Random bits
Aug. 4th, 2003 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishFrom ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uilos, Sex: Yes. Gender: No. Goes along with similar thoughts from other people. I'd like to say that gender has no effect on how I respond to people, but I saw an androgyne at Steppin' Out (short spiky hair, soft facial features) and reflexively checked for boobs. I'm not sure why, but somewhere deep down I needed to be able to classify her into 'male' or 'female,' or I would have been a bit uncomfortable. And I don't even know why.
Friday night I get in from work around 9:30 and come downstairs and start saying something meaningless and E interrupts with "You have got to see this, if it's still there." I blink and say "Okay" and come over to the sliding glass door to the porch. E turns on the porch light. There are three skunks eating the birdseed that's fallen from the bird feeder.
Skunks are pretty cool. They're flat! Their fur is very long and kind of swept down from the spine, so they don't look round like normal mammals, they look flat on top. And they have two stripes, not one. These do, at least. They make little chirruping sounds occasionally and didn't seem too bothered by the light or by me sticking my head out the sliding glass door to try and take a picture. I would have gone out but E was having trouble keeping Chaos from going out to play with them. (Picture didn't come out very well at all. Too dark. Maybe if I'd gotten closer.)
(Yes, I know that skunks spray. I also know that they don't really like to, and I'm willing to bet that I can be careful enough in my movements to not scare them, or piss them off.)
Two of them came back last night. Apparently skunk dinnertime is usually around 9:30.
According to the Sunday paper, John Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson have left the VT CS department, taking schloads of grant money and grad students with them. Carroll cited (paraphrased) a lack of both funding and interest in education in his decision to leave. The English/Theatre major in me is thrilled to see the budget cuts affecting people with job potential, too. On the other hand, Carroll & Rosson are HCI people, so this will just skew the balance further in favor of coders having no connection to the people they're writing software for.
On the third, or 'gripping,' hand, software usability is only peripherally My Problem now. My relief at having departed this field is once more nigh-palpable. Screw you, coders. I'm going home.
Teen arrested at Logan for alleged bomb threat in his bag: "According to the police report, the note, which was placed on top of clothes in a black gym bag read: '[Expletive] you. Stay the [expletive] out of my bag you [expletive] sucker. Have you found a [expletive] bomb yet? No, just clothes. Am I right? Yea, so [expletive] you.'" My tax dollars at work. Perhaps I need one of John Gilmore's 'Suspected Terrorist' buttons.
The Probability That a Real-Estate Agent Is Cheating You (and Other Riddles of Modern Life): "His paper linking a rise in abortion to a drop in crime has made more noise than the rest combined."
The Bush administration's Top 40 Lies about war and terrorism: Good reading, if a bit on the alarmist side.
Fromchaobell, amusement.
uilos, Sex: Yes. Gender: No. Goes along with similar thoughts from other people. I'd like to say that gender has no effect on how I respond to people, but I saw an androgyne at Steppin' Out (short spiky hair, soft facial features) and reflexively checked for boobs. I'm not sure why, but somewhere deep down I needed to be able to classify her into 'male' or 'female,' or I would have been a bit uncomfortable. And I don't even know why.Friday night I get in from work around 9:30 and come downstairs and start saying something meaningless and E interrupts with "You have got to see this, if it's still there." I blink and say "Okay" and come over to the sliding glass door to the porch. E turns on the porch light. There are three skunks eating the birdseed that's fallen from the bird feeder.
Skunks are pretty cool. They're flat! Their fur is very long and kind of swept down from the spine, so they don't look round like normal mammals, they look flat on top. And they have two stripes, not one. These do, at least. They make little chirruping sounds occasionally and didn't seem too bothered by the light or by me sticking my head out the sliding glass door to try and take a picture. I would have gone out but E was having trouble keeping Chaos from going out to play with them. (Picture didn't come out very well at all. Too dark. Maybe if I'd gotten closer.)
(Yes, I know that skunks spray. I also know that they don't really like to, and I'm willing to bet that I can be careful enough in my movements to not scare them, or piss them off.)
Two of them came back last night. Apparently skunk dinnertime is usually around 9:30.
According to the Sunday paper, John Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson have left the VT CS department, taking schloads of grant money and grad students with them. Carroll cited (paraphrased) a lack of both funding and interest in education in his decision to leave. The English/Theatre major in me is thrilled to see the budget cuts affecting people with job potential, too. On the other hand, Carroll & Rosson are HCI people, so this will just skew the balance further in favor of coders having no connection to the people they're writing software for.
On the third, or 'gripping,' hand, software usability is only peripherally My Problem now. My relief at having departed this field is once more nigh-palpable. Screw you, coders. I'm going home.
Teen arrested at Logan for alleged bomb threat in his bag: "According to the police report, the note, which was placed on top of clothes in a black gym bag read: '[Expletive] you. Stay the [expletive] out of my bag you [expletive] sucker. Have you found a [expletive] bomb yet? No, just clothes. Am I right? Yea, so [expletive] you.'" My tax dollars at work. Perhaps I need one of John Gilmore's 'Suspected Terrorist' buttons.
The Probability That a Real-Estate Agent Is Cheating You (and Other Riddles of Modern Life): "His paper linking a rise in abortion to a drop in crime has made more noise than the rest combined."
The Bush administration's Top 40 Lies about war and terrorism: Good reading, if a bit on the alarmist side.
From
chaobell, amusement.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-04 10:36 am (UTC)Suspected Terrorist Buttons: Did you read the comments following the entry? Definately says something about Lessig's readership...very few of them think that Gilmore had a right to do what he did.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-04 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-04 09:04 pm (UTC)Which isn't shared by all VT CS people.