rusty_halo

Anyone going to Dragoncon this year? 10zlaine and I got a Marriott room and memberships, so I guess we’re going. ;) I’m looking forward to it; it’s hard to get bored at a con where there’s so much content and even when none of the programming interests you, just sitting in the lobby people-watching provides hours of entertainment.

Work has been ridiculous. Like staying in the office until 10:30pm and working from home until 1am and coming in at 8:30 the next morning ridiculous. It’s so stressful I don’t even have time to process how stressful it is, because it’s always on to the next thing, and any free time I get, I just want to sleep. I slept until 1:30pm today. I should be exercising or cleaning, but, ugh, I can’t work up the energy to get off the couch, because I know tomorrow morning the mad rush is going to start up again.

I got assigned to be the manager of a big project about a month and a half ago, which I guess is a good thing because it’s a lot more interesting than the little afterthought projects I was working on before, and I’m actually working with people who are really smart and competent, and it’s a topic that I’m interested in. It’s just, OMG, so much, and going so fast. I can’t even think about vacation because this project is going nonstop until at least next March. Ugh.

Anyway, I ended up spending much of today reading posts about the OTW election. It all makes me sad, because as far as I can tell, there aren’t actually any villains, just a lot of people trying to do good work who don’t necessarily have the skills to accomplish their goals successfully, which unfortunately often ends up hurting other people.

(The post I found most compelling was this one, because it expresses a lot of the same concerns I have that the fannish golden age we’re living in now isn’t likely to last forever.)

Also, having spent the past year learning to be a project manager, I have to say: no matter how smart and well-intentioned you are, being a good manager is really hard. And it’s a hell of a lot easier with a good mentor than when you are trying to figure it out on your own. Maybe the OTW should either recruit experienced volunteers or hire consultants to teach project management skills to people in key roles within the org?

Anyway, I think the ideas behind the OTW are wonderful, and I hope that these are growing pains that they’ll be able to work through and emerge from in a better state.

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2695

I’m working on a freelance project and I’m looking for a CSS coder to help.

The job is very simple. I have nine template files which use a table-based layout. I need them converted to a CSS-based layout (the header and footer is the same in all) and any outdated code (font tags, table background colors) converted to standards-compliant CSS. It needs to work for all modern browsers on Mac and PC.

The pay is $300 and it would need to be done within five days. (I can vouch for the client; I’ve been working with her for three years and she always pays her bills. You’d be dealing with me, since she doesn’t understand the technical side, but she’d be the one paying you.)

If you’re interested, please send me a sample of a standards-compliant CSS layout you’ve done. If you want to see the current template files, let me know.

If you know anyone who might be interested, please forward this to them.

Thanks, and sorry for spamming the people who have no idea what this means!

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. Please click here to comment.
(Anyone can comment on public entries.)

I was in The New York Times!

Okay, not really. But a blog post I wrote was linked from one of the New York Times blogs. And from Brooklyn Vegan, too.

*feels cool*

What else? I haven't been posting much. I've been busy, and traveling, and tired.

My office moved to Brooklyn. It sucks. I don't even have the energy to rant about it right now.

I went to Austin last weekend, for an insane mini-vacation. I had less than 24 hours to cram in my first visit to Texas, a meal, some sleep, and an Alice in Chains concert.

( Laura's Austin Adventure )

[Cross-posted to my InsaneJournal]

I'm so very tired.

I had jury duty Monday, went to work afterward and worked until 10pm, then had jury duty again the next morning. Jury duty requires getting up early and taking the subway and walking far. WAH.

I did have a nice lunch in Chinatown -- vegan dim sum at Buddha Bodai. And I read the equivalent of a Sharpe book over the two days (the last half of "Sharpe's Eagle" and the first half of "Sharpe's Enemy"--this is definitely the best period of the Sharpe series).

I didn't get called to a trial yesterday until 3:20--we were all cursing, because we'd been so close to getting out. I got called up to the jury box and interviewed (god, it's scary), so I answered the questions honestly and glared miserably at everyone. They dismissed me. Yay! Apparently the key to getting out of jury service is to look really mean, or perhaps to wear a purple shirt decorated with glittering silver spiders and webs. (Hey, it was Halloween.)

They actually told us (the eight people who'd been interviewed and dismissed) that we'd have to come back the next morning to pick up our forms, since it was already after 5pm, but we objected and they printed out the forms for us there. Yay! I'm done! Four years of freedom!

Then I rushed to the Astor Place Barnes & Noble, bought Courtney Love's book, and got a wristband which allowed me to wait outside in line for two and a half hours. I finally got in around 7:15 and got my autograph at about 8pm.

