Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
devonapple	8:58a	Meme: Your Debut Album ( The meme... ) The Debut Album: Bearno's State-Controlled Manufactory of Echoes. photo credit: .B.Side. (Comment on this)
kadyg	1:11a	Going, going, gone If you didn't catch it from Bax's LJ, he and I are roadtrippin' until the 14th or so. We have a travel buddy keeping track of things for us: wallyontheroad. He can't pay for gas, but he's been making himself useful in other ways. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
baxil	10:34a	Gone: July 1-12 Just so y'all know, I don't expect to be updating my LJ much during the road trip. You can keep an eye on my new friend Wally's blog, though, for updates: wallyontheroad Current Mood: devious (Comment on this)
Monday, June 30th, 2008
kadyg	10:17p	Good news, equally good news, not so hot news The Good News: necama and the lovely Kathyrn got good and married on Saturday in a pretty awesome ceremony. As a souvenir, all the attendees got sunburns, but I don't think anyone minded too much. I underestimated the morning sun in San Diego and paid for it. Bax and I also got to meet roaminrob's sweetie and she's quite cool. Due to poor timing, she'll be here while Bax and I are gone, so a return trip needs to be scheduled forthwith. Equally Good News: I got all my business paper work filed today (local, county and fictitious business name). I still need insurance, which I will track down when we get back, but for all intents and purposes I am a Real Business. I also got a email from the editor of the Union telling me that they would love to have me write. So I'm also a food writer as well. Go me! Not So Hot News: The F15h had a bad weekend. Heat combined with left over veg matter equaled a bacteria bomb. Unfortunately, the only real cure is close monitoring and time and we're hitting the road tomorrow morning. The fish that we're both concerned about is our pleco, Boing. We've had him since he was a sprog and we're both very fond of him. We're hoping three days of no activity will restore the tank balance until Rob gets home and can keep a closer eye on things. Current Mood: anxious (1 Comment |Comment on this)
baxil	8:37p	Fish no more Came back home tonight from necama and Kathryn's wedding (which was lovely) to an unpleasant surprise: What could literally be described as a bloodbath in our f33shtank. Corpses everywhere. The entire school of neon tetras dead, several guppies, and two of our five clown loaches. After getting over our shock, I took some water samples and we whipped through a quick cleaning and water and filter change. Forensic ichthyology revealed a giant spike in lethal nitrates, so I ran down to the fish store and bought some chemicals to neutralize them. Hate going for the quick fix, but we're leaving again tomorrow morning (for the road trip to Kansas to visit kadyg's family that we've been planning for months). The emergency work seems to have stabilized the remaining fish, but the loaches are still swimming oddly and I really don't know what's going to happen after we leave again. (UPDATE: Nitrates still ~15 ppm, will do 50% water change and one more round of chemicals before we go ...) To compound the issue, most of the ammonia (that bacteria turn into nitrates; and subsequently into nitrites, which the plants filter out of the water) comes from either fish waste or uneaten food. The culprit was probably a combination of heat plus the zucchini I left for our pleco to munch on in our absence: looks like the vegetable disintegrated much faster than expected, and rotted into waste material that hit the tank all at once. I added some beneficial bacteria, which will only have a delayed effect, but I guess we'll just have to put the fish on a starvation diet until either I or a roommate can monitor the tank more closely. That'll be at least another three and a half days. I'm not sure how many of them will last the week. What a time for this to hit. Current Mood: worried Current Music: "So Deep (Perfect Sphere Remix)", Silvertear (4 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	2:50p	Spotlight: Joey Comeau If you don't know, Joey Comeau is one of the creators of the "A Softer World" web comic. A friend recently forwarded me two of his stories that I hadn't read. I want to share them with you: "There's Two Ways This Can Go..." - a lesson which should be learned as early as possible "Where Are You Off to Now?" - a bike tour gone completely pear-shaped (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 27th, 2008
