Previously: line up AM pills on the left side of the desk, PM pills on the right side, and Both pills in the middle (to be added to boxes after AM pills, and then put on the PM side). This requires extra clearing off of desk space to make sure they all fit. (Bottles that have already been loaded in go back into the "Come With Me If You Want to Live" drawer, either right-side-up if I don't need to do anything else, upside-down in the fabric organizer that the primary stack of filled boxes will go in if they need a refill soon, and upside-down in that place with a little plastic dot inside them if I ran out midway; a set of matching plastic dots mark the compartments where there aren't that pill.)

New procedure: AM pills go in the pink bins on-or-near the desk, PM pills go in the blue (teal) bins, and Both Times pills go in the white bins and migrate to Blue after they've been added to AM.

The colored plastic dots come from Microlet lancet tip protectors. (Used lancets go in my mini Sharps jar, which started life as a Costco Loratadine jar and then got a red paint job on the lid and bottom using some non-preferred nail polish, and a label saying SHARPS on the side, implying Please Don't Fill Above This Line. I dump it into the big sharps bin in the bathroom.)

This weekend featured some Bodily Fail, over which I am still Disgruntled and Apologetic. Fucking cancer. Fucking cancer treatments.


Book status: finished with The Curse of Chalion a day before the audiobook was going to get whisked back to the library, and into Paladin of Souls. (We will probably not do The Hallowed Hunt, and the next person to breathlessly suggest that we do any Sharing Knife gets The Cut Direct. However: Penric, my beloved.)

In other book news, I waxed enthusiastic about All The Warnings on Cyteen to alexseanchai, concluding "But it's great about Growing Up Autistic Under Surveillance" although modern understanding of neurotypes and Azi vs Cit psychology suggests that uh, starting a kid off via 100% Tape-based learning would Probably Not result in Autism. "Oh, they're not sensitive to their discussion, are you Florian" "No, sera" (paraphrase of Ari I and Florian I) hits Significantly Different in context of Autism "Speaks", those morally bankrupt allistic and about-us-without-us fuckers.


Relevant to The Locked Tomb, Target's Halloween shit is coming out, and they have a skull-topped decorative bottle, some blatantly 3rd House skulls that are bedazzled to fuck and back, and a "Finally, some peace and quiet" coffin shaped motto board with a skull that could be painted into a number of different House skulls.

... right, so an offhand comment sent me at Wikipedia in search of more information about Margaret Thatcher other than the general vibe I'd picked up by having a good smattering of UK folks in my circle. And there I was skimming down the article (mostly looking for her hair color, on the grounds that if she wasn't a redhead, the whole thing fell to bits) and the assassination attempt caught my eye. So naturally I clicked through to the Brighton Hotel bombing.

I was reading down it, and little bells started tinkling in my head. Prior to 1994, check. Female world leader, check. Thought to be an outrageous bitch by her political enemies, respected by opponents, tough as nails, and doing radically anti-humanitarian things from time to time, check.

Hotel bombing, sure.

Hotel bombing carried out by placing the bomb in an adjacent room ... okay.
Increasingly restless and vocal terrorist group: indeed.
Late night, check.
Uninjured ... yeah, I'll take it. Partner uninjured: check.
Changed clothes, interview with the press, and defiant & determined speech about how democracy will prevail in the face of terrorism? Ding ding ding!

Ariane Emory, folks. The assassination attempt on Ari II looks very like it was in many ways informed by the assassination attempt on Margaret Thatcher.

Tell me you don't see it.

I was once amazingly offended (and the only reason I was offended and angered rather than hurt was because the world I live in has made me arm myself against this), in a fashion that I don't often get, by some Cyteen fanfic. In it, Ari II, Florian II, and Catlin II are exploring their relationship, but Catlin is reluctant to enter a sexual relationship with Ari, because apparently in that fan-author's interpretation of that universe, female homosexual behavior is seen as wrong and gross, and Catlin has internalized this concept. But she tries it anyway, and what do you know, OT3. And I was filled with horrid, angry, slappy rage, and utter surprise that the author could have even thought to take that choice of interpretation for that universe.

( I'm sure I do go on. )

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Tuesday, 0028: The thought of Dad with a MySpace account is just kind of unnerving. (I think he does have one, because of that one time that he mentioned.)
• Tuesday, 0039: Aunt served beets because Cousin the Younger likes them. (I do too.) Had forgotten about that particular water-soluble dye effect.
• Tuesday, 0041: Heeee, the DW channel's infobot is named Figment.
• Tuesday, 0050: poodle problems wordplay: http://qdb.zhzh.org/dw/5
• Tuesday, 1214: @ataniell93 Totally in reference to Cyteen. Though nobody in that universe ever is quite all right except maybe Sam.
( read the other 15 )

Follow me on Twitter.

