Entries for September, 2005

poem #38

September 1, 2005, 10:14 AM by ree


(Um... here, have a poemy thing.)

I walk this lonely sundown path
With memories of you
The man you used to be
The man who cared for me
I walk alone because I can't have you

Your laugh
My guide through rocky ground
Your smile
My vibrant light
Your warmth
My succor in this chill
And friendless moonless night

I sob this shaky shadowed stream
From memories of you
The man who brimmed with glee
The man I loved to see
I weep alone because you are not you

Your laugh
Has died within your throat
Your smile
Has flown away
Your cold demeanor shuts me out
Blots out the light of day

I grieve through dawn for who you were
For memories of you
The man whose heart is cold
The man I never told
I walk alone because I can't have you

Feeling: embarrassed

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diiiiiiiiiie

September 3, 2005, 02:28 PM by ree

I think I am going to kill my webhost. Yesterday I upgraded forum software. Everything went smoothly. I followed the upgrade instruction step-by-step with the utmost care. I had to edit one of the files so keep a modification I had made (actually, to improve it and to make it work with upgraded security). I am positive everything worked wonderfully then -- I distinctly recall referring to a specific test post over and over, as the post reflected the changes I made in the script and let me know that everything progressed as desired.

Today I checked something else and found the entire forum blank. The database is has all the data, I haven't changed the scripts since last they worked, but every section of the board returns "no topics" and no content even though it's right in the damned database.

Hey! Isn't this exactly what happened with the last forum suite I tried, the last time I upgraded that?

Why yes! Yes it is! Isn't that motherfucking wonderful?

KIIIILL.

At least I once again backed up everything prior to the upgraded. Managed a successful downgrade to the original version using those files, but goddamn.

KIIIIIIIIIIIIILL.

Feeling: enraged

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meme-ish

September 8, 2005, 02:58 AM by ree

(Note to non-LJ users: This list derives from my LJ interests list in my user info. Just ride it out.)

Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than ten interests, pick 'em all. If you have fewer than fifty interests, pick every fifth one. If you have over fifty, pick every tenth one. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much.

I used to have lots of interests and then cut a bunch that didn't really fit me. *shrug* Here we go.

cats: Miao.

history: Eeeeeegypt. Other old stuff too, but ancient Egypt is my favourite.

mythology: Smarten up or Athena's gonna make you smart, yo. We won't even go into Egyptian mythology of severed body parts, no we won't...

rpg: One of a slew of interests indicating that my roleplay characters own my brain. I primarily do freeform message boards online -- massively multiplayer graphic games are sooo not me -- but I also tabletop when I get the chance. My half-elf needs another outing. ... *snerk*

sf: is the best type of fiction. *devours SF anthologies like Hallowe'en candy*

tsfv: The SciFi Vine, long gone and long yet to be loathed. I do the miss the community feeling, however. I liked attending author chats and reading forum comments on the latest SF news.

And that's it.

Listening to: Evanescence - My Immortal
Reading: MLA formatting, ugh
Feeling: irate

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poem #39

September 8, 2005, 04:12 AM by ree

Look at me and tell me that you see
Not the fear that keeps me bound
Not sunburned nose and mousy hair
Find my soul and think it wise
Seek my joy beneath taut nerves
Not scarred skin or bitten nails
I want you to really see me

Listening to: Cat Stevens - Father And Son
Feeling: restless

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Ree's thesis

September 10, 2005, 06:24 PM by ree

I'm behind in class (hey teach, thanks for giving us two written assignments due tomorrow but only telling us about the second yesterday -- grr, and it requires reading three chapters first!) but I have to relay this, becase I have been a hissy entry writer lately and this is non-hissy.

Apparently just two weeks into class, we have to get started on the final research paper. Argh. (Okay, mostly non-hissy.) I fished for ideas I actually knew something about and cared enough to learn more about, and I think I came up with a hummer.

I am going to write my paper on how to choose forum software. Hee. I shall explain about my message board project, my goals for it, and how those goals affected my choice. I'll get into the differences between a forum and a CMS (it's that CMSes makes Ree's brain go 'splodey, though that's not a definition that will be be in any draft of my paper), why using insecure software is a bad idea (in a word: |-|4C|<Z0RS!) with some examples -- shouldn't be too hard to find.

