I am exhausted, so let me just say thank you to everyone who wished me good luck. I think the interview went well - it was for a job that sounds completely awesome, but it is very early in the process so I am trying not to get my hopes up. I have another interview elsewhere on Monday for a job that sounds interesting and like it could be a good fit, so there's that, too.

The funniest part of this is that on Tuesday, when fleurdeleo and I were at the diner, I was complaining about the wardrobe advice the other recruiter lady had given me, and she was like, "It's perfectly acceptable to wear a nice shell under your suit jacket. You should set it off with pearls." And I was like, "I don't have pearls."

Today, in the interview, the lady was like, "You should see these girls who come in - they're very polished in their expensive suits and their pearls."

So tonight, I was telling fleurdeleo about that at dinner, and lo and behold, she pulled a string of pearls from her purse [!!!] and said, "Wear those on your next interview, until you have time to go to the costume jewelry counter at Bloomingdale's and get yourself a set. If you get this job, I am totally taking credit and saying it's because of the pearls."

I am totally okay with that.

***

Current Mood: exhausted

or how about this one -

House Tour: Jessica's New Home  - life in a 200sq foot studio

ApartmentTherapy - design suggestions for people living in small spaces. They have general articles and then questions and featurettes for major cities across the US.  NY, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago etc

Good Questions: Sprucing Up a Walk-Thru Closet?

Fluorescent Fixer Lighting Cover Warms Up CFL Bulb Light

GetRichSlowly reports that Oprah Winfrey's website is offering Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan book as a free download. More here

It occurs to me as interesting that the same technique is crucial to survival in both extremely cold and extremely hot climates; breathe through your nose. Noses: useful for more than just keeping bugs out of your sinuses!

I wanted to say on the topic of Merlin (Okay, first, re: 113, did anyone else find it hilarious that Gaius riding looks like an empty oil-drum in the back of a pickup truck going down a dirt road? (Technically a spoiler, I guess, sorry if knowing Gaius' butt touches a horse ruins the episode for anyone)) the rules of magic( spoiler )

ALSO on the subject of Merlin, I gather from third-hand reactions that someone somewhere has accused Merlin (either the fandom or the show, I'm really not clear) of something, and in case they were accusing the canon of being bad, I wish to immediately defend it by noting it is no more bad than the Pope is Catholic, and the accusation is similarly useless for defamatory purposes.

( super-serious Avatar icons, third season spoilers )

Eek! Surprise interview is surprising! Let's hope I don't need to know too much about pivot tables, because even after all these years, they still baffle me.

Wish me luck!

***

Current Mood: surprised

From an artist whose vid was taken off Youtube:

"As these woman from different TV shows pass a sword around throughout the video, they share collective power. They are fighting cultural Patriarchy on its own terms and they are doing it together. In light of the take-down notice, a new read of the video has emerged for me. I now see them as fighting out-dated copyright laws which have begun to prevent the free-flow of culture. Their swords are Fair Use."

'Sancho, fetch me my horse and my sword. Onward to glory we go!'

unfitforsociety has been updated with 56 Yuletide recs in 43 fandoms. All of them appeared in this journal first, but now they all have author names on, and fandom tags on each post etc., so they're easier to negotiate.

unfitforsociety has also had a makeover. I um, kind of got bit by the redecorating bug again. Crazy, I know.

So, poll!

( help me redecorate! )

I think this is kind of hilarious after my freakout about changing the layout last time. But maybe I am growing and changing. And I can go back to this one when the weather gets warm again. I dunno. We'll see. But you know I like to poll the electorate. I mean, find out what you think. (nb: this is for LJ only - I don't know if IJ has all or even any of these layouts.)

