Profile

[azurelunatic]

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed in this LJ are mine, unless otherwise indicated. They are certainly not those of my employer(s). They are also not the opinions of LiveJournal; I just volunteer here. My insights into Unofficial LJ Opinions are a matter of observation and perspective rather than any Secret Inside Knowledge.

So a bisexual, polyfi, gaming-resistant, slightly mentally fragmented, kinky, submissive/switch, Gemini/Monkey, pagan, mostly-female, liberal/moderate, transplanted Alaskan, fannish writer/geek walks into a blog... Hi. I'm the Lunatic. Most people call me Azz for short (not Azure). I like to get all that stuff up there out of the way up front so those who are going to get scared off by it up front get scared off quickly and painlessly.

I write. Maybe one of these days I'll write for a living. I'm not there yet, mostly because I haven't gotten published yet. This is in a large part my fault, as I'm too chicken so far to start sending out stuff. That, and I get distracted from polishing stuff to get it in presentable form. But I will, even if my good friends have to drag me kicking and screaming. I have scary amounts of drafted things, and attempt to churn out another first-draft novel every NaNoWriMo in addition to the stuff I do on my own time. I quasi-lead a local gaggle of female writers; we meet on a weekly basis for writing support and dinner. I've been keeping a journal in one form or another since the start of the Gulf War in 1991. (I was 10. It seemed like a good idea at the time.) This journal is nearly a prosthetic memory. I occasionally write humor, including random funny things that get passed around. Any public post is fair game to be linked from any reasonably friendly location. This is my personal natterings rather than a series of editorial essays. Every now and then I think about starting up a blog that's entirely devoted to polished public content, but then I realize that I have a life. :-P

What with the Friends List of Doom and all, it's a bit rough to keep track of everybody in my life. Here's a short run-down.

I live in Chandler, the Phoenix area, Maricopa County, AZ, USA, North America, Earth. I rent a three-bedroom apartment with hcolleen and myrrhianna, friends and fellow writers. (We share the apartment with myrrhianna's cats and perhaps a few too many computers.) I was born and raised in Alaska by a rocket scientist computer geek/handyman and an artist/biologist, without the questionable benefit of a television in the home, and with unrestricted access to the local library. Is it any wonder that I therefore turned out Odd?

The Darkside mentioned so much is neither darkside, nor my boyfriend, nor Fuzzy Modem/Shawn. He's been my best friend nearly since we met in late 2000. We are opposites in many ways, but either complementary or alike in most of the ways that count. I will not vanish quietly, nor allow him to slip away; this friendship means too much. To the ends of the Universe, my friend.

I respond to tech support and general random informational emails for a local dot-com (hosting, email, domains, bells, whistles). This is a step up from taking phone calls for same. I also spend enough time with suggestions to consider it a job. My position as a very part-time Queen of All Statistics and impromptu database kludger for a survey research company call center on the other side of town is ending. (The database uses Access, and hurts less than the series of linked Excel sheets trying to do the job of a database that it replaces. I'm still not a Real DBA.) People consider me insane and/or a workaholic; I just know that I can't afford to get bored.

I am a LiveJournal volunteer, and have been for a very long time now. I have no secret inside knowledge about what way the Powers that Be are steering this thing. (Anything I know is beta-testing and volunteer stuff.) I am very concerned with the direction the current administration is taking the site, and I would like plain speech, clarity, honesty, and advance notice of changes whenever possible. I support creative freedom, clear policies applied with human good judgment, and good coding and design practices. Good design takes the input and insight of the actual users of the system into consideration whenever possible. Good implementation gives users advance notices of planned changes to the system whenever possible. Good business practices include listening to available experts on the topics you're working with. Appropriate disclosure involves anticipating changes that will not be well-received, acknowledging changes when they are made (including unpopular ones), and explaining at least some of the reasoning for going against the advice of the experts. I know and trust the people I volunteer with and work alongside of on a day-to-day basis. I've made strong friendships in the Support community, and I do react poorly to people bashing my friends. It's wisest to distinguish between "all of LiveJournal staff are crazy ho-bags!!" and "That decision really upset and hurt me, and I think it's going to be bad for the site overall!" in my presence.