This means that, in order to have a well-rounded paper, I'll have to continue what I've been doing: investigating various message board systems, comparing features, and finding new links in forum tables and clicking them to see what they do.

HEE.

I already have a full page of brainstorming points, so I guess I can run with this topic, eh? I've been madly penning choices (remotely hosted or installation required? Paid or free? Forum or CMS? Paper or plastic? Except that last one. Maybe) and tallying options I didn't investigate deeply, scribbling my reasons for passing them over and why another person with different reasons should at least look into them even though I didn't.

For the first time since the semester began, I think I like this class.

Feeling: bouncy

Filed under crossposted to msree.livejournal.com, college · 1 commented · Permalink

poetry updates by email

September 12, 2005, 02:37 AM by ree as a favorite post

There have been a couple folks coming by to read my poetry on Tabulas, even though they read the rest of my blog via LJ or Xanga crossposts. How to let them stay on top of both?

Blogarithm to the rescue. If you're one of the people I described above, fill in your email address and slap that button. Blogarithm will check my poetry category for you and send you an email every day that there's a new poem. It will ignore my non-poetry posts so that you can read those however you like.

Have fun, you crazy kids.

Blogarithm button

Feeling: working

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expectations

September 15, 2005, 06:27 AM by ree

Here, have a flimsy pretext to show off -- I mean, here, would you like to read an excerpt of my class writing?

In response to the question "What do you expect from this class?" I wrote:

I expect hard work and adherence to the formal writing process, along with a couple more panic attacks on my part. I expect to complete the class with a fair grade and a greater respect for and understanding of researching and documenting formal papers, with a new bald spot from pulling my hair out over each successive edit cycle.



Says it all, really.

Listening to: Daddy Sang Bass - Johnny Cash
Feeling: rushed

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profuse adoration

September 16, 2005, 07:23 AM by ree

Roleplay: Where the mage doesn't know how many people for breakfast because the dog is drunk. And this makes sense within context. I love this place.

Listening to: Come On Eileen
Feeling: good

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fubar

September 16, 2005, 10:45 AM by ree

I should not read about kung fu, even in passing. It leads to bad puns. Like a kung fu bar.

...

Yeah, not that funny. Sorry. Bit of computer geek humour combined with Ree being less than comical.

Feeling: melancholy

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poem #40

September 19, 2005, 05:23 AM by ree

Lock me in a tiny box
And throw away the key.
Slap a label on my face
And never let me be.

Roar my obligation loud:
That I must now conform,
Never may I be myself,
But just a social norm.

Rule sets known, I once oblige,
And then I turn away.
Strictures strain my scattered soul --
That's why I won't obey.

Feeling: intimidated

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ad-free Opera forever

September 20, 2005, 10:52 AM by ree

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Feeling: ecstatic

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world domination

September 21, 2005, 10:18 AM by ree

My history class is discussing world domination. No, really. Feminist world domination, to be precise. Somehow this relates to Rome.

So what am I doing?

Why, I'm pointing out that a gender-neutral society could be beneficial to the transgendered. I, uh, don't think that's quite the point my classmate was trying to make in his anti-feminist tirade....

Also, yay comments and laughter! Thanks folks. I love reading peppy comments, I do.

Listening to: Angra - Heroes of Sand
Feeling: naughty

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gender roles

September 22, 2005, 06:29 AM by ree

Nothing starts your day like breakfast and arguing that women in traditionally male jobs are not necessarily masculine! Buwahahaha. I'm not getting extra points for continuing the thread but I don't care; this is genuinely interesting. I am sizing up my compatriot and trying to decide just how much I can bring up without breaking him. Drag queens? X, XXY, and other uncommon sex chromosome arrangements? Hormonal differences, such as women with high testosterone? A child born with some XX cells and some XY cells, one ovary and one teste?

This is a pet issue of mine and it drives some people nuts -- my brother for one. I refer to "all genders" and he says "All? Both. There's only two." I say "what about intersexed people?" and we have pretty much the same conversation about it every other month or so. I haven't yet got him to the point where he'll accept that someone could have a standard set of gonads, but identify as a different gender or no gender. I'm working on it.

