Meanderings of a Flaming Bisexual

A Minor Update

2006-07-17T13:41:20Z

Seems some rumours are going around about Tam and I; nothing bad, just not true.

I realized that Tam doesn't read LJ anymore, really, and I don't write here. I like LJ for it's keep-in-touch-with-distant-friends kind of idea, but am using RSS feeds for most of the other stuff I read. Well and LJ has some decent amateur porn;)

For our friends

Tam and I are doing pretty well. She has a new job, and is working at home again (You probably don't know she wasn't working at home laugh!).

I've gone back to work at the county, in the job I didn't take last year because it paid too little, and I would be stuck with a contractor watching my every step. It no longer pays too little, and the contractor (the person who held this posisiton before me) is completely gone. The truly miraculous thing is that this job feeds me; I'm making plans for 1-,2-, and 3- years out, knowing I may not fulfill the plans, but I want them good enough in case I am. I've never thought this far ahead in any real job before.

I'm missing J and Viv, but in a couple of weeks, I'm buying a ticket to go see them around Labor Day. Hopefully, I'll be able to go out for longer soon, once I'm a real employee and have some time off. Or I'll bite the bullet and just go:)

It feels a bit that our friends and contact are spreading thin and moving away from us. Some just physically like Viv and J, but others emotionally. I haven't really talked to or seen most of the caw-folk in Ohio since Jim's funeral. I pulled away from the lists because they were too drama-filled for me, and still largely feel that way.

We still have lovers in town, and a Goddess-daughter we love to death, even when she's bad, but then she'll be 4 next month, and we all know how Leos are ;)

Writing and stuff

I haven't been writing at work, I've been just too busy! However, I am learning a lot about AJAX coding, and have built a couple of blogs using it, and will be writing there. I don't even have the RSS feed working, and one of the blogs is completly NSFW, the other is boring computer-geekery (or will be).

However, I've challenged myself to write a few longer pieces. The first piece should be in the 40-50K words range, closer to 40K depending on the length and complexity of the sex scenes. To trick myself into this feat, I'm using a world created by someone else, actually, more of a device. The trick here is that I can't publish this except for free. It keeps my mind on the writing, and hopefully will give me the confidence to tackle some longer works that are completely my own creation. That stuff will be published several places on the net, but you can keep up with that part of my life on my sex blog

Life und so weiter

Some days I can't believe the depth of the debt we're in. Other days I can't believe that we can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's not good to be depressed and self-employed, unless you've got the financial resources to keep things going. We were barely spinning the plates, lost power a few times, and borrowed a lot of money from friends and family. By the end of August, we'll be caught up on our rent after paying double rent for three or four months. The other bills will be settled, and we'll be off the Cinci' folks phone service, somehow. Then we start paying everyone else back, and figure out what we're goign to do about taxes. It doesn't help that unemployment income (as little as it is) is 1099 income. That's crazy, actually, if you ask me, but it's the way of the world.

Since I'm finally in a job that keeps me interested (I've been here almost three months now, and I haven't "figured it out" completely yet), and where I have the authority to manage myself and set directions -- and am respected to do so, I can see that I'll be here for the long haul. And that means I can start planning for the future, know that we'll be debt free in the foreseeable future, and start spreading the love that we received from our friends back out in the world.

And with me coming out of depression, I'll probably be talking to some of you guys a bit more.

But probably not here. LJ feels like high school half the time. I'm not closing my account, I still want to hear from you; I will probably post comments, but I'm not going to be posting here any more than I have in the last year. I just wanted to catch up a bit, and say "hi".

So, well.

"Hi"

TTFN

On iTunes tonight

2006-06-22T00:18:34Z

Is the Beatles' acapella version of "Because"

The next piece is the exitingly titled "Instrumental No. 1" From the soundtrack to "The Incredible True Story of 2 Girls in Love".

I miss you vivien.

Oh my aching brain (and back)

2006-05-05T07:42:25Z

An update/reinstall of the OS on sarah to Fedora Core 5 left me with no space to complete the install. That meant that I needed to adjust the partitions so that I had enough space. Two problems with that, really, 1) I didn't know how much space I needed, and 2) adjuding partitions is done at your own risk.

Most of my writing would be ok, but I'd have lost all my music (including Viv's music, which I was serving as a back-up for) That and a half dozen million other things that might only exist in one fiile on that hard drive.

I took a break to think about it, and to hang out with _kit for a while, and while we had a good time, my mind just wasn't on our creative diversion. So I went back to my desk to see what I could do. The neighbors were making an awful racket. Well, not awful, I guess, it just sounded either like good sex or someone with asthma, and was comign from the directoin of the CrazyCatLady's house. Or so I thought. I'd never heard a computer make that noise before, but nevertheless, she was.

The CDR that was in the box I got from book_wyrm's husband was giving up the ghost -- I fiddled with it for a while until it spat up a little rubber belt before finally admitting defeat. I did dscover that there was another drive in there, though, and it was 6.4 gig, certainly enough to hold the new OS. But now, I was down a CDRom drive. There was another in the case that didn't seem to work, and I had one in my computer I didn't need since I isntalled the DVD burner. Crawling around on the floor was killing my back, so I went to bed once Tam came home.

The stress was getting to me, and fidning out I wasn't getting work that day didn't help. I don't like to take tests when I'm tired, and I don't install Operating Systems either, so I played some Thief: Deadly Shadows until I was about to fall over, and went to bed.

This morning I attacked it again.