***

I watched last night's episode of Leverage this afternoon and dear god, how is Alec Hardison SO FREAKING AWESOME? Why is there not tons of Alec/Eliot fic? And Alec/Parker? And Alec/Eliot/Parker? And Alec being uber competent? And Alec being snarky about how unprofessional everybody else is? Seriously! He is MADE OF AWESOME and also seriously HOTTASTIC. *hearts*

***

and I am trying to post this and boom! LJ is not working. After the panic yesterday, I am amused.

***

Current Mood: amused

I currently archive the communities that I work on/volunteer on: mac_vidding_101, veni_vidi_vids, and vidding. As a moderator/volunteer I can archive all posts along with all comments.

I use LJ Archive on a broader number of communities - mainly because I love the search feature in LJ Archive to find stories or posts. LJ Archive does not allow me to download comments - but once I find the post I am looking for, I can go to the community to read the comments,

I am testing the LJ download tool by Alexf LJ - it allows me to archive any community and - whether I am a moderator or not - allows me to download all comments. I am currently testing it on spnnewsletter and spnstoryfinders.

My questions:

1. What communities out there would you archive - communities where you want/need the comments? Either from  a fannish historical perspective or a useful perspective (ex. storyfinders communities where the comments have all the answers, food recipe communities where the recipes are in the comments, health communities where the responses have the health info.)

2. And second - what communities are you currently backing up?

Escapade is coming up in early March - slash fans, great panels, and did I mention fans? Anyhow sherrold posted that she was able to get $70 one way fares from Seattle!   I am still on the fence (need to wait until I know about Vividcon and I need to find someone who can travel with me). but wheee!

I am falling behind on both e-mail and blog reading - my laptop finally died and  that cuts my surfing time in half. Plus, with the new Firefox update to 3.05, whenever I try to bookmark something with del.icio.us - Firefox crashes. Which means my newsletter-ing for vidding and EDS is falling behind. It takes forever for Firefox to rebuild itself.

So many behinds, and not enough coverage!

Obviously I will be looking at a low cost laptop replacement. I liked the Asus Eeeeee, but the touchpad/clicker was too stiff and hurt my easily detachable thumbs. So I am looking at the HP mini-notebook.   I still have a fondness for Windows XP.

fleurdeleo and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire tonight and it was lovely. Also, every movie should have a big musical production number over the credits. I would totally stay and watch them if that were the case.

***

There is a lot of worrisome banging in the pipes going on in my building (and no, that is not a euphemism). I thought they fixed this problem with the boiler after the umpteen boiler repairs/new boiler installation last year. I cannot sleep with all that racket going on. Mostly because it is really random and has no rhythm to it, so I will relax, thinking it's finally over, and then BAM it'll start again. And then stop, but for a different interval, leading me to think it's finally over and then BAM it starts again. Ugh.

***

The fannish year-end meme, gacked from marinarusalka, among others.

Your main fandom of the year? Supernatural

Your favourite film watched this year? Iron Man. I think Dark Knight was really well done, and Heath Ledger gave an amazing performance, but I don't know if I can say I enjoyed it, or would want to sit through it again.

Your favourite book read this year? The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon was pretty fantastic, as was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I highly recommend them both.

Your favourite album or song to listen to this year? huh. I don't really do albums anymore. As for songs, possibly "Handle Bars" by the Flobots. It got a lot of listens, as did many other songs.

Your favourite TV show of the year? SPN, though Chuck, BSG, Bones, and season 3 of FNL make convincing contenders.

Your favourite LJ community of the year? remixredux08 of course.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year? Dark Angel. Shut up. I suppose I could say Chuck and Pushing Daisies, but as I don't write for them, it wouldn't be the same. But I am seriously hardcore OTP about Max/Alec, which I never expected.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? Pushing Daisies being canceled. Henriksen being killed.

Your TV boyfriend of the year? Dean Winchester

Your TV girlfriend of the year? Kara "Starbuck" Thrace

Your biggest squee moment of the year? The shipper in me wants to cite seeing Indy/Marion and Mulder/Scully on the big screen, even though the movies didn't really hold up to the squee. I'll steal marinarusalka's answer and go with ( spoiler for Supernatural, s4 ) Though having Bill Adama and Laura Roslin finally admit they love each other is up there.

