Am I on crack? If you want to make an online payment using a credit card, you want to make sure that your vendor is using secured protocols, right? Like the page url should be https:// and not http:// ? And generally they should have a valid security certificate, right?

Please tell me if I am on crack.

'cuz I went to go pay my new utility bill, and lo, the page was an http:// and not https:// ...and it was some kind of Western Union dealie, and the whole thing made me itchy. So I opted to go the old-fashioned route and pay with a cheque in the mail.

But let me know, so I can know if I'm on crack, and perhaps what I should suggest to them re: online payments.

It looks like Ref 71 squeaked by here in Washington State. (Here in King County, it was 65-35 in favour of.)

Praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster.



Am bummed about Maine though. Am under no illusions as to what kinda money the marriage-exclusivists are willing to throw at restricting other people's rights. :(

Annalee Flower Horne made a remark on Scalzi's board which provoked my interest. Apparently Terry Goodkind has been claiming he doesn't write fantasy. A quick Google proves that he has indeed said this.

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/3123

(I like how Certis points out that Terry Goodkind first claims he doesn't write fantasy, and THEN that he changed the face of the genre. Make up your mind, Terry.)

All I know is I stopped reading the Sword of Truth series about the time that a thinly disguised and vituperative rant against Bill and Hillary Clinton appeared. Book Four, maybe?

Hi all,

I've got one heck of a flu, so I haven't been updating and probably won't be for a few more days. Sorry, guys. :( Here's hoping I get better soon enough to make it to the out-of-state wedding.

-gwoman

mood: sick

Or rather FiDaNoAl.

(Finish the Damn Novel Already.)

Megs has been warned but not yet discovered the importance of a zoo made of felt, a purple crayon, three uncracked eggs, one cracked egg, and a praying mantis.

This novel is not as surreal as that list makes it sound. In fact, it's a rather fluffy novel, and I'm not 100 percent sure where it is going. (Neither is anybody else.)

Problem with writing Megs: Every scene contains three main characters. Every scene. I have to remember to give Elaphe and Ignatius reactions and interactions and goals so they don't turn into mere accessories.

Olive Oil
Diced portobellos
Diced onion
Diced yellow, red, or green bell pepper
Minced garlic
Finely chopped habanero or Scotch Bonnet pepper
MorningStar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles

Can of whole tomatoes; fresh peeled tomatoes if in season!
Can of kidney beans
Can of tomato paste
Cumin, black pepper, and chili powder to taste

Sauté diced portobellos, onions, peppers, and garlic in olive oil over medium heat until they're softened and begin to caramelize. If you don't want your chili to be too spicy, use a jalapeño instead of a habanero or scotch bonnet. Meantime, put the canned tomatoes and beans (drain most of the liquid from the cans) in your Crock-Pot on low. (You can also do this in a large covered pot on the stove on low heat.)

When the onions are softened, add the bag of vegetarian Recipe Crumbles. Let them brown a little, then add all of this to the pot of tomatoes. Generously sprinkle in cumin and chili powder, and grind in some black pepper. Simmer all day, and stir in the tomato paste shortly before dinnertime. Taste and adjust the spices if needed. I added a little Chipotle Tabasco at this point.

Top with shredded cheddar and sour cream, and serve with fresh corn bread.

( Pictures along the way... )

tags: beans and legumes, main dish, mushroom, onion, tomato, vegetarian

One year, my parents did that thing which a lot of parents do after Halloween: They inspect the candy and then they take a TAX. If you are a parent who does this, or think that the candy tax is funny and the parent's reward for hauling your kid around, I'm going to urge you to stop. Because the year my parents taxed my candy, I stopped trusting them a little bit more. Furthermore, in subsequent years, I would feel the clenching hand of distrust whenever they inspected my candy again, never sure that they were inspecting it for my own good and always certain that they were scoping out my bag so my dad could have my Reese's cups (which happened to be my favourite too). I only remember this TAX occurring once or twice, and most of the time, my candy bag remained unsullied by the depredations of parental fingers, but the lingering memory kinda tainted further years.

"It's only candy," people say.

You may have forgotten, but when you are a kid, there's not a lot you have control over personally. You may have to share a room if you have lots of siblings, like I did. How you spend your time is often determined by parental schedules and school schedules. Toys are shared. Books are shared. Every year, you advance through a system where your desk changes. Your clothing will be outgrown and again, if you have younger sibs, you see your cherished rainbow hearts shirt eventually passed down to your little sister. For a time that is supposed to be about establishing comfort and security, there's an awful lot of impermanence and lack of control.

So, the Halloween candy. I had earned that candy, to my mind. I had worked on my costume with my mom, and I had gone out and collected it. It was mine. It had gone into my bag. And since my younger siblings had also gone trick-or-treating, they had their own stash. It seemed awesome. We weren't required to share it with each other, as we had each collected our own. Picked out our own when given the choice. We had even gotten to the point where we were negotiating with each other over trading candy for candy, where our Venn circles of Candy Appreciation did not cross.