kadyg	1:36p	Well, this is it. I'm at the restaurant printing and wrapping up last minute stuff before My Last Train Ride Home Ever (actually, until July 15th, when I'll be coming back for a day). My room is clean with a small pile of stuff waiting to be collected on Sunday on the way home from necama's wedding. My RA never gave me the check out form for my room, but that's his problem not mine. I gave him plenty of warning with follow-ups. I plan to leave my keys with the security guard and let them sort it out. Bye, San Francisco, have fun at Pride. Current Mood: sad (2 Comments |Comment on this)
kadyg	1:08a	Writer's Block: The Bad Habit Talk about a habit that you just cannot break. View other answers The whole world can't stop chewing on their nails, apparently. I've managed to crack that one pretty well, but I think I replaced it with biting my lip. My lips have been chapped to varying degrees since approximately 1986 and I've been picking and chewing on them the entire time. A couple years ago I started carrying lip balm with me everywhere, which has actually helped a lot. I think if I made a point to wear lipstick most of the time I would probably be able to kick it entirely. Of course, then I would probably go right back to biting my nails. Or smoking. Or something even more addictive that has yet to be discovered. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
kadyg	10:54p	OMG! I have officially been blessed with the most awesome-est boss ever. My going away/work from home present? A new (to me) G4 Powerbook with all the Stuff tm! I gave my lappy to his tech guy yesterday so he could do some upgrades prior to me heading back home and today over lunch they gifted me with this shiny new Mac with my entire hard drive reinstalled just like I had it. All my iTunes, bookmarks and Stickies were just where they should be. This machine is leaps and bounds ahead of my old one, it's bigger physically and I can access my work computer with it. My old one is going to be refurbished and passed down to Boss's 13-year-old daughter - who will be thrilled. I am so, so lucky (and spoiled). Current Mood: grateful (4 Comments |Comment on this)
jackkansas	3:41p	A 3-things Meme Rules: Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done. 1. Lived for a year in a Volkswagen bus through a Boston winter. 2. Measured West Indian land snail shells (Cerion) for one of Stephen Jay Gould's research projects. 3. Took a dozen kids with Downs Syndrome for milk and doughnuts at the Dunkin' Donuts on Main Street in Waltham, Mass. Current Mood: individualistic Current Music: "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) (Comment on this)
devonapple	9:50a	Cliches and Musical Expression One of the identifying characteristics of Jim Steinman's music (predominantly, of the music he wrote for Meat Loaf) is its focus on (and frequent use of) cliched phrasing or recognizable cultural elements (we'll leave the cliched imagery and themes alone for now) united into an evocative whole. Some of the pertinent titles: "Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere" "Objects in the Rear View Mirror (May Appear Closer Than They Are)" "You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth" "Not a Dry Eye in the House" "Wasted Youth" "Out of the Frying Pan (And into the Fire)" Does the confluence of Steinman's use of iconographic (cliched?) cultural phrasing and imagery contribute to a new sort of cliche ("teenage sexuality music"), or does it become like found art: making something new and exciting from what is already there? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
devonapple	9:32a	21-Gun Birthday Salute I was thinking of an iPhone for my birthday, but maybe an Ingram Model-10 (or as I would call it, my "iMAC-10") would be more suiting the legal ruling of the Supreme Court. Edit: Per caramida, the iGun would be more appropriate! (do you still have to go through AT&T to get it licensed?) (17 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	9:03a	Writer's Block: Entering the Game Are you the kind of person who prefers to enter a game with strategies and codes, or do you like to go into it without any help? View other answers For shooter games like GTA, I like guides' help for easter egg hunts and those game aspects where you have to discover "all 200" of a particular item to get an in-game benefit. For adventure games, sometimes the logic needed to solve a particular situation is obscure to me, and a cheat guide is a welcome relief, allowing me to get on with the story without having to figure out "use X with Y while Z, and then do A and B to get Z." (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
devonapple	5:49p	Writer's Block: Choose a Power If you could have the power to fly, be invisible, or teleport anywhere, which would you choose? View other answers Flight always wins for me. Teleporting is just not the same thrill. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	4:38p	Oh... Learning Curve [games] I'm finished with the main plot of "GTA IV" so now I'm running around finishing all of those little side missions which contribute to 100% completion. Two of the side missions involve vigilantism: acquire a police cruiser, access the on-board dispatch computer, and eliminate criminal threats. ( Doh! ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