The most missed of your old fandoms? Firefly. I need to do a rewatch. I've a hankering to write some more Firefly fic, I think. Mal is starting to make noise in my head again.

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to? I need to watch The Middleman.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year? BSG returns with its final episodes! SPN comes back! Burn Notice comes back! It's gonna be awesome!

***

Current Mood: tired

I read various news outlets and, yes, the economy sucks. The LJ employee's that were laid off have my complete sympathy. I was there once myself - not having that job led me to a much better one. May you all have the same luck. That being said, the Vally Wag article that's been linked all over LJ all day long, is apparently a hot, steaming pile of crap.

firefoxey has a post with the confirmed lost and the confirmed remaining -- the count here matches up with LJ's response to Vally Wag that about 12 or 13 people were laid off in SF, leaving 17 and the laid off employee's represent only 20% of the LJ staff. LJ is saying that there is a compensation package of some sort, but no confirmation beyond that.

Does that mean LJ is going under and the servers are about to lose power -- probably not. Does it mean that LJ is struggling (like many businesses) and will be changing things up or slowing down feature releases or doing some other crazy kind of stuff - probably. Would I have said Probably yesterday before any of this hit the airwaves? Yes. I mean, check the subject line of this post -- we've been through this before.

So

1) I have a perm account, I like it here, I like all of you and you're here, I *love* fandom here. I'll be staying.
2)That doesn't mean I can't be a practical girl and Back-up - because backing up is good.

There are several back up tools that are well laid out here in liz_marc's highly useful back up post. I have happily used LJ Archive to back up my journal and LJ Sec to copy my journal over to the clone services -- both very good tools.

The one tool that Liz doesn't have listed (yet) is LJ Migrate which is good for Mac's and PC's -- first I've heard about this one, anyone have any experience with this one?

As for copycat services, I've been using Insane Journal -- yes, yes, yes we've all talked about how the site aesthetics and terminology are anywhere from eyeroll worthy to insulting. *But* much like you're journal here, you'll probably just customize your journal, pick a better theme to view the main page, hang out with your friends and be able to ignore the rest. Squeaky also likes fandom and has been good to us in the various exodus and migrations. Also, when IJ puts up a perm account sale, it's *cheap* compared to LJ and you end up with a ton of icons -- with a free account, you get 100. Squeaky posted today to comment on the LJ news and give a status report on IJ.

While I appreciate that JournelFen is the ultimate in fan friendly, the site doesn't have the support or infrastructure. I was surprised to hear that people were still able to use GJ, which apparently still exists in it's limping condition.

Now one of the joys is that when I post, I post simultaneously to both LJ and IJ. IJ does post by e-mail the same way that LJ does, which is good for me, because about half my posts are made that way. Right now, I'm typing from my favorite journaling tool, Semagic -- honestly, I don't know how you folks handle the edit.bml page. By selecting a few things, I can post to any of the journaling clones, any of my communities and post to multiple journals at once. It spell checks automatically, lets me assign my tags from a drop down list and gives all the security, screening and dating options conveniently. Flist managing - the only way to go. Also, it gets updated on regular basis and new features are added.

my twenty-five cents.

iMeem now charges if you want to upload more than 10 vids. My 19 vids are still up, but I suspect if I were to delete one and then try replace it, I'd be blocked.

More here:
 Standard user and VIP Lite accounts can have up to 100 music files, 10 videos, and unlimited photos. VIP (middle tier) can have 1000 music files, 100 videos, and unlimited photos. Finally, with a VIP Plus account, you can have up to 5000 music files, 500 videos, and unlimited photos.