The book is huge and cool and expensive. It's mostly drawings, diary entries, and clippings.

Courtney was trying to look serious in black framed glasses, was wearing lots of makeup to cover her bad skin, and she's clearly had lots of plastic surgery. I have mixed feelings about her--she represents a lot of contradictions in American culture, I suppose. She's smart and observant and her critiques of society's attitude toward women and celebrity are great, and yet she wants to be part of everything she criticizes. I was really sad when she quit being punk rock and went to Hollywood.

But anyway--I waited in line and went up to get her autograph. She said "Nice to meet you, Laura" (we'd written our names on post-its so she could personalize the autographs) and I said "Nice to meet you," and that "Live Through This" is an amazing album and that it really means a lot to me. (True.) She said thanks, I said bye and happy Halloween, and that was that. She was nice.

Then I went to meet jaydk and drujan at a place on 14th and 9th that has Belgian beer, but it was impossible to get across 6th Avenue because of the parade. It took me a half hour just to walk from 8th St to 9th St on 6th (and was a little scary, with all the people trying to get through and the crowd not moving) so I walked to Union Square instead, dropped off my heavy stuff at the office, and took the L train over to 8th Avenue. "Borat" sat next to me on the train and spoke to me in character, but I grinned and ignored him.

There I met my friends and had the only vegan dish on the menu (pasta with garlic, pretty good) and three delicious beers. One was a raspberry lambic that was awesome--not as sugar sweet as the more mainstream ones, richer flavor.

Then we went up to "Evil Dead: The Musical," and got there just in time. Third row! But jaydk hadn't realized we were in the splatter seats, so she moved back at intermission, and drujan covered herself in plastic. I was all like "Bring on the fake blood, it's Halloween!" but it missed me. The guy next to me got soaked, though.

The play was awesome. It was just what you'd expect--Evil Dead, only a musical, and funny, and the guy playing Ash was good, and the crowd was awesome and went insane at every reference to the movies. I couldn't imagine a better time to see it. (Although I will be missing Bruce Campbell, because he's there tomorrow and I'm seeing Alice in Chains then.)

So I got home at 1:30am, and then had to come to work today. (And my boss called me at 8:30!!! WTF???) Because yesterday while I had the gall to be busy with jury duty, one of our sites got mentioned on Slashdot and the server slowed way down. Now I am trying to explain The Slashdot Effect to my boss so that I will not have to move all of our sites to some gigantic new server based on the remote possibility that we get mentioned on Slashdot again someday. *sigh*

On the plus side--a site I built got mentioned on Slashdot!

And tonight (and tomorrow) -- Alice in Chains! And let's just hope that I manage to stay awake and remain standing for it.

I am wearing my new favorite t-shirt today: babydoll size, full (and accurate) color, sun logo. I used to draw this thing in all of my school notebooks--Layne Staley designed it and it's on the inside of "Dirt"--so I am very happy that they finally made it into a tshirt that fits me.

It's crazy hot. Our tiny window air conditioner is working overtime to keep the office... not very cool at all. But still a hell of a lot better than the heat outside, which kind of feels like the earth is trying to sear us right off the face of the planet.

I'm worried about the power. My apartment is on the top floor and traps heat like you wouldn't believe. I can go outside, but the cats are kind of stuck. *prays to the Con Edison gods*

The new roommate was supposed to move in today, but the lunatic old roommate claims her plans to move out yesterday "fell through" and she can't move out until 8pm tonight. *stabs* So new guy is pissed and has to wait an extra day, but hopefully he realizes that this isn't *my* fault.

The current roommate only paid half her rent for July, and I just found remnants of a shattered bowl that she clearly broke and didn't tell me about, and she still has to pay utilities for July, and she didn't move out on time, and she violated her six month agreement. I'm pretty sure this is more than enough justification for me not to return the remaining part of her deposit that I still have, after taking out the rent that she didn't pay. I just worry, because if she's really pissed, she could have her keys copied, sneak back in after moving out, and steal stuff, or hurt my cats, or wreak other kind of havoc. So maybe I should just return the money that she doesn't deserve, in order to keep the peace? Either that or have the lock changed, yet again, but that costs ridiculous money. Grrr.

