As The World Falls Down

Cancerian birthdays!

2008-07-03T14:44:15Z

Who changes like a season?
Who holds fast and lets go without any reason??
Who cannot stick to any adhesion???
It is the Cancerian !!

Today, happy birthday to dadindinda , philmoseisleian and gleznov !

Tomorrow, happy birthday to pooh27bear !

and Saturday, happy birthday to wwetuesday and philady!

Today's PSA: Don't Suck.

2008-06-26T01:52:22Z

If you are going to donate $0.01 to the Tom Smith fundraiser just to get the download link, just skip it. Instead, do something as equally helpful to the world, and go stab yourself in the face.

Bite me, DreamHost

2008-06-20T18:06:14Z

Just FYI, anyone trying to use DreamHost's "Htaccess/WebDAV" feature - don't bother. Huge piece of crap.

Tom Smith Fundraiser CD

2008-06-19T16:57:07Z

"Mr. Smith Goes to the Hospital - A Fast Fund Raiser for a Fast Filker"
http://www.partiallyclips.com/tomsmith/

Tom Smith (filkertom) is one of the nicest, most gracious and most talented musicians I've met. He can write a song in about the same time I can eat a bowl of cheese dip. (For those of you that know me, you know that's fast!)

Tom is a filker by trade, it's what he does solely for a living. While trying to get on a high stage at a recent show, he tore his quadricep, and badly. He will be in the hospital or at least assisted living for physical therapy for months, since he can't put any weight on that leg, and having had previous problems, that pretty much confines him to chair/bed.

(And before any of you say "I don't like filk," you better listen to Tom first. I'm not a big fan of traditional filk myself, but this man is downright FUNNY. If you remember me talking about a song called "Cat Macros", this is the guy. Also, "Tech Support For Dad" is a riot.)

This means he can't play any shows for the next few months, AND he'll be racking up medical bills galore since he has NO medical insurance.

Tom deserves all the support he can get. Please, if you have a few bucks to spare, go to the above site and donate what you can to him via PayPal. I know everyone's tapped right now, but anything will help.

As a bonus, you get access to 40+ cover versions of Tom's songs, many done just for this compilation!

Also, if you are a friend/fan of Tom's, please post this everywhere you can!

Edit: I R DORK and forgot to mention, if you are an artist on the album, please email me at sara@saratrice.com and I will send you a username and password to the downloads.

I have to respect this move.

2008-06-06T14:07:27Z

Obama puts own stamp on party over funding
Democratic nominee sets tight limits on lobby donations for election campaign

"If a million of his 1.5 million donors contributed the legal amount of $2,300 each, he would have a war chest of $2.3bn - far in excess of anything ever seen in US political history."

*starts thinking about ideas for a massive bake sale*

Yes, I think it's this important to donate to a candidate this time around. If McCain wins the presidency, I really think we're really and truly screwed for all time. Not only will this country be subject to his policies and who he picks for SCOTUS for the next 20+ years (adios, Roe v. Wade), but the rest of the world will look at us and say, "No, they chose the evil son of a bitch for the 3rd time in a row. They really are just as evil and stupid as we thought they were."

It's Yer Birthday!

2008-06-04T19:27:47Z

Happy birthday to eye_ar_smaurt and ebonange!

Better than ice cream and Food Network and comic books and... and... oh just SQUEE

2008-05-19T02:11:33Z

What is, you ask? Well... the fact that:

Yep, we're dating exclusively now. I couldn't be happier... this boy makes me all twitterpated.

Oh, and for the rest of you ladies: http://www.stuporduck.com/sounds/DS295.wav
*grin*

To Dubya: Shut the hell up. Love, Keith Olbermann.

2008-05-15T14:04:04Z

Ganked from filkertom, everything I've been thinking about Bush's presidency rolled into one speech.
Countdown Special Comment to President Bush: “Shut the hell up.”

Fun games you, too, can play in the US Government!

2008-05-10T07:44:41Z

Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens

Yeah, that's the Washington Post, not the Onion. Ganked from elorie . I have to laugh because I can't cry any more.

Speed Racer - thumbs up

2008-05-09T20:05:50Z

Saw a midnight show of Speed Racer last night. Ignore the crappy reviews. These are reviewers out looking for a comic book movie to compare to Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc. This is not a plot-heavy movie. It doesn't have years of writing behind it. It's Speed Racer. You remember, the cartoon that was about a car racing family, and not much else? C'mon, what did they expect, Lord of the Rings?