As of March 12, 2007, I am the new volunteer co-maintainer of suggestions. I help out there by tagging posts, tracking comments to help direct discussions away from flaming before it starts, and helping refine suggestions into a form that the development team might be able to do something with. I do reject some pending suggestions posts (largely duplicates of other suggestions that have been made), but I am not empowered to actually approve any. If you're here to ask me a question about the administration of suggestions, I may not be the person to ask. I don't make community policy or have official communication with the developers (though sometimes the developers join in the community discussion). The e-mail address is on the community profile. If you want to make a post in the community, visit the Contact Us page, select Suggestions, and begin filling out the Suggestion Proposal Generator. It is not necessary to be a member of the community to post there, and I am not empowered to add any new members to the community. I will refer you to suggestions@ for any questions that I cannot answer myself. If you're a volunteer with a suggestions question, I'll answer as I have time; if you need to know something fast, IRC may prove the best forum. I sometimes also answer requests on the Support board. If you're here to ask me a question about LJ and how it works, you will probably get a better, faster answer by submitting a Support request than asking me, and I may send you there anyway, especially if I don't know you.

Care & Feeding of your Lunatic. FAQ

The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her divine Majority - Present no more - Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing At her low Gate - Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat - I've known her - from an ample nation - Choose One - Then - close the Valves of her attention - Like Stone - Emily Dickenson I have a fairly random friending policy. My reading list is near unto maxed out, so the barrier to entry is insanely high. Interaction with me is key to me getting to know you; if you want me to do more than notice that someone's added me when LJ fires off the notification, comment here and there so I get to know you on LJ, even if we interact in other contexts (like IRC, and I may not match up the IRC handle to the username). It's not necessary to ask me if you can add me as a friend (please don't ask, just go ahead and add me as long as you're an actual person and not a serial adder). I do appreciate it when people let me know how they got here. I support behaving decently on the internet. To this end, I have disabled anonymous commenting. (Regrettably, LJ classifies OpenID comments with anonymous comments.) I will moderate comments when I feel it necessary to do so. If you're looking for a good fight, I recommend the MMORPG of choice, or efw.

Alternate journals: garnetdagger: my Warrior/Cleric side, mostly abandoned azurelettuce: pun attack! audiolunatic: my Pandora station updates There may well also be a work-safe journal of mine floating about: stuff that my employer wouldn't mind seeing, but more specifically, stuff that I wouldn't mind my employer seeing. If you've happened across it, there's not much there, and there's not likely to be.

Against Entropy The worm drives helically through the wood And does not know the dust left in the bore Once made the table integral and good; And suddenly the crystal hits the floor. Electrons find their paths in subtle ways, A massless eddy in a trail of smoke; The names of lovers, light of other days— Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke. The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made. But memory is everything to lose; Although some of the colors have to fade, Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose. Regret, by definition, comes too late; Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate. —John M. Ford April 10, 1957 - September 24, 2006

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Other than that, read the journal.

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In an emergency situation, every second counts. I participate in the LJ Abuse Emergency Contact Information First Post program. Do you? The life you save may be your own.

Current interests log, with links to past interests logs.

Previous version here; current log here

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Struck through "gaming-resistant", as I seem to have a gaming group now.

drafting

[azurelunatic]

I write. I write about (almost) anything and everything that strikes my interest. At the moment, this includes little scraps of my day imported from Twitter, collections things I have seen on the internet, longer digressions about my life and the stuff I think about, and the odd round of meta-commentary on LJ itself. (If you're here for the stuff that gets linked around, check out these, or my entries tagged lj for all of my assorted LJ-related natterings.) This also includes short stories and novels, although I don't tend to share my original works on the internet, and Other People's Characters generally don't tend to stick in my head well enough for me to write about them. I'm not yet published, largely because I'm chicken.

Any public post is fair game to be linked from any reasonably friendly location. There's no need to ask permission, though I appreciate a shout-out when there are going to be people headed my way.


People!
I know lots of people, and I interact with lots of people, but there are some people who are constants in my life.

A basic rundown of the people you're likely to see is here. (link) Most notably, "he" used without other argument is most likely to be my best friend in the universe.