Not five minutes on the floor, and my back was so bad I didn't much want to get up, or climb stairs, or go down them. After the remainign CDROM didn't work, I tried the one from my PC, which also didn't work. I shut my PC down, and transferred the DVD, which did work, which means I have 3 broken CDROMs. I'd downloaded the 5 CD-set of Fedora Core yesterday (since I had to use the DVD player, I wished I'd just gotten teh DVD iso, but oh well). I disk monkeyed through it to cd 4, about an hour and a half into the install, and there was some sort of script error in the install program.

So I did it again, being more careful with my options (since it was installing X for some reason I didn't know). This time it worked, but took longer, mainly because I decided to soak my back in ibuprofen and hot water. This time, it did work, and I finally had a running system. Back to the floor, I moved the DVD player back, and plugged in the original hard drive, and got to work.

The advantage to upgrading would have been keeping all the ancillary programs, postfix for mail, squirrelmail, apache, all configured and nice (for the most part) and keeping all my already set-up users and groups. The disadvantage to upgrading was that I didn't know what I would be leaving behind, untouched that the Skr1pt K1ddi3 left behind. As it was, I didn't have a choice, so I've spent the rest of my day man-handling postfix into place, and IMAP and enough of apache that squirrelmail will work, if not the wikis or any of the alternate domains (right now it's just www.otbp.org)

I was able to send myself a mail from gmail, and read it in a browser. Everyone's email is catching up now, but no one else can actually read their mail yet.

Since the compromised account was someone who hadn't used the system, maybe ever, and who didn't have any mail, I've decided to restrict logins some. Basically it used to be that anyone who had an email account could ssh into the box and do shell-based things. That's my preference, and until now it was great. Now, however, I'm the only one who can log in at all. There are a couple of people who probably want shell access, and that's not a problem to restore, but more on that later.

The other thing was that I didn't just want to copy the passwd file over (and to be honest, I didn't know if it would work or not). Everyone's home directories are there, alogn with their mail, but no one has a password, not in the sense of "anyone can get in" but more of "No one can get in." Even to squirrelmail on the web. Once again, in the interest of being conservative with the security, there's no access.

But I know at least three or four people actually use the email I offer: a copule have forwards to GMail, and those are working fine -- there's no need to have a login if that's all you care about. A couple of other people use pop, or squirrelmail or some other imap option, they'll need to let me know they want it, and I'll give it to them. I've added a plugin for squirrelmail that will let you change your password (I need to test it on the new system), so if those (new or old) people who want to have an email at one of my domains will contact me, I'll send them a generic password that they'll want/need to change right away.

Apache isn't configured yet, so the websites for everythign but www.otbp.org are down. Anything with a database will just laugh at you as it spews error messages. Not ap roblem, really, just not something I've gotten to yet. Nothing has been deleted, except for some pr0n that I needed to clear out for space (alas, my poor pr0n), so if something is missing or desired, let me know, and I'll try to find it and put it somewhere youc an get to it.

I'm exhausted and goign to bed. May be Sat/Sun before the rest of this is up and runnig properly (or that I get to making it work, rather).

Sorry about this, and hope it's all working now

genericjoe @ 2006-05-03T20:42:00

2006-05-04T00:42:06Z

OK, I think everything is backed up and safe, as regards datbases, email, users, and websites. Including my httpd and procmail config. (mysql used a default config, iirc).

I don't know what else to do, so I'm trying to upgrade the system to Fedora Core 5.

Pray with me now to gods that protect information and/or wear red hats.

Not my freakin' day, and maybe not yours either.

2006-05-03T18:02:12Z

Just FYI, someoen hacked into Ms. Sarah Bellum last night. I've taken her down, and I'm giving her a nice lube and OS job. That means that if you use email for any of the domains I serve(otbp.org, flamingbisexual.com, sexforpeace.com, lapisdragonfly.com, strangerinastrangeland.com, uglysocks.net,cultoftheturtle.com) it will not work.

I'm doing the best to preserve what is there, including logins, etc, I admit I've never had to do this before -- in the past when I rebuilt her, it was always jjust me using it, and just my mail to save. Trust me that my mail is my life, and it's right next to yours so, I'm doing the best I can.

GRRRRRR.

I'll post here again when things are working, and sarah is back online

The fanboy in me is stoked

2006-04-26T01:58:26Z

Saturday's episode of Doctor Who will have Elizabeth Sladen in it (aka "Sarah Jane" one of the compainions of both the third (Pertwee) and fourth(Tom Baker) Doctors. Even better, looking at the trailer, it'll have K-9 in it! This is appropriate, as any good fanboy knows, Sarah Jane got one of the copies of K-9 (along with a horrible spinoff of the show).

Woot!

Sci-Fi was so stupid not to pick this up for American release. But then, that's why there's BitTorrent, I guess

Thos of us who play WoW

2006-02-04T04:13:16Z

Should take a look at this link.

Evidently, according to our friends at Blizzard, advertising a GLBT friendly guild is harrassment.

Well this was kind of interesting

2006-01-26T04:01:53Z

Kind suggests boobs to me, but that's not surprising no matter how you look at it.

Get your own spectral analysis from Area 23^®

Crawling out of the hole

2006-01-13T19:14:55Z

Things have been a bit crazy/mad for me since Christmas. I'm not ok, and to top it all off my dear sarahbellum's motherboard when ptooie. OR something did, that's just the current theory. *pulls non-existant hair out*.

For those who need to reach me via email, please use genericjoe@gmail.com Yeah, I know I'm opening myself up to buttloads of spam. Gmail is good for that.

Girl genius short story

2005-12-23T22:54:51Z

For dreamsofthewyrd, annaoj, and book_wyrm, I proffer this link:

Fan Fiction a story in the GirlGenius world, written by Shaenon Garrity of Narbonic fame.