Headed out this afternoon to pick up my copy of Regenesis. Managed to get lost twice: first when the exit I thought I was taking turned out to not be there, and second when Google Maps directions played me false, unfortunately in a way that appears to be due to someone else's end-user idiocy. Due to the way some idiot at B&N marked their entrance, Google maps directed me that my destination would be on the right. It was instead on the left. This resulted in no little confusion, and circling until I found the actual place. (No signs were visible from the main drag.)

I think I must have discovered Cyteen sometime in 1995. It was certainly in my life by the summer of 1996. I have a memory of sitting in the dark cool pantry on one of the stray buckets of flour, reading it, sometime in the summer. Sometimes I wish that library checkout records from my teenage years existed, and that I could get copies of them, because it would in some ways be useful to have that to check up on myself.

The book came at a crucial time in my teenage development: it was about the development of identity, psychology, and ethics; I had learned what I could absorb at that time from my parents, and was hungrily trying to absorb all that I could from the world around me. The concept that one had the responsibility to track one's inputs; the concept that all ideas had an external source, some seed that sparked it; the concept that one was responsible for examining and re-examining one's processes and tracking when they were not sound: all of these were things that I hadn't thought of and found that I was desperately in need of knowing.

If I discovered it in 1995, that means that I've been waiting 14 years, give or take, for a sequel. And this is that sequel.

Of course it's flawed. I spotted two discontinuities (one very minor, one potentially major but glitching off a minor detail in the first), and the first hundred pages or so are dry and the sentence flow is awkward. By 200 pages in, all awkwardness seems to have disappeared, and the pace has picked up and things are happening. The first book takes place over more than a decade. This takes place in less than a year. There are plot threads left hanging for Book 3, but some of the nagging questions from Cyteen are answered. I startled raranax by purr-trilling at some of the best bits. The author's own love for complex aquarium setups shows up in some loving but minor details. There's psych, and plottery, and HITTING (yes, actual hitting too!!) and intrigue, and backstabbing, and computer bits, and complex machinations of catering, and that red pillow. Got to love that red pillow.

Yay work where I write up lengthy reports on "why this system is on crack"! Yay meetings at work where I start coming to terms with the idea that yes, that little spreadsheet app that I whipped together is in fact shaving from 1 to 1.5 hours off the nightly paperwork and cleanup on my team. ("That's marketable," Dad says.) I did let them know that my return to the team was under question, and that I'd keep them informed. We're changing treatment of sample for the win. Yay work e-mails wherein I make slightly sarcastic commentary that slides under the noses of proofreaders!

Yay happy conversing with roommates! hcolleen did the "Gosh, that sounds familiar!" thing when I started describing the Quintarian religion (I wear pilgrim's ribbons, of the Bastard, at cons), and it turns out that she's read The Curse of Chalion. I asked if she wanted to read the sequel, and at an answer in the affirmative, gleefully pointed out the appropriate location on the shelf. Oh, and if you see Ethan of Athos lying around, it has m/m UST in it. Tasty!

Yay talking to Darkside for 39 minutes! (My timing was off the first time, but it was dead on the next time, and we had a good chat. Warned him that I'd be at the con next weekend, so I might not call. I will probably find time anyway, though, and be all full of bubbly cheer, but it's good to let him know beforehand.) Called my parents, and had a good long geek-session with Dad, and got an interrogation from Mama.

Work was full of me angsting and banging my head on things and making beautiful graphs to discuss why things were going badly. I attempted to post by e-mail, but it wasn't recognized as valid. I'll try and re-do, attempting to preserve the random pretty pictures. (I censored everything specific that I could think of with cunning application of Paint.)

I went for a little walk while I talked with the parents. That was nice. I should probably shower and hit bed, because I want to be up bright & early to start work and then get out in a reasonable amount of time to go give plasma. While what I told Mama was true, I am pretty much in budget, there is not exactly much room in said budget. But I am a proud Lunatic most of the time, and am attempting to Make a Point as well as live simply.

Dad cautions me to not give too much notice and to have someone trained to fill my shoes when I do leave work. That is a good idea. He also says that beware of getting into the kind of technical management position where you are just doing backups and fixing things, and don't actually have time to make anything or experiment or innovate, because that is deadly boring.

In the spirit of decluttering, I took an old calendar and shuffled over the old data to my Google calendar. I like to have that sort of data. It makes my life tidier when I want to look back on it and see what was happening. Reading Cyteen at an impressionable age made me want things so that I could back up my mind at a moment's notice. Hooray my mind, eh?

Here I go attempting to pack a full work week into 3 days. I am only marginally insane, and may come in for a few hours on Thursday. (Then, I might not.)

