Grant me the strength to believe that people can be taught, and not to reach for the taser to make things easier, for cooked brains learn and retain nothing.

• 12:19 Just checking in to say I'm here too. :-) #
• 17:51 Adding my voice in praise and gratitude to our veterans and the many sacrifices they've made for liberty. Thank you, all. #

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I met Stephen King!!!!!



He was really cool! I was nervous and giggly and told him that it was so nice to meet him, and he said "It's nice to meet you too," and held out his hand.
Squee! Off to go read now. Other pics are here on facebook.

I was reminded while talking with maudelynn that I've been meaning to post my latest iPod playlist of Songs I Can't Stop Listening To, just for fun and because I think it's a neat collection.

This set of songs would be defined as "songs I ONLY obtained after hearing them on TV". So in other words, even if it's a song from TV (like Cake's Short Skirt/Long Jacket, i.e. the themesong of Chuck) that I like, if I had already heard it or already owned it, it's not here. Just stuff I specifically hunted down from TV. I recommend all of these songs, obviously. :)

Songs from TV

Time Lapse Lifeline - Maria Taylor
Bones: Ep. 4x23 - The Beaver in the Otter

Apologize - OneRepublic
Smallville: Ep. 7x13 - Hero

Brand New Day - Ryan Star
Lie to Me - Theme Song

The Gift - Angels and Airwaves
Gossip Girl: Ep. 1x1 - Pilot

This is your life - Switchfoot
Smallville: Ep. 4x19 - Blank

You Might Die Trying - Dave Matthews Band
House: Ep. 3x2 - Not Cancer

Raise Your Hand (Lifeblood Remix 128) - The Lights
Gossip Girl: Ep. 1x3 - Poison Ivy

Burning For You - Shiny Toy Guns
Commercial - Lincoln MKS2010

U A Freak (Nasty Girl) - Chingy
House: Ep. 4x15 - House's Head

Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz
House: Ep. 3x1 - Meaning

Cobrastyle - Teddybears (ft. Mad Cobra)
Chuck: Ep. 1x1 - Pilot

Funny Little Feeling - The Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers
Smallville: Ep. 4x11 - Unsafe

Feels Like Today - Rascal Flatts
Smallville: Ep. 4X5 - Run

Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
Greek - can't remember!

Guess Who (parov stelar remix) - Nekta
Gossip Girl: Ep. 1x6: The Handmaid's Tale

Don't Take Your Love Away - Vast
Smallville: Ep. 8x10 - Bride

Teardrop - Massive Attack
House - Theme Song

Precious - Depeche Mode
Smallville: Ep. 5x1 - Arrival

This Is The Thing - Fink
Lie to Me: Ep. 1x19 - Life is Priceless

What You Don't Know - Jonatha Brooke
Dollhouse - Theme Song

Set Free - Katie Gray
Bones: Ep. 4x4 - The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond

Break So Easy - Johnathan Rice
Smallville: Ep. 4x11 - Unsafe

Some Devil - Dave Matthews Band
House: Ep. 1x20 - Love Hurts

Roadside - Rise Against
Smallville: Ep. 6x14 - Trespass

...

And that's all for tonight, folks!

I have another blog about elements of science fiction up at the SFWA Nebulawards site:

http://www.nebulaawards.com/index.php/guest_blogs/things_that_go_bump_in_the_dark/

• 12:25 Wednesday writing blog: All about Collaboration. writertracy.livejournal.com/100431.html #
• 12:39 @tmc4242 You actually have a white photo backdrop? I usually end up raiding the linen closet for spare bedsheets. :) #
• 12:45 I suspect I should stop doing the writing for fun and start the writing that pays by this point in the day. #

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On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

...Yeah. I did this radio interview. Go listen if you've a mind to know what I actually SOUND like... (WARNING - it's fairly long...)

You know what I like the best about this day off? Is that my workplace is LOCKED, i.e. I couldn't go in and do my hours even if I wanted to! Therefore, I don't have to feel bad about not getting my overtime hours in yet. WHEE. (I've been working a lot of hours the last few weeks to get the permitted overtime in. But let me tell you, the paycheck is WORTH IT.)