And then we got home. The parents swooped in, told us some story about inspecting the candy to make sure it was "safe for us to eat" AND THEN THEY TOOK 10% OF IT.

I know some folks will argue that this just prepares you for a lifetime of taxes, but with taxes at least you get something back, in theory. Roads. Schools. That sort of thing. It's a shared cost and everybody benefits. In this case, my parents had the wherewithall to buy their own candy and we knew it AND THEY TOOK OUR CANDY ANYWAY.

And they didn't even take the horrible Jubjubs or the Smarties or the sugarfree candy or the sesame-seed-and-honey-stuff that sticks to your teeth or anything like that. No, they took the Reese's mini cups and the Nestle Crunch. They took the good stuff. They took my candy away. The very candy they had assured was my candy, the whole reason you go out trick-or-treating anyway.

And I distrusted them.

Now granted, they were probably worried about razor blades in apples and poisonous Pixie Sticks and so on. Those stupid rumours were rife while I was a kid, and I also remember on two other occasions, that my mom took our bags to the local hospital where they could be x-rayed for Bad Stuff. But to tell your kids that you are doing something good for them, that you are trying to keep them safe, and then to blatantly make off with their Reese's Cups? You are setting yourself up for a teenager who absolutely never ever pays attention to you when you tell them to be safe.

My parents were human. They messed up. They eventually discontinued the taxing, probably when they saw how much it upset us. But being parents, they still had their pet theories about raising kids and punishing them, and on at least one other occasion, they trespassed against my sense of security and order by threatening to give my stuffed dog, Princess, to the local thrift store if I didn't keep my room clean. It worked, but it also gave me a fucking ulcer and a fear that Princess, who I had imbued with any number of traits and who was like a person to me, could be taken from me at any time. Now my parents knew she was important to me, and would probably have just hidden her for a few weeks, but I believed this, because I had seen what had happened to my Halloween candy.

Now I'm an adult. Halloween candy means calories. I don't care about it any more. But I cared when I was a kid, because it was not just Halloween candy, it was MY Halloween candy. The fruits of my labour. And when my parents let me go out dressed up as Pippi, a cowgirl, dice, several witches, a punk rocker, and Rainbow Brite, they had implicitly entered a social contract. You go out. You get the candy. You keep the candy. You eat the candy. By violating that social contract, they made me distrust them and fear them.

It's only candy. Except when it isn't.





PS. I'm fine with setting the candy aside, say in a glass jar where the child can see THEIR candy, and letting the kid having only X pieces a day for the next month. That's kinda like a candy bank account, except it doesn't accrue interest. But it's still somewhat under the control of the kid. If you have health concerns as well, that sort of thing has to be handled. It's just the "tax" used to blatantly swipe candy from the kid, without even consulting the kid about their property.

Feeling very virtuous. John and I ran EM through Utgarde Keep, did the laundry, emptied the trashes, finished the dishes, tidied the kitchen, changed the sheets, got rid of the expired food in the fridge, made a shopping list, sold books at Half Priced Books, and acquired food stuffs to make delicious food.

Yesterday at work, I dressed up as a pirate elf, or an elven pirate, whichever you prefer. But today, I am doing jack to contribute to the holiday and that's fine by me. I expect to eat a juicy steak and saffron risotto later. (I've decided to chance saffron again. I love the taste. Who cares if I get buzzed on it? It's not like I'm doing anything other than watching Red Dwarf which will make me giggle anyway.)

dibs, n. [dibz, dĭbz]
-You'll most commonly hear this word used in informal expressions such as "I call dibs!" or "I have dibs on that last piece." To call dibs on something is to claim rights to or ownership of it. It was first recorded in this use in the US in 1932, said by children as a contraction of dibstone 'a knucklebone, jack, or pebble used in a children's games (cf. jackstones).' Though the game of dibstones (also known as jacks or knucklebones) is thousands of years old, it is not known to have existed under that name until the 19th century. The word itself with the same definition is recorded from 1692 on.



A Roman statue of a little girl playing dibstones, known then as astragaloi.


Side note:
Just want to wish everyone a happy Halloween, a merry Samhain, a blessed Day of the Dead and All Saints' Day, and a belated happy Qarqe'an! If any of you end up with pictures of fun costumes or festive events that you would be willing to share, please consider posting them or links to them in the comment section of this post. I'll do the same!

mood: cheerful tags: dibs, halloween pictures

So, apparently, it's the internet's 40th birthday. The National Geographic has a little on ARPANET and the beginings of our series of tubes.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091029-internet-40th-anniversary-birthday.html

Buried in the midst of the article is this little tidbit:

In fact, earlier this month Finland became the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right for all of its 5.2 million citizens.

Which is pretty damn cool, I think. Reminds me of the bit from Lois Bujold's Barrayar, when Cordelia gets all shocked about the lack of computers available to the impoverished on Barrayar, because back on Beta Colony where she comes from, "a citizen's right to information shall not be abridged".

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/15/finland.internet.rights/

Where are we? According to this CNN article, we're the only industrialised nation without an official policy to promote high-speed broadband.

As John says, "We're the greatest country on earth. Just keep repeating that."