It even has a character named "Mary".

genericjoe @ 2005-11-06T17:45:00

2005-11-06T22:44:56Z

I'd have to say that our trip out to see the foliage yesterday probably influenced the part that I wrote next. It's out of sequence, and up on the OTBP wiki.

10,270 / 50,000
(20.5%)

NaNo UpDate

2005-11-05T02:24:48Z

I got the wiki pages up, so you can read the progress. Yes, it needs proofing and everything, but it's fun, I think.

7,815 / 50,000
(15.6%)

I don't know why

2005-11-04T16:04:44Z

I thin it was the "good pictures" appellation

Take the quiz: "Which Starbucks Drink Are You? (Great Pictures)"

Starbucks Caramel Apple Cider
Starbucks Caramel Apple Cider(www.myspace.com/andrew2)

genericjoe @ 2005-11-03T18:37:00

2005-11-03T23:37:02Z

Here I am jumping into the fray as an excuse to write.

The trip to Minneapolis combined with a lull from my client, has spurred me to write. It's November, so I offer you this:

5,427 / 50,000
(10.9%)

I'm not giving myself much pressure "to win", and I'm not really writing a Novel, but with the Zokutou Clause, it still counts, in my mind.

These could be wrapped up in an anthology-esque novel and all revolve around the same characters (so maybe I'm getting the idea of scenes better).

Lots of erotica too, appearing on my wiki soon.

The Late Billdate

2005-10-05T03:16:33Z

Very Late Indeed!

Too much more and it would be time for a new one.

I've put together a plan for my work, goals for income, things like that. I've got a short term plan, and a medium-term one, and some long-term goals. It's kind of amazing to me, this sort of focus-change that has been going on for a year or so now. I've got a pretty good client, who has lots of work for me to do, I've got some things that I hope will turn into clients. I've got the money for my java certification, and a good feeling about getting contracts from that. I don't even need to work the contracts for long to meet our needs.

One of the things that amazes me is the difference in the quality of our life from now and when we lived in Charlotte. It's not that we weren't happy then, or that things were bad, but our household income was, oh, five times what it is now (and there were only 3 more adults), yet even then we were constantly stressed about money and cash. Now we go through spurts of that, but we never seem to really need anything, and when we do it is less. I'm not sure what we changed,exactly, but it's a lot less stressful, our expenses are less, and that means we don't have to work as hard to get "enough and some to share".

We don't quite have that all the time, but it feels as though this Copernican revolution in my view of work and goals may actually help us get there, and be happier when we do. I know I have come to really hate office work; I can do it, in short spurts of 3 or 6 months, but it makes me miserable. Even CallTech, which I 'more or less' quit this week, finally drove me crazy. I've become a bad employee.

It's not that I won't work for someone, I just want to do it on my own terms. Not an easy thing in this world. But I have options, and I have my own agenda, which I don't think most people have. I was raised to work a job -- any job that needed doing, making the most money I could do (and still be ethical/moral/whatever). It wasn't supposed to matter whether I liked it or not, I was just supposed to do it.

For a while, around the turn of the century, aka Y2K, I was catered to, and treated well. Things changed pretty rapidly, once the bubble burst. I was supposed to be grateful and loyal to the companies that offered me employment. To companies which rarely understood gratitude or loyalty.

Now I think about what I need out of the contract. CallTech had almost no power over me. They tried to discipline me over stupid piddly things, and where their training didn't adequatly cover things, yet I screwed up. I think I was supposed to be upset. I laughed about it, and my work mate looked at me strangely. I had already decided what the worst that could happen was, and wasn't scared of it, because I have a plan.

Now it all looks different, and hopeful for the first time in months. I have options that will meet our needs and make me happy. Who'da thunk?

It sounds a little crazy and egotistical, and maybe it is. But it's empowring and uplifting too. Maybe I'll fail, but even if I do, at least it was my game.

Not that everything is peachy. I spent a good part of the weekend moping around here like a depressed person. I couldn't focus enough to get any work done, or to do anything. I spent the better part of Monday playing Suikoden III instead of doing something a little more productive -- and while I don't have a problem with playing games for a while, or hours on end, it comes after obligations. I just couldn't get any of that done.

Viv helped a lot with both that feeling and the reason for it. I'm still processing this idea, something that I more or less knew about myself, but probably wasn't willing to admit. One more clue to the dynamics of my brain.

And speaking of gaming, I switched off NetFlix and signed up for GameFly. I've already rented two games (and sent one back). I'll do reviews over at www.cultoftheturtle.com, which you can also see at gjfeed. I'm debating doing some sort of IronMan Rental Combat thing, but that almost seems silly. Almost, but not quite.

The other thing rattling around my head lately, is my pattern. I move from coding to games to writing to writing non fiction and around and around. There's a pattern to it, but I"m not sure what it is. I want to figure it out, so I can 1) tame it or 2) plan for it. I'm not sure how, maybe a daily little checklist on how I'm feeling and what interests me. Maybe after a year or so I'll have some clue what moves me. Right now it's code and that's a good thing because I'm getting paid to do it.

And I'm off to do that now

All The Bill That's Fit to Print

2005-09-25T06:16:06Z

Man, a busy and screwed up week!

Found some problems with the client's site, as I was making changes to them. I wound up writing a new quote and doing that work this week. A large part of it was working on my libraries, getting them up to snuff. Most of it goes back to ideas that I was doing on offthebeatenpath.org, with the MNeme CMS, and a way of defining tags which could, in turn contain tags, and which could be either replaced with html or executed php code. (And stored in a filesystem or in a database).