This reviewer, IMO, did a good job:
http://www.themovieboy.com/reviews/s/08_speedracer.htm

It's a fun, fast-paced, loud-blinky-lights movie that has some cute comic relief brought to you by a kid and a chimp. The visuals are beautiful, the editing makes it feel true to its early anime roots, and the dialogue, while not deep, is a hell of a lot better than anything Lucas has written in the last decade.

It's exactly what it should be - not a re-imagining, not a re-telling, but a live-action version of Speed Racer. I watched the cartoon back in the day because my brother watched it, and it's true to its source. I say go see it. It's a nice 2-hour break from reality. Just sit back far enough from the screen - you'll need a bit of room to catch all the action.

Two Damn Fine Shows seen tonight

2008-05-04T07:42:26Z

You know all those awesome unannounced shows people always talk about but nobody ever seems to have actually gone to?

*big huge grin*

After the Paul and Storm/Jonathan Coulton show tonight (which was entirely awesome as always), we heard from one of the guys running the Lakeshore Theater that there was a stand-up comedy show starting afterwards, and that they were having a special performance at the end by none other than Robin Williams. Not only that, but since we'd paid for JoCo already, we only had to show our JoCo ticket stubs to get back in for free. We could pay $5 to sit up in the "VIP" section (i.e. the first 6 rows), which is a complete bargain by me, so I ponied up my dollars and got seated - in the front row.

Hot damn. That man continues to be f'n hilarious. He did all his "blue" comedy that he can't do on specials or TV and it was amazing.

My life rocks.

Camera for sale - SOLD

2008-05-03T01:46:39Z

I'm selling my old digital camera which is still in great shape and has taken most of the photos in my gallery.

Canon SD100 with 1 extra battery
Specs: http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-SD100-Digital-Optical/dp/B00009Q96Z

Here's the most recent photos taken with this camera: http://saratrice.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=8904

I've printed up to an 8"x10" photo with this camera and it looks pretty good.

EDIT: Sold! Sometimes Craigslist is, in fact, useful for other things than amusing personal ads.

Why I think Wright won't hurt Obama in the long run

2008-05-01T20:40:01Z

(reposted from a comment I made in lukeski's journal)

I don't think [Obama's shot at the presidency] is hopeless. As a matter of fact, I think the reason Wright is in the news so much is that Obama has a strong chance, and the neo-conservative pundits are terrified of this - so much so that they're blowing all of this way out of proportion in order to hurt Obama's campaign. From the latest polls, it's not really working. People are seeing Wright as another Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton/Louis Farrakhan - so his overall impact, small as it is now, is shrinking daily.

(And why would the neo-cons rather have Clinton? Well, because her politics are closer to parallel with theirs than she'd ever admit.)

The groups putting out campaign smear ads are the ones we have to worry about - but since the Federal Election Commission is useless right now because it's missing 4 of its 6 members, these smear ads are playing with no repercussions to the groups funding them. Let's hope they have the reverse effect and people get sick of seeing Clinton putting out ads bashing her opponents so that she loses credibility.

PS These are pretty cool: http://www.obamain30seconds.org/

More sick assholes in the world. Who knew?

2008-04-30T21:29:34Z

Torture tape spurs shock in Alva

Just... no words.

I'd say these guys might be good candidates for Manic Mondays, but really, there's no funny.

Help with bash script - SOLVED

2008-04-23T22:27:54Z

I'm using the script at the bottom of this page:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/check-table.html

Do any of you bash gurus know how to get it to where I can put in a list of tables not to check? Some of the tables are archive tables and I don't need to know on an immediate basis if those tables are broken after a server crash.

UPDATE: I've moved the script to pastebin so that people can comment on it more easily:
http://pastebin.ca/995893

I tried putting in a section myself to exclude tables but it was EPIC FAIL.

Help me, Obi Wan Livejournal! You're my only hope.

UPDATE: drunkencritch gave me a hand with it and it's working now. It was pretty easy but I didn't know how to approach it... he removed the tables with a grep -v command in line 88. Woo!

Today is Songs About Bacon day

2008-04-11T16:54:14Z

Why? Cause I said so.

First, the original:

Now, the sequel:

p0rkc0re, baby.

