or a deck that's flat-out better than yours.

Your chances of beating these decks? Not good. The odds are against you from the start.

Yet hand a novice player a killer deck and have him play a master with a weak deck, and the master actually has a decent chance of winning. Why? Because Magic is a game of incremental advantage.

Let's say you have only a 25% chance of winning against this particular deck. But if you know when to send back an opening hand that's weak against this deck, well, you might gain a couple of percentage points. Laying your lands in the proper order and tapping them correctly might improve your chances by another percentage point. Playing your threats at the right time? Another percentage point.

Magic's a complex game, and there are a lot of places to make mistakes. But if you're really rigorous about how you learn, strengthening every weak spot you can, then you can turn an guaranteed loser of a deck into - well, something better, if not spectacular. Sometimes you can get that 40% win chance to a 60% win chance - but more often, you've upped that 25% win chance to a dreary 40%. Despite your doing everything you can, thanks to a situation you had little control over, your outlook still isn't good.

But sometimes, the uber-deck stumbles. It doesn't draw the cards it needs, or your opponent doesn't know how to play it, or you get the right series of cards to pull it out - and if you know how to take advantage of that, then you can pull wins out of nowhere.

There are a lot of things you can, and should do, to prepare - yet none of those things guarantee a win. The best players routinely go to gigantic tournaments, and don't get the right draws, and bomb out. There's a lot of luck in Magic, good and bad, and all you can do is hone those percentages so that everything that's under your control will go your way, will.

The rest? Who knows?

Which is why I get irritated by both sides of the "It's hopeless/it's ALL HOPE!" debate.

Because yes: poor in a given system have a system that is largely stacked against them. It's never going to be easy to beat that shit, and there are a lot of very smart people in ghettos who did everything right and never got the damn breaks. Like Magic, sometimes you can make every correct move and still get the crap beaten out of you by a better deck. That's life.

But that also doesn't mean that poor people should just sit around passively and wait for rescue from an outside source. There are things you can do to up your percentages - smart moves that can be taught (and often are not taught because any given group of poor people doesn't get a whole lot of education on beating their system), and should be. Yeah, it's stacked against you, but you still retain some power to affect your life - and if that system ever stumbles, if there's ever an opening, then you should be as fully educated as you can to drive a goddamned truck through it.

And that's not blaming. Saying, "Hey, there's more you can do" doesn't magically negate the fact that yeah, most of the things in a poor person's environment are dedicated to ignoring, humiliating, or stopping them. It doesn't ignore the fact that doing the right thing in those circumstances is a fucking behemoth of an accomplishment, one that sometimes involves swimming upstream with both your arms tied behind your back. If someone can't do it, well, hey, lots of people can't.

But not doing it, understandable though it may be, robs them of those incremental percentage points. It can hand them a defeat when, with another decision or preparation, they might have had a triumph. Those percentage points do not guarantee a win, nothing does, but by God it gets them a lot closer to a chance at victory.

I want them to win.

We can all debate what a given downtrodden segment needs to do in order to triumph, of course: that's a long-standing debate, with a lot of legitimate space between understanding the realities on the ground without making excuses for those realities. I just wish that both the pollyannas who think that the human spirit is infinite and the Debbie downers who think that circumstances define you irrevocably would look at reality and understand that no, the odds aren't good. But while you're working to make the odds more even from the outside (which, as part of any balanced fix, you absolutely should), the principle should be clear:

It's a noble goal to help the people under the gun understand how to make their own odds better.

(Reminder: Almost all of yesterday's DVD links, including Farscape and Homicide, are still active, and the ongoing Holiday Lightning Deals are also active, with lots of toys and kitchen stuff (including a pressure cooker) going up throughout the day.)

Lots of DVD deals today, mostly on TV sets, with a few movies. That said, there are three non-DVD deals:

First, there's a sale on Skullcandy earbuds, with a lot of them under $10, and most at least 55% off.

Second, House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii is $12.99 (35% off).

And Worms 2: Armageddon for the Xbox Live Arcade is $5 (50% off).

George Carlin's All My Stuff (a DVD set featuring all twelve of his HBO specials) is $88.99 (53% off).

The Compete Red Dwarf (which does not include Back to Earth) is $49.99 (75% off)!

V: The Complete Series (which does not include the miniseries or The Final Battle) is $10.99 (73% off).

The complete BBC version of The Office is $18.99 (53% off).

Gilmore Girls: The Complete Series is $99.99 (61% off).

Stargate SG-1: The Complete Series is $97.99 (70% off).

The pre-order of season one of Stargate: Universe (which I'm assuming someone likes, although we've long since given up on it) is $27.99 (44% off).

The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset is $40.99 (59% off).

Almost every season of South Park is 50% off.

The Space 1999 Megaset is $39.99 (60% off).

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is $6.49 (57% off).

The Neverending Story/Neverending Story 2 combo pack is $6.99 (46% off), which amounts to about $6.99 for each movie you'll actually want to watch.

Finally, The Iron Giant is $5.79 (55% off). This belongs in every DVD collection.