The code is still rough, and doesn't work like I remember MNeme working near the end (I have most of that code, but most of it was hidden away in the database, very kludge-like). I've got sort of a task-based OOP model for it, where each page has a task which runs and gathers all the data it needs to process pages or display data. This is a bit different than the way I've seen other people doing OOP, for instance I don't undestand why people have classes which map to database tables. That's storage, mapping too close to that ties you to closely to the storage. But then I've mostly gone to a functional OOP model as opposed to one based on Data. I've been over here on my own, slaving away at my thing and not paying attention to the world at large.

Most of that doesn't matter, so if it didn't make any sense to you, so what? :) I love the code I've worked on this week, it's really sweet and mostly understandable. Hopefully I've done a good job of separating out my logic/code from the html/display so that, say, a webdesigner (not me) could come in behind me and make it all nice and prettified. And maybe get rid of my table-based layouts. I know I'm not super-strong on my HTML, mostly because I learned it a decade ago (Yes, really it has been that long), and things have changed. Dramatically.

I've learned a ton about HTML and javascript and CSS this week, largely from reading the other code that other people wrote for my client. I haven't learned a lot about php code at all. Oh well, guess that makes me an expert. Time to write a book or something...

CallTech work has continued being annoying, so much so that I called in sick two nights this week (I'm not at work now). I don't know if I was sick and stressed out, or so stressed out I was sick. It wasn't just CallTech, but I know I'm frustrated with it, and it's hard when I do have other income (even if not as much (yet)). It has helped us for me to be working there, helping us to catch up from being behind and that makes me feel good. I don't want to just walk away, but I know I need to start replacing it with my other plans.

In light of that, I've been combing Guru.com and some other sites for likely work, and think I've found some. There's a couple of sites that specifically cater to adult-oriented businesses, which might not be a bad choice for me, since it attracts me anyway. Right now, it's just a kernel of an idea, but I think I'm gonna try to grow that some this week. I can't base a home-based business on one client. Or, really, even two, but it would be a start.

I got to see book_wyrm again this week. It's hard to believe it had been almost a month. I saw her again tonight, when I went over to see her, and I'll see her again later in the week as I do some <silly>Heroic Man Duty™</silly>.

I also had a hard talk with (Viv) and (J) this week. I've thought for a long time that J should be closer to his son, and now it sounds like he may be doing just that. It is hard for me, nevertheless, Viv is my longest-time lover and it will be hard to be away from her. There really aren't any plans for us to leave Columbus any time soon, so I'll just have to find a way to get out there. I appreciate that they asked me how I'd feel about it, and I have never thought it wrong that I take second place (or more) to my lovers' children.

All of my current lovers have children, or are partnered with someone who does. Except, of course, for Tam and I -- by choice. It is hard because they all choose to be where they are for the children's sake, and that means that they aren't all in the same place. I never really thought we'd be "movin' to the country" but the longing for that dream is still kind of there in the back of my soul.

Speaking of people who are far away from me, I was surprised to see Pam log into yahoo today, and we talked for a while. She was tired, and a little hard to understand, but we talked for a while. I hope to talk to her again soon. She's at GMT+3 which is kind of where I live these days, so that's cool, perhaps we'll be able to talk some more. I'm finding I'm missing her a bit more this week.

At least (beyond my two jobs) there've been some distractions this week. I got my grubby little hands on both Burnout: Revenge and We <3 Katamari. Pretty much is ok when I'm blowing up cars and/or rolling them up. I've been rationing the katamari, not to make the game last (it's very replayable) but so that I don't spend all my time with it. I feel the need to be social and meet my other commitments, even if I'm not quite meeting them at CallTech:)

We got to have dinner with nepthytis and alexhobson on Tuesday. Tam made a nice stir fry and peanut sautee and an absolutely wonderful chocolate chip cheesecake (which was in no way good for us, except for the flavor). We talked a bit, and I'm hoping to get to Lancaster sometime soon for a small technique demonstration from her. I've always respected her knowledge, including risk assessment and mitigation, and I've learned a lot from her over the years. I look forward to learning more (and then using my evil knowledge).

Plans proceed apace for our trip to Minneapolis, and hopefully for wolfrick & co's trip here. I can see the end of the year coming, and lots of changes coming in the early parts of next year, some which are unqualifyingly good, and some which I'm still not sure about. I try to remind myself of the turtle, constantly moving forward, always a goal in his mind, doing his best to keep moving toward it. And eventually, arriving. Live is always getting better, and we are always learning. Even when things are hard, and I am sad.

I've not got any writing done this week, I was way too tired at work, and my focus has been on code. I'm not sure this week will be better, but at least I'm enjoying the coding. It's the one thing I've taken real joy in this week (well and maybe cheesecake;), so having more on the close horizon is good.

Well, I'm being extra-rambly and disorganized tonight, so I'll sign off until I can organize my thoughts better.

Have a good week

Weekend Bill-date

2005-09-18T09:59:25Z

(without any SNL members)

Has it only been a week? This week has been kind of on the hectic side. I spent a good portion of last weekend waiting for the Guru job to settle down. Michelle, the client, wanted me to take an online PHP test, but was having trouble setting it up (the people from the site weren't there on the weekend (who sells stuff on the internet that requires physical presence?)). Finally, on Tuesday, she had the test ready to go.

Tests never bother me. I took a sample test, saw how it worked, and while its setup was kind of annoying, it wasn't bad. The one thing I didn't have was any idea of what sort of score I needed. Nevertheless, the test was an 'open book/open note' type, which means you don't actually need to know anything except where to find the answer. That is easy for PHP, it's right here. One of the nice things about PHP is that it has this user-commentable online documentation. With discussion and samples of particularly hard functions.

Some of the test questions were even pulled from the documentation samples.

