Home is, of course, in Somerville MA.

At various points, I slept in hotels in Framingham MA, Brighton NY, Brewer ME, Tacoma WA, and West Conshohocken PA. I also stayed with friends I was visiting in South Burlington VT and Olympia WA.

Johanna and I went to the Marigny (New Orleans) LA for our anniversary, there was camping in New Lebanon NY, and I took my my usual trip to Star Island (Rye) NH. And I went to Europe again, which adds London, UK; Beziers, France; Narbonne, France; and handful of small towns in Southern France like le Someil and Homps (and probably a few I'm forgetting).

There's this really weird display bug going on with LJ for me right now. When I view comments on a post, and they display in my style,

everything is narrowed
to a very short
column of text,

which makes it sound
like everyone
is writing parodies

of that poem
about the icebox
and the plums.

This is less of "What's this" and more "Hey, check out this neat thing," since the answer is pretty much directly visible from the Google Map. It's worth tracking down the history of the thing, though.

I love these things. h/t lowellboyslash for reminding me.

For those that don't know the game: I've listed lyrics from 25 songs. Your job is to guess the artist and song title without doing any research. One point each for being the first person to get each part right (artist+title = 2pts). Using Google is cheating.

Songs were chosen by going to my Google Music collection, turning on "shuffle all", and clicking Next until I hit a song that I knew most of the words to by heart. No band is represented twice on this list (featured artists don't count). Lyrics are selected capriciously.

Bonus points and hints:
#2 is worth double, but if I tell you why it'll give it away
#3 has a third point for identifying the featured artist (sings backup vocals)
#9 is a cover, so the artist is worth double
#11 is worth triple because no one else I know listens to this band
#14 is worth double, but if I tell you why it'll give it away
That makes a total of 60 points available.

Okay, here's the list:
1) Read my palm and tell me / why do lovers come and go
2) No I just can't believe what they say / when they tell me it was better way back in the days
3) Sirens ring / A shot rings out / A stranger cries / and screams out loud
4) I hear a hoot owl / Lord Baden-Powell / Adam West putting on the Batman cowl
5) Time keeps on slipping / Into the future
6) Breaking my back just to know your name / Seventeen tracks and I've had it with this game
7) She's got her ear to the walls / and she's tapping the calls / If you've got a secret, boy / forget about it
8) Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here / Too many people have lied in the name of Christ for anyone to heed the call
9) Do you, don't you want me to make you / Coming down fast, now don't let me break you
10) I was introduced and we both started grooving / She said I dig you baby but I got to keep moving / on
11) Downstairs in the lounge / there ain't no one around / Through tidal waves of whiskey / you can hear the ice cubes sound
12) So your girlfriend rolls a Honda / playing workout tapes by Fonda
13) We sit here stranded / though we're all doing our best to deny it
14) We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over / We want your bread so don't make us annoyed / Give all the toys / to the little rich boys
15) Now if you're feeling kinda low 'bout the dues you've been paying / Future's coming much too slow
16) Why stay in college / Why go to night school / Would it be different this time
17) Last night as I slept / I dreamt I met with Behan / I shook him by the hand / and we passed the time of day
18) My hands can't touch a guitar string / my fingers just burn and ache / My head intercedes with my bodily needs / and my body won't give it a break
19) Nothing wrong / with a little whiskey / But too much whiskey / fuck you up
20) Like a game show contestant with a parting gift / I could not believe my eyes
21) Lucy still loves her Coke and rum / but she sits alone / cause her daddy can't come
22) And I could / list each one / Where would that get me / it's been / Said and done
23) Well I guess you left me / with some feathers in my hand / Did it make it any easier / to just leave me where I stand
24) Don't fly mister bluebird / I'm just walking down the road / Early morning sunshine / Tell me all I need to know
25) Why did you paint the walls / Why did you clean the floors / Why did you plaster over / The hole I punched in the door

Answers are in comments.

It's time for another "Hey fraterrisus, what comics are you reading these days?" post. Today I'm going all Academy Awards on you and doing categories, where I'll (mostly) list the top three.( Read more...Collapse )

PSA: My cell phone is broken. Because I use Google Voice, you can still call or text me, but I won't get it unless I'm sitting at my computer at the time, so it's not as effective.

