Viridian5's
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"We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
-- Oscar Wilde
What's On My TV:
Bleach
Metalocalypse
The Mighty Boosh
Naruto Shippuden
The Venture Bros.
Waiting For:
The Amazing Race
CBS, ?
Burn Notice
USA, 1/21/10, 10 p.m.
Dancing With the Stars
ABC, ?
Dexter
Showtime, ?
Doctor Who
SciFi, ?
Project Runway
Lifetime, 1/14
Robot Chicken
Cartoon Network, ?
Supernatural
The CW, 1/21, 9 p.m.
Top Gear
BBC America, 1/25, 8 p.m.
Randomness:
100 cheapest, best places to eat in NYC
8 Coupons
All My Faves
Amazon.com Associates links
Babelfish Translation
Book-A-Minute SF/F
BookMooch
Cake Wrecks
Carol Lay comics
The Complete Pondering List
Dreamwidth f'list
Fed Ex Locations
Flickr Favorites 1
Flickr Favorites 2
Forgotten NY
Free Rice
GasBuddy.com
German words of love & romance
Girls in Suits
Goodreads
HopStop subway directions
Internet Movie Database
Invisible Records (Underground, Inc.)
Isolation Tank music & merch
LibraryThing
Lileks' Institute of Official Cheer
Living on a Shoestring
Lucky Cats - Maneki Neko
Mapquest driving directions
Metropolis Mail-Order
MTA NYC transit
New York Press
Overheard in New York
Random Name Generator
Rate My Kitten
Saiyuki Reload in Zero Sum
Television Without Pity
Textism: Word HTML Cleaner
Tomato Nation
ThinkExist Quotations
Witchblade Episode Guide
Wayback Machine
World Time Zones
Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode Guide
LJ-related
paid account status
friends of friends
interests match
member birthdays
popular amongst my friends
recent comments
what server am I?
Writing Fandoms:
Slash
Andromeda
Angel
Buffy tVS, the movie
(Pike and Benny)
Death Note
Doctor Who
due South
Fight Club
GetBackers
Hard Core Logo
Once a Thief
Saiyuki
Smallville
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Twitch City
Two Guys and a Girl
Weiß Kreuz
The X-Files
X-Men (comics)
One Shot Fandoms
Gen
Andromeda
X-Files
Recommendations
Quotes of the Moment:
"In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these."
-- Paul Harvey
“I think [doubt is] perceived in this culture as something weak or denatured, and that’s a huge mistake. Conviction is what you do to be comfortable, to write The End on thinking. Doubt keeps you in the present, it keeps you conscious and reacting to and acting on what is going on now. It’s work, and people like to avoid work.”
-- John Patrick Shanley, playwright of Doubt, a Parable
"On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."
-- Virginia Woolf
"Like in Last Night, there was a lot of laying on top of other
women, and, and, and... not other women, not like I'm a woman, but -- that made no sense. On other women, you know, and you have to -- it's a bit tricky 'cause you're trying to respect what's, you know, them, and the scene, and the stuff, and you know. If I get excited, I apologise, if I don't get excited, I apologise."
-- Callum Keith Rennie, on doing sex scenes
"You may have noticed that Turlough spent a great deal of time kept captive in various states of bondage. It was always a disappointment to me that there seemed to be no getting around this problem."
-- Mark Strickson
Introduction,
The Companions of Doctor Who: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma
by Tony Attwood, Copyright 1986
"So hit us at Talismaniac.com, where you can log on and you can rock on, because my nipples are dry and he needs food."
-- part of Gabriel's advertising pitch, with baby doll, for his business website
Witchblade: "Static"
Chiari I malformation
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Saturday, December 26th, 2009
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11:22 pm - The Coming End
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I'm reserving some judgment on "The End of Time part 1" until I see the second part next week. Then again, Rusty's concluding episodes tend to be utter rubbish.