The wank over at writercon makes me sad. I know there's lots of bigotry in the world, but I hate seeing it hit so close to home, in a place that's otherwise a safe harbor. I'm glad that people are responding, because letting bigotry stand without a response seems like condoning it. And I'm glad that people are (for the most part) being reasonable and genuinely trying to engage in dialog with the guy. I know intellectually that you're more likely to change people's minds with politeness and dialogue than with angry confrontation, but I'm having a hard time coming up with much beyond "Fuck off!" so I applaud those who are more articulate and restrained than me.

In other news...

I went to the Black Sun Festival in New Haven with 10zlaine this weekend. New Haven is a nice little pedestrian-friendly town with tons of vegan food, so we ate very well. The only band I really wanted to see was Chemlab, who were amazing, despite a fairly short set. I took nearly 400 photos; they're such a fun band to photograph. Lots of action, and very photogenic band members. ;)

I enjoyed some of the other bands as well. Das Ich was very good, a German band with very charismatic members who looked like they'd just stepped out of a fantasy novel. I didn't see all of Null Device's set, but they had some really interesting and diverse influences. The popularity of Combichrist continues to boggle my mind, though; I don't think they could be more boring.

Aside from seeing the bands in the evenings, I'd talked 10zlaine into going (after she'd talked me into going and then threatened to cancel!) on the promise that we'd hang out all day watching videos. She brought her DVD player and we each brought a ton of DVDs, but when we arrived we discovered that the hotel television had no inputs except for the coaxial cable that the cable TV was coming in through. Who ever heard of a television with no inputs? And it wasn't terribly old or anything. So after much struggle and me calling my dad trying to figure out what to do, we ended up driving to Best Buy and picking up an RF modulator, which was basically a converter allowing us to hook up the DVD player via the coaxial input. It took us until 3pm Saturday to work all this out, but we still managed to watch a lot: Sharpe 7, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Gun Shy, and the remake of The Thomas Crowne Affair (though we watched that one after the concert Saturday night, so I slept through most of it).

It ended up being quite a fun weekend; I'm glad we went.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

My office's adopted turkey. Please do consider having a compassionate holiday.

Oh, and here's a link to all my favorite vegan pie recipes, including really wonderful pecan, pumpkin, and caramel apple. :)

I am about to catch a train and spend the next four days with jaydk and her mom, where we'll be having a relaxing weekend (I bought the Veronica Mars season 1 DVD in preparation). I'll be back next week.

Enjoy the holiday. :)

So for the past hour, we've been looking out our office windows watching people set up a gigantic red blow-up float thingy of Santa Claus riding a huge lobster. Anyone have any idea what this means? We figure they're selling something--lobsters? Christmas decorations:? Is it some kind of early cinco de mayo celebration? Are they promoting bestiality between fat men and lobsters?

Also. Every day the mail guy comes and he calls me "princess." I hate it. It's not funny. And everyone laughs about it and I feel obligated to smile and be nice, but really I just find it terribly condescending and not funny and irritating and I wish it would just stop, and I wish I was a great big intimidating man so that no one would ever call me "princess."

We ordered Indian food today, and they completely screwed up our orders, and then they were assholes on the phone and wouldn't send us the right food. And my female coworker freaked out and got really upset, so she gave the phone to my male coworker and he convinced them to send replacement food. This also upsets me.

Reading LJ. People are still kerfuffling over Marsters? God, that's like, so two years ago. :P

Actually, I rediscovered this last night. Ah, the good old days--I sort of miss being able to start a kerfuffle with just a bitchy JM post. It was pretty funny. (Though I'm also somewhat embarrassed by my devotion to something I now find so completely... irrelevant.) I think that post got on fandom_wank, and was the inspiration for me leaving some snooty elitist yahoo list in a huff because they were bitching about me without realizing I was on the list, and then witling started writing that boglescatverse story for me because I was all upset.... although maybe I'm confusing things; I think I had multiple kerfuffley posts. Way back when. I was such a newbie, I cared so much about this inane social bullshit that I don't even notice anymore.

It's weird seeing who I used to talk to back then--some people who ended up becoming close friends, and some who I've totally lost touch with. It's weird that I've had a LJ for over two years; it still feels sort of new, like something I'm experimenting with, rather than something I just do. Truthfully, I'd probably have been long gone, except people kept gifting me with paid time, so I felt obligated to stay, and now I'm pretty much stuck with it, because now I maintain some important relationships solely through LJ and I don't want to lose those.

Yesterday someone linked to this, and I thought I was going to die laughing. I mean, no offense to those who like him, to each his own and all, but, dude. Seriously. Are you kidding?

