South Dakota, and [But I'm A] Nice Guy[s] vs. [genuinely] nice guys

Seen it all over: help get a Planned Parenthood on the rez in SD! http://community.livejournal.com/be_bold/212948.html (this isn't the original; the original's in someone's personal journal somewhere.)

divalion: No More Mr. Nice Guy
(with supplemental http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/ng.shtml re-pointed-out by elorie)


And my take...

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A whole bunch of links and some Naismithery

Have growled at the ex-roommate's car salesman for junk calls to the former phone number of said roommate. Told them that their web design is shite because it takes 5 minutes to load on broadband.

Via theregister: http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127 -- Absolutely flaming idiot makes assumptions and runs with them. Note to end-user: the OS that's on the box that's running your website is supposed to be there. If your web d00d misconfigures their Apache to the point where you can see what OS the box is running, it's not the fault of the manufacturer of the OS. Really. Threats involving the FBI get slung!

Via slashdot: http://www.spamdailynews.com/publish/Jailed_spam_king_caught_conspiring_to_kill_witness.asp -- Article title says it all, pretty much. Hot damn, that's a lot of extra charges.

Genetic breakdown of the population based on Jerk/Nice and Interesting/Boring: http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/genetic.shtml Darkside is a jNbB. A classic one. It's just that our very boring interests happen to coincide, and while he may not always be Nice to me, he is, for the most part, sweet and thoughtful.

Snakes on a Logo: http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1175748_1_0_,00.html -- It's official!

I have an "Ego" folder in the mailbox that my LJ comments come to, and every now and then I put a comment away in there. It's not something that I want to keep in the inbox for active reference, but it's nice to have a collection of reminders around that I have historically rocked, from time to time. Imperial Auditor Vorkosigan notes that it's only necessary to have one blinding flash of insight to be considered a genius. Similarly, I must surely possess some subtle level of rockitude based on unsolicited comments of "You rock" from complete strangers, even if I do not consistently rock all the time.

jpicon of note_to_cat deploys guard cats against the Glorious Bug.

Known Issues: FireFox vs. Flash: Transcribing ye olde Voice Post

So you're transcribing a voice post in Firefox, and it stops, and then you play it again, or you stop it, or you stop it and play it again. And suddenly the text field just plumb stops accepting input.

It's not just you. It's your browser.

Minimize the window and restore it.
-or- Click on another tab and click back.
-or-Click on a part of the window that is not the text entry and not Flash.

Click back to the text entry place. You should be able to enter stuff again.


LJ staffs-types know about this thing, and there ain't jack they can do. ^Cited.

Housecleaning means I go post-happy. Moments from work (old)

From a crumpled piece of paper found when emptying the large willow basket that's now down in the car and full of books:

Usually, "talked to answering machine" is not so literal: "Hello, R2-D2."

"I would like to ask you a few random questions."

Five pivotal albums (lemming)

Rules
List 5 albums that are pivotal to you. Write about a special memory for one song from each album. Tell us who the albums make you think of. Tag 5 friends to do the same.

pyrogenic did this one, and I just have to jump onboard, though I may skip tagging specific people.

Flood, by They Might Be Giants ~ 1995/6

Picture a 15-year-old Lunatic, wearing a black ribbed tight-fitting t-shirt (back when those were just starting to come in) over a long flowy straight pink skirt. Picture her chin-length brown hair flying around as she dances barefoot, barely aware of her surroundings. You can't go back to Constantinople / It's a long time gone, Constantinople...

pyrogenic was there. moonberryq was there. Alice was there, and Emily, and Dave, and oh! So many of us. Kathy. Amol. Jimmy. Gella. Rebecca/Gertrude. boojum was an invisible presence. She'll be waiting in Istanbul. I know I'm forgetting people. But we were there, and it was timeless, and how we danced. (I got the album somewhat after coming home, and played it endlessly.) It was the album of friendship and quirky humor and noticing that lyrics that read dreadfully on paper just worked in the music.

It's nobody's business but the Turks.

Document, by R.E.M. ~ Late December, 1995

I slip the CD caddy all loaded up into Majel (the pretty Quadra 660 AV named in honor of the noted voice actress Majel Barrett, as the computer could speak in a calm female voice and take voice command), and select my favorite songs to repeat themselves several times. It's a party, with the adults downstairs, and me holding quiet court upstairs in my new room with the screensaver and my new lava lamp lighting up the room. I am dating -- almost engaged to -- the most beautiful girl in the world, and I am so very happy. I giggle and whisper with Dad's co-worker Glenn's daughter Sara. Sara is a year younger than me and a year older than my baby sister Tay-Tay. We've had such fun in the past playing together, and I want to tell her my secrets.

I've been testing to see who I can tell about my girlfriend. So I tell her about my friend Savil who's dating a girl who goes to the U. "Eww, gross," Sara says. I go silent, and eventually Sara wanders off to re-join the party.

It's the end of the world as we know it. I'm drifting away from the people my parents have chosen to populate their lives with. I am making this conscious disconnection from them. I can't make them accept me. I have to just step back, lest my wiring and my love disrupt my parents' lives. But. I feel fine.

Parallel Lines, by Blondie ~ 1997

I'm sitting outside Austin Lathrop High School after the Driver's Education class with Mr. Bodle, with the tape player that's been in the household for years in my hand. It's got fresh batteries. It's only monaural, but it's what I have. I'm snuggled up in the battered brown leather jacket with the vastly inaccurate map on shredded silk lining inside. The jacket was from a thrift store, and I love it so much, because it makes me look so vastly cool (I fondly believe). It isn't black, but it is leather. "Fade Away and Radiate" is in my ears. I am alone, for the moment, and waiting. I do a lot of waiting alone in these moments, but I'm singing to myself, loud and proud and strong. Sometimes it's for joy. Sometimes it's to shout out the pain. But I'm always singing.

That's a Shawn era, with Shawn a silent presence just in front of me. I trailed after him like a guardian angel, and that's how Death Child always saw me. Shawn was turned on to the TV culture, and I wasn't.

Aquarium, by Aqua ~ 2000

This is the album of my relationship with BJ, the good times and the surreal times. It might not have been, except George left it on for three days straight on repeat, sort of to counteract the fact that BJ and I were having noisy sex. "Good Morning, Sunshine."

George. BJ. BJ's scary little brother. Sue-bug and John. The whole crowd at work. Bonnie the little red car and long drives at night for the sheer joy of the road and motion. My virtual aunt renting us her little cabin. Independence.

Country Grammar, by Nelly ~ 2001

I moved in with Sis in April of 2001, and our musical tastes clashed. She loved rap. I hated it. I loved R.E.M. She hated it worse than she hated country music. We eventually worked out that she couldn't take twangy minor chords, and that I did not do weaponry and lip service to "no drama" that worked out in practice to shooting anyone who tried to start drama. She conceded that she liked some of their covers that didn't have the problematical chords. I conceded that the beat and sound of nonviolent rap songs could be all right.

Think of a hazy hot evening in late April or early May, with two white girls in a beat-up old used Buick Skyhawk with about three weeks more life in it cruising down the streets of Phoenix, windows down with no AC, belting out the chorus of "Ride Wit' Me"...