Doctor Who: "The End of Time part 1": ( spoilers for the episode )
current mood:  annoyed
current music: "Amazing" by Johnette Napolitano
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2:01 am - Celldweller by Celldweller
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One of my Christmas presents was Celldweller by Celldweller, and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's rather unusual in that it kicks through several genres, sometimes in one song. There's industrial, alternative, dance, electronic, goth, pop, metal.... It's Faith No More, it's Korn, it's VAST, it's Nickelback, it's Crossfade, it's Enigma, it's Incubus, it's Machines of Loving Grace, it's any alternative guitar rock, it's Scissor Sisters.... The Auto Tune moments in "Under My Feet" still surprise me even though the album is constantly knocking your expectations out from under you. I definitely recommend it.
I also asked for The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic, since the broad majority of my Weird Al is on cassette, and have started listening to it. (It's a two-disc thang.) Hearing it now, I'm amazed by how almost aggressively low-fi the earliest work was, such as "Another One Rides the Bus." I have to say that I appreciate his David Byrne/Talking Heads impression in "Dog Eat Dog" now than I did when I first played it.
current mood:  surprised
current music: "The Last Firstborn" by Celldweller
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(comment on this)
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1:53 am - A Very Merry Schwarz and Weiß X-mas
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With being sick and all the things I had to do and attend in the last few days, I didn't post this when I usually would have.
If you're interested in revisiting just the X-mas sections of "Glass Houses," here they are:
1
2
3
4
5
6
You can find links to other Christmas fics of mine in different fandoms here.
current mood:  sick
current music: "Gasoline" by Brand New
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, December 25th, 2009
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8:32 pm - Highs and Lows
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I got a new camera for Christmas! Have to figure out how to work it. It's much more complicated than my last one.
Someone sent me Dethalbum II. Yay! But I have no idea who to thank. *g* The package had no sender information or message.
Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shisho_kat for the LJ certificate!
To my my self-disgust, I lost my left-hand flip-top mitten/glove. It had to have fallen out of my coat pocket sometime between me getting out of my car near my home Wednesday night and returning home from my family's Christmas get-together today. That was fast. The right-hand one is most important anyway, but it'll be weird to wear two different gloves when I'm shooting. ETA: My brother found it in his apartment.
current mood:  sleepy
current music: "Can't Say No (To You)" by VAST
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(9 comments |comment on this)
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12:43 am - Windows After Dark
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Worrying about how much longer my camera viewscreen would hold out, I took a ton of photos Wednesday night. About 20 didn't work out at all, but some looked damned good considering they were taken nearly half-blind. My Flickr account has new Bergdorf Goodman stuff up, enough that there's some more new stuff on page two as well. The night shoot photos appear to a greater sense of depth in the windows and a better look at the illuminated backgrounds.
current mood:  tired
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| Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
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11:12 pm - And So It Goes
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I don't know if it's just my four-year-old camera getting old, a lucky shot that somehow made it through the padded bag to hit a weak point, or some combination of the two, but the viewscreen is dying. Much of the very top right is a black smear with some rainbow streaks, while the left top corner is a gradually growing blank white shape that starts to "bleed" along the whole left side of the screen. Every time I use the camera, turning it on or especially shifting between flash and no flash, the damage worsens. The top part of the screen is also where the camera displays information about flash and number of shots left. It still takes photos, but it's much harder for me to know exactly what part of the scene it's taking a photo of. Also, I need to reset the date and time information at every battery change and need to see it to do that and things like flash compensation are chosen through a menu that appears in the viewscreen.
Not knowing how much longer the camera will be completely usable, I went for a night shot run at Bergdorf Goodman, and a higher percentage of photos sucked than usual from me not having a more complete view of what I was doing. (Also because it was really cold and my hands were freezing up even with gloves.) I'll be looking through them tomorrow to decide what to post. Some of them turned out really well... though the usable parts of viewscreen got smaller and smaller as I worked.
This had to wait to show up a day and a half before Christmas. If I'd known earlier I could have asked friends and family for money toward a new camera. One with a tolerance toward night shooting and a competent zoom would be great. I definitely didn't need the added expense, and I don't know when I'll be able to buy a new one.