(p.s. Anybody selling a used G2 for cheap?)

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leaving for star island for a week. don't do anything i wouldn't do while i'm gone.

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There's been a bunch of talk recently about how Boston now has a championship in all four major sports in less than a decade, and has anyone else ever done that? ( Read more...Collapse )

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– I understand that I have a serious peeve about entitlement, but there's one way that it affects me on a nearly-daily basis: The doors on the subway train are wide enough for two people to exit at the same time. (Usually.) If the people on the platform that are waiting to get on – when they bother to wait, which is a different peeve – but they hover around the edges of the door, then suddenly only one person can exit at a time. The longer it takes us to get off the train, the longer you have to wait to get on, folks. An ounce of consideration makes everyone's day better, including yours!

It's the engineer in me that sees a way to optimize everyday life that is most pissed off about this, I know. *sigh*

– In a desperate attempt to find new revenue streams, the T has apparently opened an online gift shop.

– If you don't know about it already, How Fucked Is The T is pretty amazing (worksafe URL) and should be in your browser's bookmark toolbar.

– ETA: Breaking news! Google Maps now incorporates the same real-time data, so you can click on a transit station and get upcoming departure times. (Only works in a handful of cities at the moment though Boston is one of them.)

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thirty-five.

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Things I like:

• Unity is kind of nice, actually; the layout feels more optimized for my laptop's widescreen, I'm getting used to the launcher bar, and I haven't had the performance issues that some people have discussed.


• It fixed the odd sound hardware problem I'd been having, where Ubuntu would discover a generic audio card on boot, and then around 60 seconds after startup, discover the "right" audio card.

Meh:

• It boots even faster than it used to before. I have the suspicion, though, that it's doing the Windows thing where it brings up a login screen super-fast, but that's because it started all your system daemons in background/fork mode and they're still loading, so it actually takes forever to load your desktop. So it's not really a net gain.


• Learning new keyboard shortcuts for Unity, some of which are now fairly obligatory since there's no 'Main menu' anymore.

Things I don't like:

• It hasn't fixed my wireless card problem – clearly this is a driver issue and not Ubuntu's fault, but I count on the biannual kernel version bump to also include new drivers, and apparently there hasn't been any progress.


• Unity is still in beta, really; in particular, fullscreen apps and LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice) play weirdly with the external monitor port, and a lot of old gnome apps (like xchat) don't play nicely with the way that Unity wants to show the menubar and notification icons.


• I miss my gnome-panel applets. I found a pretty awesome replacement, but why can't I have gnome-system-monitor in my panel anymore?

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BCG and Emperor Norton's bring you yet another face-melting circus celebration. This time it's at the Armory on Highland Ave in Somerville. Six big shows including two family-friendly matinees! Go buy yer tickets now!

Fri 6/3, Sat 6/4, Fri 6/10, Sat 6/11: 7pm, 18+
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/172754

Sat 6/4, Sat 6/10: 2pm, all-ages
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/172757

(I just bought tickets to the 6/3 show, since I can't make either Saturday night...)

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Andrew Wakefield is speaking at Brandeis tonight.

(ETA: Wakefield is the de-certified British doctor who published the fraudulent articles linking vaccines to autism.)

Readers who feel annoyed by this are free to choose one of the following options:
1. Call Brandeis and ask them why they allowed this nutcase a room. Especially effective if you're an alumnus.
2. Read the above link (but, for the love of all things holy, not the comments)
3. Be this guy.

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so, in light of the FUBAR'd nature of livejournal, i'm migrating over to dreamwidth under the same username. crossposting is on, etc. etc.

This entry was originally posted at http://fraterrisus.dreamwidth.org/814.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Digger has come to a conclusion.

it's a sad day.

lorem ipsum kitteh!

http://placekitten.com/

(hat tip to coraline)

"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" by R.E.M.

It's been a very interesting day for keys.

I'll actually spare you most of the details because they're uninteresting and skip straight to the part for which I turn to you, my dear Intornetz, for help.

Essentially, I stuck my hand into the inside pocket of my winter jacket this morning and found a key ring. It has two keys on it, neither of which I recognize. They aren't labeled with anything that might hint as to their purpose.