And I'm going to shut up for a bit now that you all think I'm completely daft.

Listening to: The Knack - My Sharona
Feeling: energetic

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bloodlust and upgrades

September 22, 2005, 06:22 PM by ree

I have had a very scary thought. See, in my enclosed little world, vampires are not sexual. They are capable of sexual acts but have no particular desire to do so. It's a bloodlust over crotchlust thing. *shrugs*

And that means... Pasht was actually even hornier as a human.

I need a shower. With lye. Gah.

At least my classes are going well. I need to sort through some more MLA style examples, but the assignment that wouldn't let me sleep last night has been postponed. The instructor realised he forgot the upload the sheet actually explaining what on Earth the assignment was, so he's doing that shortly and the work is due next weekend, instead of in a few short days. Rock!

MoonBurnt was upgraded to the latest version of PunBB not 24 hours after the upgrade was released. Bow before thy empress administrator! Man, that'd sound much cooler if I was actually a sysadmin. Well. One thing at a time. Now that I isolated and removed the glitch in the last upgrade, everything's peachy and I feel far cooler than I deserve. (You be quiet, Sesh; you're biased and you know it!) I'm still trying to nail down the mod I want to make; progress is slow but present. The lack of proper RSS autodiscovery tags irks slightly but that should be handled automatically in an upcoming release of PunBB, so there's little point in working it out now.

Did any of that make sense? Um. Ree big happy for Ree. Yeah, that! *g*

Feeling: embarrassed

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quote storm

September 24, 2005, 10:51 AM by ree

Some strange quotes for you!

..."that's not God's will. That's the hypnotic sexual power of Elvis' gyrating hips!" --Hitherby Dragons

"It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and *guess who's back*? They returned more times than raw broccoli." --Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (via PHP-fortune)

(in response to a question about states)
Ree: "I think it's 'Idaho.'"
Squirt: "Idaho?"
R: "Yeah."
S: "You da ho!"

Can you tell I don't really have class today? Heh. I should further flummox my classmates in discussion but everything else that's due is done. I was planning to go to a game day over in uni town until I realised a few things: 1) the roads were thick with rain 2) which hadn't stopped falling, 3) I hate driving in those conditions, 4) of all the people likely to be at the game day, the only one I particularly want to see (Squirt) comes to visit once a week anyway.

In South Dakota, the sun shines now, drying its tears from the roadside where they fell. I keep coming back to this thought: However drenched or thunderous a storm came around me, it is nothing -- not a damn thing -- next to Texas and Louisiana. And I have no call to complain, none at all.

Listening to: Nightwish - Elvenpath
Feeling: worried

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amen to that

September 24, 2005, 11:00 AM by ree

I am the guy who came out to the entire school in his senior speech and got a standing ovation for his courage.

I am the girl who kisses her girlfriend on the sidewalk and laughs at those who glare.

We are the couple who planned and studied and got a damn good lawyer and BEAT the state that wanted to take our child away.

We are the ones who took martial arts classes and carry pepper spray and are just too dangerous to gay bash.

I am the transgender person who uses the bathroom that suits me, and demands that any complaining staff explain their complaint to my face in front of the entire restaurant -- and shares with my other trans friends which restaurants don't raise a stink.

I am the mother who told her lesbian daughter to invite her girlfriend over for dinner.

I am the father who punished his son for calling you a fag.

I am the preacher who told my congregation that love, not hate, is the definition of a true follower of God.

I am the girl who did not learn the meaning of "homosexual" until high school but never thought to question why two men might be kissing.

I am the woman who argues (quite loudly and vehemently) with the bigots who insist that you do not have the right to marry or raise children.

We are the high school class who agrees, unanimously, along with our teacher, that love should be all that matters.



If you agree, repost this. Do it. You don't have to be afraid. You can handle it. You're stronger than you think.

I am making a difference. Hate will not win.

Feeling: touched

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gender role model

September 24, 2005, 01:23 PM by ree

Oh, now that's priceless. New posts from the guy with whom I've been arguing gender roles in class. I brought up the examples of women in combat and stay-at-home dads to support my theory that gender roles are too restrictive.

Turns out he's an ex-military homemaker.