For a while I was thinking 2009 hadn't been so bad, but it's getting in a few kicks in its last few weeks.
current mood:  frustrated
current music: Celldweller by Celldweller
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1:02 am - Looking for a Place to Rest My Head
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This is coming up fast--where did December go?--so I'm putting it out there now. I have an appointment to see the Ehlers-Danlos specialist January 13, 2010 at 1 p.m. at N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD. With my Chiarian condition and how it's about a five-hour drive, I figure I'd need to drive in the afternoon/evening of January 12 and return home January 14, meaning I need a place to stay for two nights. There's no cheap on-site lodging, and the best they can do is a small discount at some local hotels. Considering that for this doctor visit I'll already have to pay for gas, food, tolls, parking at the doctor's place, and whatever percentage Medicare doesn't feel like covering of the appointment itself (the place doesn't take Medicaid, and even if it did my NY Medicaid doesn't work out of state), this really sucks.
When I first mentioned this in my LJ November 11, I had some kind folks offer some ideas of people to stay with instead, but does this still work with the new details? I have to figure out who's best to go with too.
F'list o' mine, please give me suggestions. *g*
current mood: tired
current music: "Love Song" covered by Jack Off Jill
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(1 comment |comment on this)
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| Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
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9:00 pm - With All the Extras
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Amazon.com is offering these holiday songs for free this month.
+++
Hey, if somebody wants to get me a little something for the holiday, my extra LJ userpics expire in the next few days. I thought I had more time than this....
current mood: surprised
current music: "Right Where It Belongs" by Nine Inch Nails
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1:02 am - A Year of Firsts
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| Monday, December 21st, 2009
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11:06 pm - Other People's Windows
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11:01 pm - They're Just Not Caring
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Since filling in the fair hearing request form online just led to me getting server errors trying to submit it, I went back to trying to call to get a fair hearing. I started calling at 3 p.m., trying again every two minutes because I got a busy signal every time. I stopped getting a busy signal at 4:50 p.m. and waited on hold until 6, when it was obvious that they'd gone home and abandoned me to automated message hell.
Tomorrow I hope to get my hopefully undamaged car out of the snow packed around it and get to the library to try the online form there and if that still doesn't work print up a letter to fax to them.
It's frustrating as hell.
current mood: frustrated
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| Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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11:59 pm - My Day
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I didn't really sleep last night. Also, my bedroom is at the front of the building and a lot of people came out at 7 a.m. to start clearing snow off their sidewalks, with the scrape-scrape-scraping keeping me awake. I went out early before the snow could harden and ice up and before more people got out on the roads. I fear the people more than the ice. Thus I went out driving through the snow grocery shopping at 8 am, got stuck while going up the hill back to my home and fortunately had a neighbor who pushed me out so I didn't need a tow truck after all, though I shoveled for 15 minutes before that, and went to bed at 1 p.m. and slept until 8 p.m.
I got stuck 35 feet away from my open parking spot, which was maddening. I was lucky no one had nabbed my original spot on the corner, but part of that was from me going out so early. The reason I got stuck was that the garbage truck with plow couldn't get up the hill itself so the street wasn't plowed, but by now my car may be plowed in.
I hope the bottom of my car is okay.
current mood:  weird
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, December 18th, 2009
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10:50 pm - The Run Run Runaround
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So Medicare told me in a letter that I'm denied the Medicare Savings Program because I am "active in another case." Yeah, another case where they lost my paperwork and told me to resubmit it, which is what I did. The letter came Saturday. I always get crap like this Friday night or Saturday afternoon, when there's nobody in an office I can call to start dealing with it. So I left a voice message for Legal Aid Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday and faxed a copy of the letter Wednesday while waiting for a response from them.
My Legal Aid lawyer called me at 4 p.m. today, unfortunately when I was napping and thus was too groggy to really question WTF when she told me Legal Aid can't help me any further in this. But, hey, I'm articulate and surely I can handle requesting for a fair hearing myself and representing myself in it! In my experience, whenever a lawyer, doctor, or the government tells a disabled person that they're "articulate" it's right before they belittle your problems and toss you into the deep end of the pool. I remember being so stressed out and terrified in the last fair hearing that I could barely speak. Legal Aid managed to rush groggy me off the phone before I really had a chance to look at the letter and see that even though it mentions an "insert" instructing how to request a fair hearing, that insert doesn't actually exist in the envelope. I left a voice message for them about this but doubt Legal Aid will call back.