1. LJ Archive - Backup and Search Tool All In One

Backup - You can use this tool to back up your own journal as well as any community that you are a member of AND where you have posting access. For your own journal (or a community that you moderate), it will back up the posts plus all the comments. If you are a community member and have posting access - you can backup all the posts, but not the comments. And last if you are just watching the community (ex veni_vidi_vids) and the moderators have not given posting access, you will not be able to backup anything

Search - why would you want to backup a community if you can only backup the posts? Because LJ Archive also allows you to search those posts. This comes in very handy if you're in a storyfinder or technical community that does not use consistent tags. You can also use it to search your own journal.

2. Alex LJ Downloader

This tool will allow any community member who has posting access to back up all community posts + community comments. It requires that you have Internet Explorer and you may need to be logged into your LJ account via Internet Explorer. Note: it stores the html files in your temp folder so you will have to do some hunting to find the folder and move it to a more accessible place.

3. LJ Book - Makes a PDF "Book" version of your own personal journal.

4. Other Back-Up Tools

LJBackup

BlogBackupOnline - offers limited support for LiveJournal blogs - yours, mine, ours - any blogs that are public. Also does a daily automated backup. It stores the data in a harder to read format (xml) but the data will be available for later use.

LJ Migrate -

and a roundup post of tools here

My posts under lj tools and ljtools

More amazing LJ tools and scrips here lj_nifty

5. Last, if you moderate a community - or know of someone who moderates a community please have them check to make certain their settings are enabled to allow people to make a backup. More here

I was up very late last night - I went to bed at a reasonable time, couldn't sleep and ended up staying up until about 3:30. Which would have been fine except I had an interview this morning and... yeah. That happened. It went as well as these things ever do, which is to say, I felt it went fine walking out of there, but it was still just an agency and not an actual place looking to hire someone and really, I don't think I'm going to consider an interview a true success until someone offers me a job.

Then I came home, backed up my LJ, did some grocery shopping, and took an epic nap, which I am still groggy from.

***

Things I am actively thinking about:

1. I wrote last night, and it felt good. Hopefully, that trend will continue.

2. In order to get back into the s4 Sam'n'Dean headspace, I rewatched "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Heaven and Hell" and ( spoilers ) Overall, I am still very pleased with the way the show has gone so far this season.

3. iTunes is finally getting on top of things and waiving DRM on all the music it sells. About freaking time. The change in pricing structure is interesting, as I am sure there will be much more that costs $1.29 than $0.69, but I will be happy not to have to do the whole burn-to-CD-reimport dance to get rid of the lock.

4. I posted a story yesterday!

Stirred
Dark Angel; Max/Alec; adult; 3,530 words
In which Alec puts his money where his mouth is. So to speak.

It didn't come out quite as funny (or hot) as I'd imagined it, but I almost always find writing dirty talk ridiculous, and the sex didn't go quite the way I thought it would, but overall I like how it turned out. Thanks to those of you who've commented. I really appreciate it.

*

Things I am choosing to ignore womanfully until such time as they can no longer be ignored:

1. that SPN spoiler that's got everyone in a tizzy. No, not that one. The other one. I refuse to believe it until it shows up on my TV. Because it is the height of DUMB. (possibly there will be spoilers in comments?)

2. I feel bad for the folks laid off by LJ, especially if they don't get severance, but I don't see it really affecting us in any way at this time - if it comes down to it that LJ no longer makes code updates etc., and some other service does it better, or is actually fan-owned and run or whatever - then I guess fandom will move. Where fandom goes, so goes my nation, mostly. I've been ready to pack up and go since Strikethrough, so. My LJ is backed up. I am musesfool on IJ, where all content has been mirrored, JF (where it has not been, because I don't plan on going there), and er, that other one that was Scribblit and is now, um, Inkhost? Inkspot? Something like that. Aha! Inksome! Where none of the layouts I choose ever actually work, so whatever. I have begun putting new fic on the new Wordpress version of my website, and I am slowly filling in the stuff that isn't on the old version (I've already copied over a bunch of the small fandom stuff, but I am not sure how much of the HP stuff will make the transition; none of the XMM or SV stuff will at this time), so there's that.