Is this a real test, I wondered? and decided it was. Life is an open-book test, after all. I'd be using the documentation as I did my job, and the documentation wouldn't be all that useful to someone who didn't have a structure within which to fit the concepts. Needless to say, according to Michelle, I scored "very highly" against all the other people who took the test.

Since I didn't pay for the test, I still don't have a good idea how I scored. Not 100%, since I completely missed one question while researching (on a topic/bit of PHP that I'd never used, it's Image Library).

I think she checked my references, but not until after she had a problem to solve. Tuesday night (well, Wednesday morning), she had a problem, which I was able to solve in just a few minutes. Which was important since it affected one of her customers.

I spent the rest of my week making quotes, and talking to her on the phone, and generally all that stuff you do when you start a new job. I'm still getting things set up the way I want, trying to get a sample website and CVS and things like that. I get the feeling I can do mostly what I want on my side, so long as I don't disrupt her site or give away her secrets. I also sense that there is a lot of work to be done, and ongoing maintenance, etc, that will be available.

Meanwhile, work here at CallTech has been freaking annoying. I had to come in for an afternoon meeting on Wednesday, which mean my sleep was really fubar-ed. Even though I told Michelle that I was pretty busy, I didn't wind up doing anything for her on Wednesday, which may have been a mistake (but not an unrecoverable one). There are a bunch of new rules for how we do things here on our project at CallTech, and some requirements that aren't really possible on third shift.

Part of the good thing about this job had been the sort of lack of bureaucratic nonsense. The job was pretty straightforward: take the calls; fix the problem; read the KB. The Knowledge Base sucks, of course, and several times I've been "pointed" for things that were wrong or impossible to find in the KB. My new boss doesn't seem to care about that very much, which is annoying. He's not very good at management, quite frankly, and things have switched from the carrot to the stick.

The stick doesn't work very well on me, as I'm sure some of you know ;) I'm more or less of the opinion that they can go stuff themselves, and if they want to, they can "point" me until they fire me, and I'll just gleefully go home, while they find someone else to cover this shift.

My writing has gone well, although not as much volume as last week. My most recent word game (emancipation) is growing wild. I think I need to print it and thing for a bit, t here might be a way to tighten up the story and make it more reasonable. It's enjoyable, now, as the characters take on a bit of depth, too.

This next week should be busy and interesting again, as I get myself setup and work done for Michelle, and try to make sure that I get some time for Bill set aside, as well. We invited the neighbors over to play Zombies after the kids are in bed. They've done some cool zombie photoshoots/comics (it's sequential art, anyway), and are going to do some more -- yesterday she came over and borrowed red food coloring for more fake blood.

The other thing I need to do this week is finish troubleshooting the laptop. I'm going to need a mobile workstation, if I plan to keep freelancing, and it helps with the writing, too. That is, as long as it doesn't keep shutting down intermittently.

No such thing as

2005-09-17T10:00:02Z

Too much Diesel Sweeties

Bookmarklet...

2005-09-17T04:50:15Z

Well, saw this interesting link about reserving books from your library while you are browing Amazon Basically, it helps you construct a bookmarlet that parses the URL from amazon and opens a new window to your local library's ISBN search (from which you can usually reserve the book).

Well, I couldn't find "webpac" on his list of servers, but given that Columbus Metropolitan Library doesn't checl POST vs GET urls, I'll took apart their form and made my own.

Just save this as a favorite or bookmark, and if you're browing a site that has an isbn in it (I verified it works on Amazon), it'll run that search against CML's catalog. Nifty!

LJ won't let me post it here, since it's a javascript URL, You can get it from my blog here:
CML library lookup

I'll probably crosspost this to columbus_geeks

Nominated

2005-09-13T04:22:01Z

So, Um, whoever did this Hunks of Hanukka thing thanks. I have my theories about who it was.;)

I accepted (why not? :), but that's what I know about it at this time.

*TeeHee*

A Barrelful of Bills

2005-09-11T09:48:53Z

Another Sunday, another week past. This week has been overall good, I think; sleep patterns have been better, and I definitely got a lot of good writing done.

I sucked down the old offthebeatenpath.org filesystem and database, it is all residing on Sarah right now, soon to be functional again, but on the otbp.org site, for now. I still need to unwind the craziness that is the offthebeatenpath.org domain registration, since it points to an email, an address, and a phone number that are no longer mine. Once that is done I'll bring the site back up, hosted locally.

The best thing is that I got pair's rebilling taken down just two days before it was time to rebill. Whew, avoided a negative account, and felt good about saving us almost 30 dollars (twice that, since it would have overdrafted us). That's a lot to pay for hosting, and I paid it originally since I saw that site as becoming a strong writer/journal community.

It lacked focus, and a lot of the features that were already here, which is why I think everyone who ever had a journal on pathways now has one here. Network effects and all that. Not that LJ is the best place for a blogger, especially a serious one, to be (though most serious ones will have an RSS feed here). It has decent community tools, despite the unfortunate name "friends" for what amounts to subscriptions and permissions lists.

The other monkey I got off my back this week was World of Warcraft. My rebill date for them was today, September 11. That's 15 bucks that could go to something else, that I'll actually do and enjoy. I've tried to put into words both why I enjoyed the game so much, and why I just can't play it now.

It was sad to take all those items I worked hard for off (a couple of my characters had gone long enough to look very interesting, and had cool gear I felt I had earned). It was hard to sell or destroy the items that weren't tradeable, and send all the rest off to Tam. At least someone who is getting enjoyment from the game now has a few more resources to do so. Knowing her, she'll share with friends/guildmates, at lest those who aren't jerks.