So. My computer works again.

Guess what the problem was????

Not the hard drive. Not the power supply. Not the CPU.





It was the fucking Maxtor removable drive that I use for my backups.

Turns out that while THAT THING is plugged in, you can't boot the computer. (I googled this, and it apparently is an issue with some other Maxtor products as well.)

On the other hand, it did not display this fun attribute for months and months, and I've rebooted my computer tonnes of times while the drive was hooked up. So it only RECENTLY decided that it was going to be a problem.

I got suspicious last night actually. John had brought a hard drive enclosure home to test my drive with his machine. And it worked swell. Right up until the point where we plugged my removable drive in to his computer to transfer my files and backup everything. Then for some reason his computer refused to find the removable drive. We tried finding drivers, only to discover that Maxtor (subsumed by Seagate) doesn't provide drivers for that model, as it's supposed to be plug and play. Whee. Then I said to John that we should hook it up to the laptop as we knew for certain the laptop had been hooked up to it before. And voila! Laptop refused to start.

But me being tired, and tired, I didn't actually test my theory until tonight when John put the regular hard drive back in, and I restarted my computer without the Maxtor drive attached to it.

And it seems like the Maxtor will no longer connect at all, so I guess I've got a nice brick to dispose of, and a new backup drive to find. Which will probably not be a Maxtor.

soot, n. [soot, sŏŏt]
-You know the black, fine mess covering Bert the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins? That was a thin layer of soot, the carbonaceous residue from wood and and coal fires (among other types of fires). Spelled as soot, the word was first recorded around 1385 CE in Middle English, an alteration of the slightly earlier (pre-1200) Middle English sot. This earlier version had only changed marginally in pronunciation from Old English sot (with a long o), which was in use prior to 900. Along with Middle Low German and Old Norse sot, Old Dutch soet, North Frisian sutt (all akin to 'soot'), the Old English word is thought to have been derived from Proto-Germanic sotan, sotam 'soot (lit. "what settles")', which in turn came from prehistoric Indo-European sodo from the base sod, sed 'to settle.' Interestingly, this is also thought to be the base for Old Church Slavonic sazda, Lithuanian suodziai, Old Irish suide, and Breton huzel, all meaning 'soot.'

mood: busy tags: soot

Today I am taking a break to rest up and boost my immune system. I feel a little run-down and overly tired, and don't want anything to develop, although I am vaccinated against the possible strains of regular flu. I would not want to develop anything over the next week and a half, since I'm flying back to Utah in early November to see my fambly.

Mostly, I plan on hanging out with Bro Eins, and spending time with him and Megan, BUT I am hoping that I will be able to see my grandparents as well, as they are not doing so well. I have been bracing for bad news ever since last month when Grandma had to go into the hospital. Earlier this year, she'd fallen and sprained her wrist. And then she had a stroke. Or maybe it was the other way round. All I know is that recently she had to be hospitalised for about a week. And since I didn't particularly want to fly at Xmas (the second worst time of the year to fly) or Thanksgiving (the worst and most expensive) I figured I would visit the fam a few weeks prior. Which is cheaper and easier on my time and budget. And now it looks like....I don't know....that either my timing will be about right, or just a bit short. Dad called me yesterday morning, and since he almost never calls me in the morning, I figured something bad had happened to one of his parents. Only it turned out to be about a legal matter unrelated to the grandparents at all. Cue sigh of relief. But then Mum calls last night, and tells me that they are getting home care for my grandparents in starting today. She sounds worried and teary, but these are one of several defaults for how Mum usually sounds, so possibly it is not as bad as it seems.

But they--the grandparents--are pretty old, so then again, it probably IS as bad as it seems. (Pretty old = mid 80s.) Also there was something she didn't tell me in the phone call but said she could discuss when I came down. I hate it when people say that sort of thing. Leaves me wondering what is so horrible that they can't talk about it over the phone or email. I'm a hypochondriac. I don't want to imagine the worst. (First thoughts: Maybe one of my parents has horrible cancers?)


....


ETA: Forgot to add. The harddrive is fine. Still don't know what is up with the puter though. Possibly the power supply.

If QC were done in straight-up anime style, this is what Marigold would probably look like.

( TOTORO HAT )

gravel, n. [grav-uhl, grăv-əl]
-This word has stayed true to its roots throughout its history. Gravel's oldest ancestor is thought to be the Celtic root gravo 'sand,' from which were created Welsh gro 'sand, gravel,' Old Cornish grou, grow 'gravel,' Breton grouan, and Old French grave 'sand, the seashore.' The diminutive form of Old French grave was gravele, which was borrowed into English and transformed into Middle English gravel 'sand' around 1225 CE. By the 1330s, the definition changed from 'sand' to the more modern 'rock fragments and pebbles.'

mood: calm tags: gravel

So my computer died last night. Still trying to figure out if it is the hard drive or the power supply. Probably the hard drive. Trying to think about the last time I backed up my files. I will be very annoyed if I lose all my pics and psds.

Any of the Seattle peeps know a good computer repair place?