Two videos for today

2008-04-10T19:49:47Z

Sudden Death's new video My Atari - go watch and comment! Fun vid for those of you who are old-school enough to have played all the Atari games mentioned.
Professor Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" - possibly one of the most inspiring 10-minute lectures I've seen.

Science and ink

2008-04-10T16:38:59Z

Ganked from just0chris

Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

While I'm not into ink on myself, these are pretty amazing.

Public Transportation FTW

2008-04-08T19:34:01Z

OMG Cool: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/chicago/

Unfortunately, it doesn't integrate Metra or PACE, but if you can get there on the CTA, there are tons of super-nifty features, including trip planning, timetables, estimated travel time, little arrows to show you where to walk to, etc.

Nifty.

(Y'know, this might be one thing that pushes me into getting an iPhone. Eventually. I still have a year on my Verizon contract, and I likey my phone.)

Added to the list of "Not in my world"

2008-04-05T23:52:51Z

In my world, $90 trash cans are not marketed as "affordable."

Does McCain have any idea what's going on?

2008-03-21T18:41:58Z

I love it. McCain is campaigning that he is best suited to lead a country at war with terrorists because he knows the situation best, but he doesn't even know which group is being helped by the country his cronies are trying to start a war with.

Foreign policy expert? Yeah, right.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/18/a_mccain_gaffe_in_jordan.html

Kuni Says...

2008-03-15T21:12:52Z

There's a special on MSNBC about 419 scams. At the beginning they show a few people who have been taken by these scams, one for $18k, one for over $1m. And the reporter asks a police officer, "Are these people stupid?" To which the officer replies no.

YES YOU ARE. If you are so damned stupid to fall for a 419 scam at this point, when everybody has heard about them, YOU'RE A MORON.

Photos recovered.

2008-03-11T19:31:22Z

My sysadmin is awesome and had a backup of all my albums. I didn't have a current backup of the database, so the captions are gone, but c'est la vie - at least I got all the photos back in the albums. I've restored everything from Phreaknic 9 (2006) to present.

Well, my MarsCon photos are up. And a whole bunch of others are gone.

2008-03-11T03:49:53Z

I should never do this stuff when I'm tired. I just deleted all my "events" albums after DragonCon 2006 to present by mistake. I'm hoping my sysadmin has a backup, but I'm not counting on it. I'm so annoyed at myself. Yes, the pics are on my laptop somewhere, but I'm not sure what I had up.

Anyway, for those of you waiting for my MarsCon pics, they're up - clicky.

Also, for the Bloomington folks, there's a few pics from when I visited in January here. The first pic is a good indication of where I got my current obsession with hair color.

MarsCon - DEMENTIA RADIO Dinner on Saturday Night - Part III

2008-02-20T20:37:37Z

OK folks, here's where you actually put your money where your mouth is. Or put money in your mouth. Or ... something.

It looks like the winner for the DEMENTIA RADIO Dinner on Saturday Night is Buca di Beppo, and while I have not spoken to the catering manager yet, the person I talked to said there did not seem to be any problem with the date or the quantity. They will provide plates, plastic cutlery, and chafing dishes if we need them, so it sounds like a good deal.

Note: the Manicotti is cheese-only for vegetarians, but is, of course, not vegan.

So far it sounds like we will be setting up the food in the Musician's Lounge, and while there may not be one room where everyone can sit and eat, at least we won't spend hours on Saturday night trying to get everyone to a restaurant and back, and waiting for ages for food.

So, if you want to sign up for this, I'll need a show of ~~hands~~ dollars. I won't bore you with the reasons for this but feel free to ask if you can't figure it out yourself.

We can do this one of two ways:

Paypal - Send me $16 via Paypal to cover the fees they charge.
(The math: $15 + $0.30 paypal fixed fee + $0.46 transaction fee = you're overpaying by $0.24. If you really want your quarter back, I'll arrange it.)

Mail $15 to my home address, which you'll have to contact me for. This is a big pain in the arse and you'll need to send it Priority mail to get it to me on time - which negates your savings over PayPal.

This is for MarsCon Dementia Track artists, DJs and track attendees. I'm sorry I can't do it for the whole con, but we just don't have the manpower or the space. Please be honest and don't just sign up because you want food - sign up because you are a part of the track and want to enjoy dinner with your cohorts.

See you at the con! And remember to visit MarsConDementia.com for all the latest info on the track!