I had an emotional attachment to those characters, things I'd worked hard on. I probably won't have it again if I go back, not the same way, not if I get the same items. That was a part of why I left: having accomplished what I did, I didn't want to do it again. I didn't have a maxed our character, but the game felt like it was getting repetitive to me. And it wasn't as exciting as it had been. Some of the obsession had rubbed off.

I admit I obsess about things, and about people. I hope I don't just drop people like I don't rebill an MMO. I know I return to certain obsessions: like writing or certain kinds of coding, or writing games. My life seems to be little forays out into other things, and then back to these pursuits that satisfy me the most.

But that doesn't express the sort of visceral feeling I get when I thin of playing EQ again, and to some extent WoW as well. It's a fearful feeling, like I've been there, and I don't want to go back. EQ and WoW are like an abusive relationship you aren't in anymore, only it was something you did to yourself. I can't go back there, I become someone that isn't who I am when I obsess on it.

The truth is, I knew that I'd be here, with this feeling, when I first started playing. I did it anyway, and it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed playing with tamiris and book_wyrm, and the occasional team-ups with ozymandus or the random guild member. That's when the game was at its most fun. Ironically, I mostly played alone, though, because that's what I prefer overall. MMOs for me are like big single-player games with a sort of background chatter that is going all the time, only you never quite win the game, and the chatter is sometimes too annoying to pay attention to.

I'll probably even go back someday, to visit. There are one-month gamecards that would let me play for just a bit, and have some fun or chat. I'd like to meet in real life some of the people I played with -- most of them are in Minneapolis, and with other news that is going on, there's a good chance of this happening soon.

This isn't really good news, tamiris's step-dad has malignant cells on his epiglottis; that's about what we know right now. I'm fond of him, the times I've met him. He's the sweetest, kindest asshole I know. Tam was planning on going to MN near the end of October, if we can afford it, I may go with her, both as support and to see people -- especially if she's not going to the Women's Conference (which I wasn't attending for obvious reasons;)

I got the first part of "Peccable" done this week. The whole piece is probably going to be named something like "Deadly Sinner" instead, the plan is for something 5 or 6 times as long as what I've posted already. I'm not sure it has a lot of plot to it: interesting characters/situations certainly. I've gotten an author account on (storiesonline.net) to post it there; they seem to have a nice community for comments/ratings/etc, and it's more or less the sort of thing people read there.

I also made some headway into my next word, another long piece, which I'll probably go ahead and finish in its entirety: it at least has a whole plot in my head, and an enjoyable if edgy one. The next word after that has started germinating -- I love being able to see out that far, and think about what I'm going to do. It's good to plot one thing while I'm writing another, the ideas play off each other and keep things fresh, and keep me from including all my good ideas in one story.

I also started another story in the MasterPC universe, which I think will be fun. I'm not working too hard at it, since like Peccable it won't be saleable. Unlike Peccable, it's set in someone else's Universe. It's not quite fanfic, more like the original author set rules for a genre, and a bunch of people wrote to that standard, of sorts. Of course, people always twist and change things to suit themselves, and I'm not different in that.

Yes, book_wyrm, one of these days I'll get back to my Neville/Goyle slash. Especially after the most recent book. Teehee

The other thing going on for most of this week was my efforts at landing this guru.com job. It seems like I've written a decently long email just about every day this week, working with this customer who wants to bite, but who seems afraid to. I know she'll pick one of her two final candidates, but I'm getting very tired of some of the nitpicking.

It's sort of like being asked a question, and then being berated for the font you used to type your response in. They wanted all the responses in Arial, and it's not what you did. It'd be one thing if you did it in Symbol, but I used Times New Roman. I've admitted Arial would have been a better choice, but dammit, the answer was still right.

I finally pointed out to her that we'd been going around and around on this, and I think we've got just one more hoop to jump through. She's paying for me to take a technical aptitude test of some kind, and that will be that.

I volunteered to work a few extra hours at CallTech this week, which means I'm working on my second 12-hour shift in a row, with only 10 hours between shifts. It'll give me enough hours to keep me full time with benefits (mainly sick time and dental), and a bit more money in a couple of weeks. They're pulling us in during the middle of the day (prime sleeping time!) on Wednesday for training. I suspect it'll be a waste of my time, but I'll go anyway.

Right now, I have about four more hours of work before I can drive home and crawl into bed, which is what I want to do more than anything.

Oh, on a side note a couple of questions:

Anyone know where I can find good safety information and equipment for doing surgical stapling? 3M makes what looks like a nice disposable kit for about $20, but it's marketed to vets; it might be fine, it might not and knowledge is my best weapon here.

Second, a techie note. Writing in Java, I want to have a server, which keeps and modifies an object's state, and updates automatically to clients when the server object updates. Clients ask the server to make the changes (and if the server agrees, it does so). I'm looking at Object Serialization, but this doesn't feel dynamic enough( I could be wrong), is there some lightweight structure that handles this?

Word Game, Round 2!

2005-09-07T06:02:41Z

Well, just one more word (emancipation, from bookwyrm) left in the Word Game Meme, so I'm posting another go-round of it.

It's pretty simple, if slower than I'd originally intended: post a single word to a comment here, and I'll write a story around it. Since I mostly write erotica, these pieces will fit within that genre. Most of them will be in the 1200-1500 word length, since that's something I can (usually) do in a night, without too much planning. I've been re-using some of the characters from other Word Game entries, so even short pieces may have a moving plot, or longer story lines. I kind of like workign that way, as I found with my Images.