I miss 10zlaine already. How dare she go to New Zealand and not have internet access for a week?!

monanotlisa asked that I put together a QaF recs list, since I'm reading so much of it lately. That's my role in fandom, isn't it? Starting kerfuffles and screening out badfic. (Could be worse; at least I've got good taste. ;)

Anyway, I'm mainly going to rec authors rather than stories, because most people who write well tend to do so consistently.

( My half-assed Brian-centric Queer as Folk rec list )

[This post jumps randomly from topic to topic. I apologize.]

OH my god. This is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

This is ridiculously lame. What the hell is wrong with Sascha Konietzko?

Clearly, I've been reading the sick city board way too much. It's kind of addictive, and immensely entertaining, even though I don't think I'd fit in at all, and so haven't posted. Plus it seems like everyone there has known each other for years, and they enjoy ripping newbies to shreds.

But... entertaining. (I'm actually starting to know all the regulars and their personalities, which is just sad.)

*sigh*

I'm depressed that KMFDM is coming out with a new DVD and Raymond Watts probably won't be on it. He is the most entertaining thing, by far, in any of the previous DVDs. I'm not sure there's much point in buying it without him. I mean, otherwise it's just the dour German guy and the boring American chick. The whole point of the KMFDM backstage footage is to laugh at Raymond being a dork. And onstage, he's got the most presence by far.

Maybe they'll include some old footage or something. They've got to have some interesting unreleased stuff in their archives....

I thought this Pig obsession was going to go away quickly, but it only seems to be getting stronger. It's been over four months, now, and hasn't waned at all. The man has been releasing material for over 20 years and has been incredibly prolific. I've finally got all the Pig albums, but there's still singles, EPs, Japanese versions, LPs, remixes, covers, compilations, side projects, appearances on KMFDM albums that I don't own, etc. Then there's Pig videos (which I have no clue how to obtain, though people on thesickcity have them and won't share), live bootlegs of Pig and of Watts with KMFDM... not to mention interviews and internet archives to search through for information: old newsgroups, yahoo groups, ezboards, old websites, some only visible through archive.org. And so on. Massive amounts of stuff to keep me entertained for a while longer.

It is weird being in the grip of obsession like this. I absorb so much, so quickly. I mean, honestly, when else would I have the patience or motivation to glean through hundreds of old website postings for every speck of information?

Musically it's been delightful. The man is a genius. I am continually astounded by the cleverness and depth of lyrics, and the intricacy and passion of the music.

It sucks terribly that nothing's happening now, though. I'd drop everything and fly to London tomorrow if Watts were playing a show. But it looks likely that this is pretty much a dead/dying fandom.

Today is a very exciting day. It is the official opening of the Whole Foods at Union Square. I am incredibly excited. It's huge and they have everything, all the natural organic vegan stuff that I buy, at better prices than anywhere else, and it's so close to my home and work. Normally I'm not fond of big chain stores driving out the little guys, but I'm hoping and praying that they'll drive the hideous local health food store out of business. (It's called Healthy Pleasures/Wholesome Market, and is known for lying about what's vegan, passing off crappy old canned vegetables and meat as organic, and having horribly unsanitary conditions).

So for lunch today, I had vegan chocolate truffles, vegan pesto tortellini, falafel, baked plantains, cranberry-walnut cous cous salad, tofu egg salad, an Indian medley (chickpeas, eggplant and potatoes, vegetable biriyani), fried rice, and guacamole). Everything is well labeled so that you can tell easily what's vegan, and the options are endless: juice bar, coffee bar, sushi bar, fresh salad ingredients, Indian food, Mexican food, pretty much any type of food you can imagine with massive amounts of well-labelled vegan and vegetarian stuff. Plus baked goods, a chocolate section.... I could go on. I could eat here every day if I want; it's virtually next to my office.

I repeat: vegan pesto tortellini.

I'm really inordinantly excited about this.

dizenchanted, did you see this? Or this? The new bio is hilarious; for example:

At the height of their career, LAW AND ORDER garnered significant video airplay on MTV with their singles "We Don't See God" and "Soul Inside". The band also received a "KKKKK" review (the highest honor) in the UK's infamous Kerrang Magazine, as well as touring with the likes of Platinum artists such as Pearl Jam and Blind Melon.

And other such bullshit. Yeah, they were big time. I didn't realize that a few airings on Headbanger's Ball counts as "significant."

I wonder if the record is worth buying. The idea of paying money for something like that is kind of funny.

My coworker just followed U2 down 7th Avenue from 13th St. to SoHo.

Huh.

Just added a bunch more pictures to the slideshow of Union Square protest photos.

Small version or large version.

I want this t-shirt for DragonCon (but they don't have it in girl sizes).