*

Things that regularly appear on my flist that I don't care about:

1. those clicky dragon things
2. twitters
3. Merlin (and please don't bother trying to change my mind; my indifference, it is vast and nigh impenetrable [which is to say, if Anthony Stewart Head couldn't penetrate it, you certainly can't])

***

Current Mood: groggy

( Holy cow. I do have a journal over here! )

Current Mood: moody

Title: Five Conversations Cap Had About MySpace (That Weren't With Kat Farrell)
Characters: Steve Rogers (Captain America), Sharon Carter (Agent 13), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Nick Fury (Director of SHIELD), Rachel Leighton (Diamondback), Sam Wilson (Falcon)
Genre: Gen, humor.
Summary: Cap is intrigued by this new "MySpace" thing that kids today are using!
Word count: 2600ish
A/N: Thanks to destroythemeek for betaing and encouraging me to write this. Any errors, particularly those MySpace related, are my own.

( FIC: Five Conversations Cap Had About MySpace (That Weren't With Kat Farrell) )

Video response about the risks/rewards of surgery of Ehlers-Danlos surgery

Icon meme! Seen most recently at chez slodwick. Neato table gacked from lizbee.

I tried not to have any repeats, and also, my answers could change at any moment!

( 100x100 )

How many icons do you have total? 176

How many can you have? 195

If you could buy space for more, would you? depending on my financial situation, probably.

Do your icons make a statement about you? that I really like Jensen Ackles and Katee Sackhoff?

What fandom do you have the most icons of? Supernatural (66)

The second most? Huh. Firefly (17). I thought for sure if would be BSG (or, to be honest, Katee Sackhoff) but that's 16. I think.

What ship do you have the most icons of? I don't technically ship Sam/Dean, but I have the most icons of them as a pair (27). Otherwise, I just have one (or two) each of pairings I ship.

How do you categorize your icons? Uh. Mine are sadly haphazard, if you mean how are they uploaded. Currently, I use quotes I like as keywords - lyrics or lines from poems or shows that seem fitting. I used to just use emotions and/or character names.

Are your icons mostly made by other users? Mostly, yeah.

Do you make icons? Yes, though they're not very fancy. I like textless icons, so I've learned how to crop, brighten, and sharpen.

Are they any good? I like them!

I really wish I remembered I had all these different icons. I fall into the trap of always using the same ones, and I have some great icons that are just languishing from lack of use (or fear that someone will misinterpret the text as directed at them, when often I just mean it as a commentary on whatever situation I'm talking about. That's why my Frank icon gets so little use. Sigh.).

You should feel free to talk to me about my icons! They are very pretty, I think.

I should probably go rustle up some dinner now.

***

Current Mood: hungry

http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2767

Wow. Apparently lots of stuff happens in the world when you spend two weeks devouring the Lymond Chronicles and ignoring everything else.

My boss told me that they’d announced the new Doctor as I walked into work today. My immediate thought was “I can’t wait to read Fandom Wank.” It’s not disappointing.

(I’m surprised, actually. I expected to have to grudgingly give Moffat his due for choosing Patterson Joseph. Instead I’m LOLing at him for choosing some random kid who looks like the mutated offspring of David Tennant and Robert Pattinson.)

I owe email and comment responses to people. I’m sorry. I really haven’t been at my computer for two weeks–I updated the last two times from Indiana via my magical phone.

Oh! And I have to say–THANK YOU kita0610 FOR THE LOVELY CARD AND DAVID TENNANT CALENDAR! And thank you netweight for the incredibly sweet card! My internet friends are the best. :)

Now I’m going to ramble more about the Lymond Chronicles, because that’s all I spent my winter vacation thinking about. I finished Pawn in Frankincense and The Ringed Castle and am now partway into Checkmate.

Current Mood: thoughtful

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