This round will start when I finish the last work of the first round, and will be open for words until I start the last word.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Just adding a wrinkle, for people with overactive wordimations. There's nothing wrong with posting more than one word, just do it in seperate posts. I'll try to do the words in order, but if someone posts a couple in sequence, I'll probably break there's up a bit. I'll get to all the words eventually though.

genericjoe @ 2005-09-07T01:55:00

2005-09-07T05:55:31Z

Here it is, another entry from the wordgame meme! This time it's peccable from dreamsofthewyrd. This one sort of steps over a writerly boundary since I've never written anything with an underage person in it, nor have I written incest yet. Well, I'm not sure what all is on my hard drive, but no one has seen that yet.

Odd that this should be a harder taboo to break than say, non-consensuality, which I've also written.

Peccable means "liable to sin", and as such implies a religious context. Several years ago, long before we moved from Charlotte, I had another writer-identitty, FinsternisEx, for writing some darker pieces, or pieces GenericJoe didn't feel comfortable posting. There was a very short voyeuristic piece of June seeing something like what is in this story. This is different, both because I wanted somethign that fit my length requirements for the Word Game (I'm trying to keep them shorter so they will get done, still this piece is over 2K words long.

The codes for this story are Mf, ff, inc, voy, oral, spank, religion

I think that's the whole list. For a description of the code meanings I'm using, you can look here (link is work-safe, but the topic and website itself are not).

One other word of caution, sort of like InverseSquare/Moore'sLaw this story is not complete. It was always intended to be a longer work, but this is a complete sequence.

Enjoy...

Peccable

"I don't know what you mean," I said, on my knees in front of Reverend James.

"Peccable," he said. "It means 'liable to sin'. Would you say you were liable
to sin, Jane?"

I blushed at that, he knew the answer. I had been caught stealing, after all.
Caught on camera. And if I hadn't been at my friend Amy's house celebrating
with her, the police would have come and I'd have had to face them. As it was,
my parents had made me pay for what I stole, and enter Reverend James'
counseling sessions. He was teaching me about the Lord and what He wanted.
Right now, I was kneeling beside his daughter Natalie at the church altar.
Reverend James was sitting casually on the altar. He was telling me about sin.

"Teenagers, especially girls, are particularly peccable," he said. "Sinners of
the first order. I know, my own daughter is a sinner, but she has learned to
repent. Do you want to repent?"

I didn't say anything; I didn't know what to say. This was my first session
with him, and all I'd done was kneel and listen to him preach. He touched my
face gently, drawing my gaze up to him. "The Lord hates it when we sin," he
said. "It puts us apart from Him. He wants us to be close to Him, at one with
Him. He wants you to be at one with Him, just like I am."

I couldn’t say anything. Tears ran down my face. I had failed God; I didn't
know what to do. It was wrong to steal -- I knew that. "I know the Lord
forgives you," he said. "But I also know that's often not enough to forgive
yourself. When you understand what it means to repent in truth, I will ask you
again. Maybe then you can answer." I sniffled, and looked down at the ground,
one of my tears feel on the floor in front of me.

Then he turned to his daughter, Natalie. She was the only other one in this
session -- I guessed he hadn't had a lot of people sign up for them yet. He was
new in town, after all. Natalie was in a couple of my classes at school -- we
were both freshmen. I didn't really know her too well, just that she was smart
and quiet, and didn't really like gym.

I guess that's not saying too much, really. None of us liked gym much.

"So, Natalie," he said, turning to her. I kept my eyes down -- it just felt
right to do that -- but I turned my head to watch what he did. She was looking
down just like I was, kneeling in front of her dad.

Her long black hair had been pulled back into a single ponytail, which hung down
her left shoulder and between her breasts. She was wearing a white button-down
blouse that hadn't been buttoned all the way up, and a long skirt that pooled
around her knees. I realized she wasn't kneeling on the skirt at all, but on
the hardwood floor.

He touched her face then, like had touched mine -- I could still feel where he
had touched me, warm like a blush -- and she looked up. "Are you a sinner?" he
asked her.

She blushed then, and nodded. "I had lustful thoughts today," she said.

"And…?" he prompted, lifting her chin.

She looked down at the ground. She whispered, then, so I could barely hear
her. "I…I touched myself in the shower after gym."

My jaw dropped after that, I didn't remember anything like that -- I mean, I
wasn't looking that much at the other girls, but you'd think you'd notice -- or
someone would notice -- something like that. I thought maybe she'd been in
there after we all left, or something. It's not like I paid that much attention
to her. I thought I might now, and blushed at the thought.

"Anything else?" he asked.

She nodded, and said "I cheated on an test today." She seemed less embarrassed
about that, but why would she cheat, she was smart, right? "And I let several
people copy my homework."

"I see," he said. "Cheating is a sign of sloth, Natalie." He said. "That's one
of the deadly sins, as is lust. But you know that don't you?" Natalie nodded.
"Do you want to repent, my daughter?"

"Yes," she said, almost eagerly.

"Good," he said. He sat down on the large, armless chair in front of us. I
remained kneeling, but Natalie rose, as he sat. My knees were getting
uncomfortable, even though I was wearing jeans, but I sat back on my heels to
watch what was going on. I didn't think it was cold, but Natalie's nipples
pressed against that white shirt like little points. It made me feel odd to see
it. Something was going on.

He turned to me then. "The Lord wants us to repent our sins," he said. "He
hears our hearts when we admit our faults, but sometimes we need more. Our
bodies need to know that we have paid for our sins. Natalie is going to pay for
hers now, right, my daughter?"

"Yes sir," she said.

"Then assume the position," he said. "Show your young friend how it is done, so
she can learn for next time." She knelt across his lap where he sat upon the
altar. Her ass was right across his lap and angled up; her arms and head lay on
the altar itself. I glanced above them where the white cross was back-lit with
yellow lights.