Don't drop your iPod in an airplane toilet. Via slashdot.

One of the things I really want to do is take good photos of the places I go, the buildings I deal with, the plant life, the landscape, the sky. I want to remember how these things look for after I leave. There are so many photos of the people, and I write so much about the events -- what I want my eyes to remember is the lay of the land, the way that building sat right in front of those trees, the way the little mountain was, the rocks, the crack in the sidewalk...

What I'd really love to do, if I were feeling particularly irresponsible and cheery, is take photos of the beats I walk, then put them on Petridish with Google map link complete with satellite photos and exact coordinates. You could find the places I stood, years later, with a GPS and my photos for a guidebook.

... That's what I'd like. A mobile device that knows where it is at all times, GPS and compass in one, complete with camera and upload system. Take photos, tag them with location, date, time, direction, people, keywords, commentary.

In the discussion about memory technology in the Harry Potter universe, there was a comparison between Obliviation (and similar things) and rape -- and the follow-up that rape is more vandalism, desecration, and invasion than it is theft, really. A physical assault is an attack that "takes" feelings of security and safety, yes, but it accomplishes this by creating traumatic memories that override previous experience, rather than actually removing events that had led to the feelings of safety. An Obliviation takes away memories, rather than creating new memories that change emotion.

Tangent much? Yes. Sort of. I've been puzzled by the intense feelings of traumatic violation I get when someone or something has messed with my data. I pride myself on my memory, but I know my good memory is an illusion, carefully crafted by the fact that I keep very detailed records of what I'm doing, where I've been, who I know, and who I am. I keep my memories on my computer. An invasion of my computer is not only an invasion onto a personal body part, but risks damaging my memories. Keep your memories in your shoes.

I read Cyteen too young, I think, because once I'd read it, I started hoarding information about myself -- not quite the way an obsessive and mentally ill person might save old pizza boxes and assorted garbage, but with a disturbing dedication and fervor. I want immortality, but I don't think I'm going to get it in this body. I want to be remembered -- more than that, I want to remember me. I want some girl in the future to be able to look through my memories, look through my eyes, and use where I left off as a point where she can leap into places where I won't be able to reach quite yet, but I can almost see if I stretch hard enough...

There was just a locked post about something that hit me two months ago, but is now hitting me again as the real-world implications of it catch up to me. And that's stressing me the fuck out, but it's an old stress, now. I can deal with it.

Darkside was there for me five minutes after it hit me, and dealt with me gibbering and trying to cry but failing, dealt with me starting to slip into shock, dealt with me laughing in very disturbing ways as my universe flipped upside down and started raining bits of mental foundation down upon me. Figment was there for the aftermaths, and was the first person I allowed to touch me after the first shock started to slip away.

Incidentally, I should never be given bad news when there isn't someone trusted around who can physically hold me, because I can and will start slipping into shock. I've learned to recognize the symptoms, and will dutifully get something to drink and wrap myself up in a warm blanket, but if my mental processes have been derailed, my safety features may have been affected too.

I'm a social creature, but no company is preferable to bad company in a time of stress. I need someone I can safely fall apart around. I trust myself to do that around very few people. There are far more people who would offer hugs and shoulders and their company -- and say the wrong thing when I was vulnerable, and run the risk of planting something in my psychsets that would grow there and trigger off things that would have been better left untouched, or touched only by someone who could successfully read from the Black Book and banish the fishy tentacled thing into rich black fertile soil instead of a slimy, writhing mass of venomous self-doubt. When I'm vulnerable, I shrink back from physical contact except with people who are known to be safe.

I become Disturbing when the foundations of my sanity shake. I keep telling myself that I've been to the rock-bottom, and there isn't any less sane I can ever get, and then someone tosses me a shovel, and I just keep on digging... Paradoxically, the further down I dig things, the more stable I get, because I know where so many of the faults lie now, and I know how to brace them and compensate for them. And people who haven't explored their own sanity in such depth get very scared when someone talks conversationally about where all the holes in their head are...

Freud didn't get it all right. Childhood builds the base structure for the personality, so if there are any down-deep flaws, the mistaken ideas kids get about the funkiest things, it's going to be in the childhood. But some of the deepest damage can happen when an adult earthquake shakes the foundation, or worse, pulls chunks out of the foundation and sets them on fire. If you're lucky, at least, the foundation gets removed before it's set on fire. And the teenage years are just as crucial to the adult personality as the childhood years are to the base personality. Some forms of adulthood are the mask we wear when we pretend we don't want to have fun anymore; those are the bad ones. Some forms of adulthood are figuring out that we don't have to do stupid and dangerous stuff to have fun. I like that kind.