I dug through my massive pile of old paperwork and found a telephone number to request a hearing with. After being on hold for 45 minutes, I gave up around 5:20 figuring they were closed now. I went online to fill out a fair request hearing form but after giving me a load of bs about filling things out wrong, I got a server error twice that stopped me from submitting. I'll try again tomorrow. I get to try to submit an application for a fair hearing during a week when offices will constantly be closed.
current mood: frustrated
current music: "Fear of Dying" by Jack Off Jill
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11:26 am - "Sensitive"
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Weiß Kreuz slash: "Sensitive"
RATING: R; Farfarello/Schuldig.
SPOILERS: None really.
SUMMARY: Farfarello has to control his temper... and Schuldig.
current mood: sleepy
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10:29 am - Trojan Horse and Its Pale Rider
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Computer weirdness that I hope is over...
Last night AVG sent me a warning box for a Trojan horse that I think was called "Trojan horse Junto" with a file extension I can't remember at the moment. It claimed that the Trojan came in through Google Desktop. When I went to AVG's site for more information on that particular Trojan horse, none was available, with AVG's site claiming it never heard of it. My AVG archive is full and when I was tempted to delete I got a message that deleting my destroy the functioning of several programs and possibly my whole computer, so I wimped out. I got another warning box just before I closed down for the night.
When I turned my laptop on this morning just as it reached the wallpaper part of the start-up the last tone of the Windows music held and held and held, none of my desktop icons were loading, and I couldn't turn my computer off via the Start Menu and had to unplug it and pop its battery out to stop it. The next start-up went smoothly and here I am, but I'm worried about what might happen next time.
Does anybody have any experience with this one?
ETA: When I turned my computer on again I had no trouble. I'm thankful but mystified. Also, my Google Desktop program seems to have been destroyed in the process of dealing with the warnings. When I try the shortcuts it says I have to reinstall the program. Do you have any idea how I can do that? It was part of my laptop's innate software and I don't really want to mess with all of that.
current mood:  shocked
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(5 comments |comment on this)
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| Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
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12:53 am - Food Envy
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| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
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8:17 pm - "Ups and Downs"
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6:05 am - Letter Writing in Action
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Having heard of LiveJournal's intention to remove "unspecified" and make people specify themselves as either male or female, I wrote them a polite feedback in protest. My points were mainly:
- I've been with LJ since 2001 and during that whole time I've been unspecified because my gender is nobody's business. I don't want some casual browser or advertiser easily snatching that data up and doing something with it.
- I have friends who don't fit within the narrow male/female field and they shouldn't be forced to just so they can have an LJ account.
- Even if the gender field would not be public, I don't want to be forced to specify so LJ or some advertiser can target me with ads based on some stupid assumption of what my stated gender is about, like diet ads put to women's accounts on Facebook. It is none of their business. I am not a data mine.
- I know many people who have moved off LiveJournal because of things like this coming into effect in the recent past, and it might be in LJ's interest not to provide more ammunition.
I received an answer to my feedback within two or three hours, ( and it reads: )
current mood: off to bed
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(14 comments |comment on this)
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| Monday, December 14th, 2009
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4:05 pm - Useful Hands
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| Sunday, December 13th, 2009
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2:14 am - Wear and Tear
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I had to return some flip-top glove-mittens to Target because on the first wear the seam on the left thumb came apart and then the chenille started to unravel. There were some chenille bits coming out of the fingers of the right-hand glove too. Just worn once. I'm never buying Merona gloves again.
I've been looking for flip-top gloves so I can take photos in the winter without having to take my gloves off to work the camera. My ideal flip-tops would have a removable cap for the thumb as well. I saw gloves that had a removable cap for the thumb and forefinger, but they were a really vomitous shade of pink. Aside from the individual finger caps and tiny buttons--which were cool--they were ugly gloves.
current mood:  disappointed
current music: "Why Don't You See Me?" by Concrete Blonde
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contemplative
cold
sore