He lifted her skirt, and my eyes were drawn back to them. I was surprised to
see that she wasn't wearing panties. He didn't seem surprised, though. I
watched, mesmerized as he tucked her skirt into its waistband and began to spank
her. "This is your punishment before the Lord. Take your punishment and be
forgiven." She cried out a little, as her ass god redder and redder. Her breath
started to come faster and faster and she turned to me, and winked. She grinned
just a bit, and then closed her eyes as he struck her hard several times. Her
body shuddered, but he didn't stop until she cried out. I couldn't take my eyes
away from it. I couldn't help but think: next week I'll be there, on the altar,
on his lap being spanked, crying out.

I was scared, I admit. But that was just a small part of it. There was
something going on that I barely understood. My pussy ached about the whole
thing, which made no sense to me at all. I felt myself getting wet as I
watched, and I didn't know why.

When she cried out, she slid off of his lap, and knelt again in front of him,
but very close. "You have been forgiven, both by the Lord and by yourself. You
are free of sin, my daughter, are you ready for communion?"

She nodded, once slowly. "Yes, Father," she said. "Please allow me communion."

"Communion," he said, speaking broadly -- to me, of course -- "is an old
ritual. It is the body of the Lord, and the fluid of his body. Take it into
yourself, and you will be on with the Lord. Are you ready, Natalie?"

That's when they really blew my mind. Here was my friend -- well not really,
then, my classmate, anyway -- kneeling before her dad, our preacher, her red
ass hanging out because she never pulled her skirt back down. I watched as she
reached up and unzipped his pants. His...his penis sprung out, I don't know if
it was big or small or what, just that it was hard and vein-y with a big purple
head.

She kissed it then, sliding her mouth down over it. Reverend James closed his
eyes and began to moan quietly. He spoke to her, "Yes, take the body of our Lord
into you, Natalie. Draw out his fluid. Become one with the Lord."

I knew about communion, the last preacher had started me on confirmation
classes, but we hadn't finished before he had to leave. This was nothing like
what he taught me -- nothing like I'd seen before. I was shocked, but I couldn't
look away as Natalie bobbed her head up and down her father's penis.

That's when I noticed where her hands were. One was inside her shirt; I watched
as the other ran over one of her red ass cheeks, then back around, and between
her legs. She was touching herself there.

I didn't know where to look. Some part of me thought I should look down and
away, but when I did, Reverend James called my name, and I'd looked up at him.
He stared at me with a powerful gaze, just like when he was in a preaching mood
on Sunday. One of his hands was in his daughter's hair, gently guiding her up
and down as she moaned around him.

"You were in confirmation, weren't you Jane?" I nodded. "It's good I came along
then," he said. "You were going to learn it all wrong. I'm glad we're here to
show you, just as I was taught.

"It wasn't a Last Supper, Jane. It was a Last Orgy. Jesus passed on his body
and his fluid to the Magdalene -- and all the others from her, down to my
parents who passed it on to me. Like I'm passing it on to Natalie, and like I
will pass it on to you. Or maybe Natalie could do it.

Would you like that?"

I didn't know what to say. I watched as she moaned, and touched herself. I felt
my own panties get wet. Wasn't this wrong? It wasn't supposed to be like this
was it? But he was the preacher maybe he knew something no one had told me. I
mean nobody really talked about confirmation really, it was supposed to be a
private thing, between you and God.

I was almost going to tell him I didn't know for sure, but that maybe it was
okay, when he grabbed Natalie's head, and his back arched while he cried out.
Natalie shook also, and moaned around him. I could feel the energy leap off of
them, as they each had an orgasm. I shook nervously, still looking up at
Reverend James.

"Maybe next time you'll be able to ask for redemption, Jane," he said. Natalie
sat back, fixing her skirt with one hand while she licked the fingers of her
other. She smiled at me, and winked. The Reverend stood up, and motioned for
us to get up too. "That's all for today," he said. "Same time on Thursday,
Jane," he said. "Your parents asked me to give you extra sessions."

Natalie showed me to the door. "You look lost," she said.

"I don't know..." I said. I had no idea what to think. Something was wrong
with it sure; it was like the stuff they told us to avoid in school. But he was
a preacher, he should know, and Natalie seemed okay with it. More than okay,
actually. A part of me wanted to be okay with it too.

I still felt bad about the stealing; Natalie seemed so at ease with herself -- I
could be like that too. And maybe the reason I'd never felt at one with God was
because I'd never known. If only my confirmation classes had finished.

Natalie leaned close into me. "There's nothing like it," she said. "I feel so
good afterwards. I even make up sins, just so I can feel this way."

I was about to ask her about it, when Reverend James called from back in the
chapel, "Oh, and Jane, when you come on Thursday, be dressed appropriately. See
you then."

"You're the first to come to him since we got here," she said, and smiled. She
moved in close to me, and her lips brushed mine. "I'm glad it was you." As she
spoke her lips tickled mine, shooting shocks all through me. I'd never felt it
before, but I knew where I felt it, there between my legs.

I backed away, towards the door, and opened. "See you Thursday? And at school
tomorrow?"

"Y--yeah," I said, and left.

What was I going to do now?

It is time.

2005-09-06T18:07:04Z

It is time for the loud music,

It is time to be making with the creativity,

It is time to rock out,

It is time to write.

Sorry folken

2005-09-04T11:58:18Z

Looks like it'll be another day before peccable is done. I have some work to do on my bid, and dozed last night (no surprise there, since i didn't sleep much yesterday and didn't drink as much caffeine either).

Still, I know what happens, I just have to write it.