Technical Journals Again

I remembered today that I haven't read Router God magazine in a while. This magazine presents on-line tutorials in all the subjects I'm supposed to know in my job, and each one is presented by a celebrity. The ones I read today are Agent Smith Explains Syslog and Iraqi Information Minister Explains Policy Based Routing . But they are all great. If you've wondered what I do at work, this kind of stuff is a lot like it.

Fire and Hemlock

I'm still reading more books by Diana Wynne Jones, currently Fire and Hemlock which appears to be based on the balland of Tam Lin. This reminded me of the deep research available on that ballad at tam-lin.org. More...

Puh-leese

Remember the "Shocking Pink" catalog? It published around the time of the big 1993 March on Washington. We parodied it in an April Fool's edition of the Lavender Reader, with a magazine called "Surprisingly Beige." The parody contained products like "Rainbow Kleenex, blow your nose with pride, 15 shees, $40" which were not that far off from the "real" products: page after page of "pride rings" rainbow desksets, gay frying pans. (Oh wait, that was one of the parodies.) From the same wacky world comes rainbow wine. via Queer Day.

Cooked Quotes

Did you read this? The link is to an Arizona paper, but the wire story was in our local papers too:

Mary Dalrymple

Associated Press

Jul. 26, 2003 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department began mailing out checks worth up to $400 per child to more than 25 million middle-income households Friday, a summertime windfall from tax cuts enacted in May.

Jodi Mendoza, 38, of Portland, Ore., said she planned to use at least some of the money to buy school clothes and supplies for her three children.

"We'll probably also put some of the money away for their college," Mendoza said.

California Travels, Part 3

We spent a few days in Guerneville on the Russian River. We've gone up there a few times, even though we could probably have exactly the same vacation in Boulder Creek, which is only 30 minutes away insteade of 3 hours. But we do like Johnson's Beach. "Johnson's Beach?!" our gay male friends repeat in horror. More...

Harry and the Substitutes

Since I've been on vacation, I've been spending many hours in a chair, in the shape, reading near a body of water. We've been reading "Order of the Phoenix" outloud, but when I'm not reading that, I've been speeding through the books of another childrens author, who is almost as good. More...

Favorite Trees

This jacaranda grows across the street from our house. The jacaranda is also called the rosewood. More...

The Stop Sign Is Here

This morning our stop sign arrived. We've been working on getting one at Barson and Riverside for about four years. More...

More California Travels, Part 2

On the way to Santa Cruz Island we stopped at Mission Purisima near Lompoc. (If you follow that link, note that "What's there to do at the Mission?" includes: "There are restrooms at the Mission." ) Yes, it's that good. More...

California Travels, Part 2

Last week we went to visit Santa Cruz Island. We had read "Island of the Blue Dolphins" last year and this island off the coast of Ventura south of Santa Barbara is supposed to very similar to the island where the girl spent 17 years alone and surviving on her own. More...

The Limits of Friendship

A friend of mine was over tonight. We decided to sort and album photos together, since we never get around to this chore while we are alone. While she was looking at a photo of her old friend V., she told this story. More...

California Travels, Part 1

For the first few days of my vacation, I camped at a location that is so nice, I won't be identifying it in this entry. Few people I know have been there, and I'd like to keep it that way. More...

Vacationing Away from The Internet

In the last week I've been up at Florence Lake, behind Huntington, and down south at Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Ventura. Photos and comments soon.

Risk Management Runs our Lives

Because of the troubles at my work, I started seeing a counselor who helped me deal with the stress. I used UC's "Employee Assistance Program" which provides for three free visits to a counselor to discuss any issue that affects a staffperson, work-related or not. UC and other employers offer EAP programs not because they are kind and good, but because they don't want people to bring guns to work. More...

Will We Get an Election?

At the end of May, UPTE filed its petition with PERB asking to hold an election for 13,000 "Administrative Professionals:" Student Affairs Officers, Programmers, Analysts, Accountants, "Specialist," and other mostly white-collar so-called knowledge workers. We had meet the goal of gathering the signatures of 30% of the 13,000 staff, based on the list of eligible employees given to us by UC, as they are required to do by law. Then UC submitted a list of eligible employees to PERB so that the cards could be checked for accuracy. The list that UC submitted was much different, and much smaller. More...

Where Have I Been?

This week, my union, UPTE has been working very hard to assure that we win the right to have a union election at the University of California. At the last minute, UC cheated, and a good portion of our authorization cards were made invalid. So we had to collect more. And we collected 200 more signatures on the petition in three days. But its been a lot of work. Tomorrow I'm off on vacation and won't have a computer until Monday. Pictures to come.

Watching the Hours

We watched The Hours last night. People told me I would like it, and would smile mysteriously. I think what they meant is that they thought I would like this because there were lesbians in it. I didn't like it very much. More...

Yet Another Unidentified Animal

This time off the coast of New Zealand. This thoroughly entertaining story came to me via ambiguous. Maybe it's a plesiosaur, maybe it's a shark. I read the story, then noticed an unexpected point-of-view in the story. I had no idea that creationists are deeply interested in finding evidence of dinosaurs.

Your Car Will Rat You Out

Speaking of privacy: The Register reports a story of a drunk driver who said he was traveling 65 in a 30 mile zone when he hit a car and killed the two women inside. The data recorder in his airbag testified he was traveling 114 mph. More...

Fresh, Hot, Queer (International) News

The Advocate's news page has been something I read at least weekly, but the other day I found a reference to Queer Day. Much better.

I Bought the One With the Lesbians

I was a bit embarassed to be celebrating the right to enjoy sodomy last week. Yes, I love being lesbian, and yes I love lesbian sex, and a hundred percent more than enjoying the both of them, I love my privacy. This week's Newsweek got me thinking about this court decision without embarrassement. More...

Hey, I Had One of Those

Click 'N' Clack have released their ten worst cars. The VW microbus is only number ten. I agree with person who wrote that if more people had had a VW bus as their first car, far fewer of us would drive their own cars, thus saving us from pollution and dependence on foreign oil. And this life-affirming quality of VW buses is why the VW bus is at number ten, instead of, say, number 3 with the Ford Pinto. via j-walk blog.

"A Site for Vintage Ames, Iowa, Gay Folk and Friends"

Dennis Brumm collected ephemera when he was in college. Now we have an archive of gay Ames Iowa, Seventies Style.

Neat J. K. Rowling facts

Forty-nine things worth knowing about the author of Harry Potter.

Salt of Ages

I keep picking up and putting down "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky. This is one of those topical hologram books where you can tell the whole story of something, say, the whole story of human history, by focusing on one small part of it because the part, as in the hologram, contains the whole, but just with less detail. More...

Parodists with Too Much Time on Their Hands

Objective Christian Ministries is parody site that is calling for us to shutdown another christian parody site. It also includes way too many articles about creationism, secular consumerism, game theory, and living a christian life. This is pretty funny to me, but it probably saves the lives of people like me who have to live in other places.
...via j-walk blog.

More New Animals

This Reuters story about a giant sea creature washed up on the beach in Chile is interesting--can't wait for the photo.

New York Wild Life

When I read that history of New York last year it broke my heart to read how beautiful Manhattan Island was before the Dutch came. This story in Wired is about how many different species of animals life in Central Park. Not nearly the same, but better than you think. More...