In other, much more fun/interesting news, here's an interview on blogcritics.org with one of my favorite people, cleolinda Jones. Check it out!

And now, I'm going to find some early dinner.

Why is there no way to search the history on your computer? Eh, Mr. Firefox? Hmm, Mr. Gates?

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/40324

Dogs showing how welcoming a military member home ought to go.

"Advocates of government control want you to believe that the serious shortcomings of our medical and insurance system are failures of the free market. But that's impossible because our market is not free. Each state operates a cozy medical and insurance cartel that restricts competition through licensing and keeps prices higher than they would be in a genuine free market. But the planners won't talk about that. After all, if government is the problem in the first place, how can they justify a government takeover?" --columnist John Stossel

"Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes. America, this is not an academic issue. If this health care bill becomes law, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, privacy as you have enjoyed it, will cease to be." --Judge Andrew Napolitano

"Where in the U.S. Constitution does it authorize Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance? If Congress gets away with forcing us to buy health insurance, down the line, what else will they force us to buy; or do you naively think they will stop with health insurance?" --economist Walter E. Williams

When the best thing that can be said is "well, we won't be any worse off than Great Britain or Canada!"--- then perhaps we should reexamine the presumption that the proposed course of actions will make things BETTER? I don't WANT to live in either Canada OR Great Britain. Both those nations have earned themselves at best a long place in second and third for protecting the rights we in America take for granted. Freedom of speech? Freedom of Press? Freedom of Religion? Right to bear arms? There are people being prosecuted and harangued by the governments in those countries RIGHT NOW for saying the Politically Incorrect. And men in JAIL for defending their homes from violent criminals. And as for their health care, those that aren't dying in line--- or dying in their hospitals-- or simply being DENIED life saving care--- are currently coming HERE. Sorry, I don't want a third-place medical industry OR a third-place country.

"Among the things that people complain about under the present medical care system are the costs, insurance company bureaucrats' denials of reimbursements for some treatments and the free loaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others. Will a government-run medical system make these things better or worse? This very basic question seldom seems to get asked, much less answered." --economist Thomas Sowell

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 - March, 1918
Wilfred Owen

"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

—Sir Winston S. Churchill, Harrow School, 29 October 1941


I never saw another butterfly . . .
The last, the very last,
so richly, brightly, dazzling yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears sing
against a white stone . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly `way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it
wished to kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto,
but I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me,
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live here in the ghetto.
-- Pavel Friedman, June 1942

Thank You for all that served. To their friends and family that supported them in their choices.

To my friends and family, thanks. That last two years would have been unbearable otherwise.

We raise a glass to the living and our dead.

We've been clearing the backlog of stuff for the move. masses of old photographs. Men and women in uniform... 4 wars worth. I daresay there'll be some plonker out there who'll say they were imperial wars... But the world you might have had without their sacrifice was not a very pleasant one. And the little districts in little far off countries gave more - by ratio - than the great powers did.

I stood at little memorial in the back of beyond in New Zealand. Beautifully kept... maybe 20 names in two wars. The same surnames repeated... In a sparsely populated area like that it must have seemed all their dreams gone to dust and ashes. And yet in the second World War those families sent more sons...

Here too. (And while it was English speakers who responded heavily, there were many Afrikaans volunteers too - my mother. There were Zulu volunteers who died heroically on the Mendi.) Yet, today the TV announcer in SA do not wear poppies (we do) and there are no headlines of rememberance services. The memorials grow weeds in many places.

Yet we will remember them, and the sun shall never set on them.

Salute.

Writertopia

I think all these Nanowrimo people are sapping my novel-writing juice. I haven't been able to work on it for a long while. Finally, today, I'm back to it, and making progress again. Woot!

This is the fourth book in the series and I think I have liked this one more than the rest. Secrets about the Light troop come to light by the end of the book and Joanna tries to fix what she did to a child in the previous book. This is certainly a pivotal book in the series and I don't think it would be a good book to start with.

                 City of Souls (Sign of the Zodiac, Book 4)