kadyg	3:57p	There is something very San Francisco about the fact that I'm wandering around town with two bottles of champagne in my backpack and I'm using the most recent issue of The Advocate to keep them from banging around. Apparently I'm ready for Pride a week early. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	2:03p	The Cradle of Birth How a wall may have made it possible for humanity to climb.... "It was a dry wind/ And it swept across the desert And it curled into the circle of birth And the dead sand Falling on the children/ The mothers and the fathers And the automatic earth" Current Music: Paul Simon, "Boy in the Bubble" (2 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	1:07p	Bizarre Music Moment I was getting on BART last night, and a flautist was busking near the toll gates. He wasn't particularly spectacular or anything, but the notes kept haunting me. As I waited for the train to arrive, I could hear him playing, and my mind tried to fit the music into some recognizable framework so I could identify it and get to the urgent business of tuning the noise out. The tempo would shift and change, note length would vary somewhat, so it began to fascinate me, because I recognized enough of it to know it was something I'd heard before, but not enough to file it away. I'm still not sure if I successfully identified the tune, but my mind finally settled on the pattern into which the flautist's pipings were close to fitting. The theme song to "The Munsters." Bizarre. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
jackkansas	5:05p	Dune Trivia Question "I think about this stuff a lot." — Miller, Repo Man (1984) The plot as I understand it: Lady Margot Fenring, the Bene Gesserit wife of Count Fenring, seduces Feyd-Rautha. The plan was to marry the daughter that Jessica was supposed to have borne instead of Paul with Lady Margot's son, thereby healing the breach between houses Atreides and Harkonnen. I was unable to follow the Herbert oeuvre to the end, collapsing under the hammer blows of Herbert's non-stop prose and the endless stream of revived Duncan Idahos. I think I got through God Emperor of Dune (1981), but that was it. My question — does Lady Margot's child play a role in any of the later books? Current Mood: reflective Current Music: "Can You See The Stars Tonight?" (Jefferson Starship) (Comment on this)
kadyg	3:16p	Writer's Block: Comebacks Know any great comebacks? View other answers "You talk to Jesus with that mouth?" is an all-time favorite even though I've only had cause to use it once. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	1:39p	Leather Cell Phone Cases If anyone has ever wondered where I got my Celtic cell phone case, it is from Renleather.com. Here are the cell phone cases. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
baxil	11:59a	The state, the state, the state is on fire Visibility's a quarter-mile in town today. "*EVERYONE SHOULD AVOID ALL PHYSICAL ACTIVITY OUTDOORS.*" There's talk of evacuating the tiny town of Washington, about 15 miles east; and that's not even the fire that's pelting us with smoke. And it's like that in pretty much the entire northern half of California. It's not a good time to be a firefighter. My thoughts go out to everyone on the front lines. Current Mood: worried Current Music: "Beyond All Fear of Doom," Souls in the System sndtrk (13 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	11:51a	More Silly Haiku Jalapeno jack, Grated on a tortilla, Heated, eaten, yum. Thirty-two ounce Coke, Rolling, bubbling, belly-bomb, Sloshing when I run. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
devonapple	11:33a	Leftover Haiku Suspect pizza slice, Out too long the other night - Rolaids are my friend What is this thing here? Could be meat or could be cake -- Perhaps it's meat cake? (apologies to George Carlin) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
devonapple	11:01a	Television Musings Shows I am pleased will be back on the air coming this Fall: "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles" - it may still fall down, but we're all for giving it a chance. "Psych" - and on a side note, "Shawn" and "Juliet" from this show are together in an upcoming episode of "Fear Itself." "Dexter" - gods, he can be creepy. "Burn Notice" - this one really grew on me. Plus, Bruce Campbell! RIP: "Bionic Woman." (7 Comments |Comment on this)

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