This is a novel development. I'm particularly curious about how the keys ended up in the inside pocket of the jacket, which leads one to the conclusion that they were placed in that pocket with some amount of intention; it is unlikely that a pair of keys just fell into the inside pocket, for instance. Naturally someone could have put them there by mistake thinking that it was their jacket, or something of that ilk.

Or, someone tried to slip me their keys (*wink wink, nudge nudge*) but never got around to telling me that they were doing so. Or they hinted at me and I missed it. (I'm not always the most observant dude, that way.)

Based on my memory of the contents of that pocket over the last week or so, I'm guessing that this happened this past weekend. My jacket was in the following places:

• hanging on the door of the coat closet at UDL
• at the Forgery Shoes concert Saturday night
• at CMRD scrimmage Sunday evening

If you have any idea whose keys these are, how they got into my jacket, or what I should do with them, I would very much appreciate a comment on this post or a private email. Just for kicks, I'm going to screen comments, too.

Help me Intornetz!

regyt asks why the world doesn't have a meme where everyone leaves screened comments with what they want to say to to the poster but haven't yet for whatever reason – and I say, indeed, why not? So! Tell me anything you want me to know - about me, about you, about your mom, whatever you like.

Anonymous comments are enabled, and everything is screened. Tell me something you want to tell me, anonymously or not. If you say you want me to unscreen, I will, happily might.

Then do the same, and I will tell you something!

Smoking: If you do not smoke in waking life and dream that you are smoking, then it indicates that you are trying to shield yourself and others against your emotions. You have trouble letting others in. The dream may also be a metaphor for an addictive relationship or habit in your waking life.

---

Smoking: To dream that you are smoking implies that you are refusing to allow others to be too close to you. You are trying to protect yourself from being hurt emotionally.

Cigarettes: To dream that you are smoking or offering a cigarette indicates that you require some down time or time for yourself. It may imply that you are too reliant on someone or something. However if you are against smoking and have this dream, then you need to consider what behaviours you are displaying or what situations you are experiencing that are having a negative influence on your life.

If you have a 978 area-code phone number for me, please don't send text messages to it. My shiny new phone required a more expensive plan that doesn't come with free text messages. However my Google Voice number (617 area code) still works great for texts and doesn't cost me any money. Drop me an email if you have one number but not the other.

(For actual phone calls, either number works, but you may as well delete the 978 number from your phonebook.)

i'm not all that much of a "don't cross the streams" guy when it comes to putting multiple kinds of food on the same plate, it doesn't really bother me at all. but i very much am a guy who likes his salad in a separate bowl, especially when it's covered in a oily dressing that's likely to run.

there just isn't much that mixes well with lettuce. the particular instance that brings this up is a somewhat sloppy lasagne served on the same plate as a Caesar salad.

ew.

Y'all were so helpful when I was looking for blue body paint a few weeks ago, so I'm trying again:

You know those T-shirts with the clenched fist that say "power" or "resist" or "pride" or whatever? Something like this.

I need one of those but I need it by Friday (and don't want to pay $25 for it). Help?

I finally got sick enough of my shoulder hurting that I've been going into the gym at school to exercise it. Nothing special, but a few minutes of cardio to warm up, some ab work, and then a couple of shoulder exercises to try to build up some of the muscle. I'm largely doing the same sorts of things that the physical therapist gave me to do back when I injured the thing in the first place*. It's definitely helping!

Unfortunately, I also twisted my ankle a couple of weeks ago while refereeing. (Apparently I haven't been posting so much here recently, so no link for you.) So doing cardio has been hard. Yesterday I tried to do my cardio on a rowing machine instead of a treadmill, and the result is that my ankle is sore and my lower back hurts a lot too.

Anyway, yay for getting into the gym, but boo on picking up nagging little injuries.

*: see here. Holy shit, that was five years ago?!

Dear IEEE:

For a society of engineers, you have some issues with your membership renewal process.

1. If you're going to send a locked PDF to my email address, sending a notice to that same email address a couple days ahead of time with the password to that PDF isn't actually secure in any way, shape, or form.

2. Why did you send me a PDF renewal notice that says "Please respond online. Do not mail this document back to us" ? Why couldn't you just say that in the email?

3. You might want to update your online shopping checkout form so that it won't accept credit cards with an expiration date of 2008. Just sayin'.

No love, fraterrisus