I just really, really wonder what the hell he makes of *me* now...

Listening to: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Feeling: embarrassed

Filed under crossposted to msree.livejournal.com, college, gender & sexuality · 3 commented · Permalink

the title element

September 26, 2005, 07:18 PM by ree

Making this quick. I have three computers running right now as I try to juggle my class reading and copying files from my mom's old computer (sad slow heap) to her new computer (sleek, sexy, and loads everything in a flash).

I kept bumping into a problem when I tried to burn Mom's settings to a CD: something's filename was too long. I traced it back and it turns out that I couldn't burn the entire CD because some idiot woman put a complete description of her website in the TITLE element and TITLEs become filenames when bookmarked in IE.

Don't do that, people. My mom had not saved any pages from this site, just bookmarked it for future reference -- and if I hadn't tracked down and renamed each instance (several pages were bookmarked, not just one), it would have created problems with the entire backup. That aside, a long TITLE won't fit on a short titlebar and TITLE is for titles, dammit. Make sense?

Okay. Good. Looks like it finished burning, so I'm off for now. (And if you see me log in and out and in and out of AIM, that's me pressing the boundaries of my wireless card -- sorry in advance, but my curiosity must be sated). G'nite folks.

Feeling: irritated

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cd burned

September 26, 2005, 08:34 PM by ree

I have been trying for an hour and a half to make the CD burner, y'know, burn a CD. Nothing doing.

To review: My brother was too impatient to set up my mom's new computer to even try backing up files. He is the one who installed the CD burner in the old computer, after the last one suffered the same problem I'm experiencing with its replacement drive -- the program goes through all the motions of burning but doesn't burn anything to the disc.

This means that I was right that the old computer was a piece of shit, and Squirt is an idiot for throwing out the old drive. It also means that if I want to transfer 690-odd megs of data, not including my old collection of music, I'm boned.

When this is all done and every needed file has been painfully extracted from this son of a bitch, I am borrowing a sledgehammer -- or perhaps pushing it off a local scenic overview. It's no good unless I can see the screwhead suffer, though. I deserve retribution for all the trouble it's caused me, and I intend to get every ounce.

I may also permanent marker my brother's face in his sleep next time he spends the night here. I'm still deciding.

Feeling: pissed off

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not well

September 28, 2005, 12:59 PM by ree

Always fun to wake up late and still find bags under your eyes. I don't mean "gosh, they're a little dark and slightly puffy" either -- I mean I could pack for a trans-Atlantic vacation using just the bags under my eyes. I could smuggle grown people in them. Lovely.

I'm sick. Low fever off and on (currently on), sore throat that kept me awake until I was too exhausted to even care, head feels like hydrocephalic (which is to say, painfully inflated and under pressure... pressing down on me, pressing down on you... right, I'll stop singing Queen & Bowie now). This is clearly a cold, but my sinuses are perfectly clear. I can't even get sick right! Heh. It's fine actually. I have headache and fever stuff and sore throat stuff but not sinus stuff, so if I had to get sick, this was the way to do it.

Just not *when* to do it. Usual reading for my classes is 2-3 chapters a week. This week it's eight. I've started but only got one page in on everything I picked up, because I am a wimp and cannot concentrate if a single neuron gets squinched to the left.

Squirt called yesterday. He says that CD burner's doing something slightly different than last time, which means we are both flummoxed as to what's wrong or what to do next. He suggested a cleaning, which I may as well try right now -- not getting anything else done except blogging -- but if that doesn't work, we are all the more baffled.

On a related note, I don't reply enough to the Xanga folks since there's no notification of replies and stuff there, but all you commenting people rock. It's wonderful to know such open-minded and funny folk. Thank you for making my day on so many days!

Feeling: sick

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born Aragorn?

September 28, 2005, 06:21 PM by ree

It's probably a very bad sign to be rocking out the Lords of the Rhymes and have your brain auto-correct the song. "I was born Aragorn but you can call me Strider" is wrong; he was born Estel, which means hope.

Hi. I read appendices. They're more interesting than reading about researching. *is soooo not a formal research type*

Feeling: dorky

Filed under geeky, crossposted to msree.livejournal.com, literature · 5 commented · Permalink

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