I'm not drinking from the firehose, it just seems like I am.

[sofiaviolet]

Notes

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth happening now. Expect everybody to be posting all the time. (Seriously, the amount of stuff on my reading page today was terrifying. If you want the actual firehose, the threeweeks feed on Latest Things aggregates posts tagged with several variations on the fest name.)

Recently

Got to see the US Archivist speak today but was barred from the reception afterwards due to being a student (supposedly because of the presence of alcohol, which is doubly hilarious to me because I am over 21 and still do not ever booze it up). Although his speech was good (and confirmed that government archives are not my first choice but would not be too soul-sucking), and I got to archives-squee at the guy I sat next to.

21 Days of Dreamwidth

(originates with finch)

1. Why did you sign up for Dreamwidth?

Because I was pissed off at LJ, because I wanted to be an early adopter for once, because they set the barrier so low for valid contributions. The plans I saw convinced me that these people knew what the fuck they were doing and were creating a service for People Like Me.

I tracked the posts where Denise was holding discussions and I joined the email list, and I did their card sort for the navigation, and I lurked in #dw all the time, and I got sent an invite code during closed beta because I had validated an email address for my OpenID. Especially because a lot of of the planning and early stages of the site took place while bandom was in a relatively quiet phase (what with everyone going on hiatus and/or splitting up, and a lot of the authors I'd been so fond of drifting away), Dreamwidth became my fandom.

Questions meme

erika asked:

Do you feel you're an adult? Why or why not? What goals would have or have been achieved that make you feel like that?

... not so much.

It's not even about goals - I mean, I have an actual life plan and I have accomplished at least as much as can be expected for a 23 year old (probably more). And even though I will eventually reach the Real Job, Paying My Own Rent, etc., there are various markers of adulthood that I will never have because I've rejected them, because they would make me miserable: kids are the big one, but I'm probably not ever getting married either.

But even though I have real plans and am where I should be with regard to them, I am not an adult. I am bad at remembering to feed myself and I can't even cook half a dozen real kinds of food. I go to concerts and get bruises under my boobs from the barrier in front of the stage and crowd surfers kick me in the head. I have too many Hello Kitty t-shirts and not enough business casual separates. I have purple hair.

So I'm not an adult, I will never be an adult, I can only hope to hit the sweet spot where I get shit done and yet the only person I'm responsible for is me.

Are you interested in jewelry, stereotypical girly stuff, makeup?

Yes. The only problem is, I'm bad at it. I claim that my gender presentation is lazy femme because, well, it kinda is. :(

How geeky are you on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being "luddite" and 10 being "I dream in binary"?

Uh. Somewhere in the middle range, definitely over 5? Somebody needs to figure out the right carrot and/or stick to make me learn perl; I wanna contribute patches and shit to Dreamwidth. On the other hand, I did my own websites, journal css, etc., and I've done small nifty things with S2 before. (Speaking of, there's an S2 class happening over on style_system for the next IDK how long. syllabus) I am also considering building a computer and installing Linux on it.

Actually, that looks reasonably geeky! But I live with an ECE major who built a computer in high school and my dad does, IDEK, some kind of wizardry with Oracle. And I lurk at Dreamwidth devs like a (fairly harmless) creeper. My standards are high.

Links

metahacker: Boys don't know how to say no (to sex)

The straight male privilege I'm highlighting is two-fold: lack of fear of rape, and lack of having to reject people nicely. The first one I am not well-qualified to speak to, and others have done a good job here, but I want to focus on the second part.

Freakonomics: Talk Derby to Me: The Private Regulation of Roller Derby Names

Trademarked derby girl (their preferred moniker) “skate names” include Amber Alert, Anna Notherthing, Busta Armov, Felon D. Generous, and Ivanna S. Pankin. But the vast majority of the thousands of U.S.-based derby girls have not trademarked their names. And yet nearly all skate names are unique: there is only one Hell O’Kittie, though there are doubtless many derby girls who wish they had that name. If the names are valuable, why don’t more of them use trademarks?

ar: She's Kind of a Big Deal: Call for Prompts

Choose a non-fictional woman you find interesting and/or admirable*! She could be as old as Lady Murasaki or as new as Arianna Huffington (or, you know, newer or older, but brainstorming on a lunch break was never my strong suit). She can be anyone in the public realm: an artist, a scientist, a politician, an activist, a CEO, a professor. She doesn't have to be serious business--if you want to tell us all about Lady Gaga, you're welcome to. She just has to be a real person. (Apocryphal people will be considered, too, especially from a historical context. The rule is mostly because as awesome as TV Character X is, she's not the focus of this fest-thing.)

lireavue: (no subject)

This is the start of a series of essays on migraines. I decided to do this around about the time I realized for the umpteenth time that even migraineurs are often ill-informed about their disease. And it is, make no mistake, a chronic illness. It might strike a handful of times in your life, or it might hit you several times a month - there are different degrees of chronic, but once you've had one migraine, your likelihood of having more just went up. So I want to inform people what migraines, especially chronic ones like I and my husband live with, are like. I want to get this information out there to people who maybe wouldn't hunt it down otherwise. And frankly, it helps me cope. This will not - cannot - be a complete overview. A complete overview would be a book, not a series of essays, and require a lot more research than I'm putting into this. I do hope it gives some insight into one or two people's lives with migraines, however.

Plans

Last blog entry for class, last paper for the same class, only paper for the other class, book reviews, responses for the New Orleans FONSFAQ (also still taking prompts), possibly some responses for other FONSFAQs, possibly a notable woman for She's Kind of a Big Deal, the thing I am making for MCR (yes, I am making them a thing).