Mine started out well. Friday night I dyed my hair a dark auburn that's actually not unlike the color it was in this user icon picture from 2008. More recent pictures start here. Then I relaxed in bed reading Slow Fall to Dawn, Stephen Leigh's first novel (Stephen and I went over his "brag shelf" last time I visited and he was kind enough to give me this along with other early paperbacks). It was really quite a lovely evening.

Saturday I went to a casual adult dance class that turned out to be basically modern dance, with four other women including the instructor. Just an hour, which compared to the 1.5 hour classes I mostly took at the Gallery seems like just enough time to get warmed up, but it was still nice. Plus it was a sunny day, as you can tell from the pictures on this post. I spent some of the afternoon working on Wellspring, and some wrapping presents for the families my company has adopted for Christmas, then got ready to go out for the evening.

My housemate, Kate, joined me and another friend, Steve (I know a lot of Steves), in heading to a Japanese/Korean restaurant for dinner and on to the Cincinnati Fantasy Group's Christmas Bash for Saturday night. Sadly, sleigh and parsleigh were unable to be there, but still I was able to introduce Kate and Steve (who are both SF writers themselves) to many fine CFG folk, and I was of course delighted to see people as well. There was much pressuring for me and Brian to come down for the Extended CFG New Year's celebration (and hinting from Becca that we should contribute Belgian Waffles to New Year's Day brunch), and I was in touch with Brian by text about that and an immunology question from Becca (a cat has caught H1N1 and she wanted to know how - Brian looked it up then explained that's a do-able mutation from the avian flu, H5N1, which cats have caught before). Steve helpfully drove us home to Yellow Springs, and we all agreed it was an enjoyable night!

Sunday I dealt with an Unfortunate Incident about a Mouse and generally had a bit of a down day, though I also cooked a pork roast with a nice rub of Brian's concoction (He'd left a bag of it in the freezer) that had been setting in for about three days, along with some apple, pineapple, onion, and carrots. Oh, and, separately, a butternut squash. I felt better after I spoke to Bri on the phone for a bit while stuff was cooking, and Kate made a really nice salad with a tahini dressing to go along, so dinner was good, and then I had a decent meeting of the African-American Cultural Works group, planning the local Kwanzaa celebration for December the 26th. I turned in early though.

Today has been a bit better. This morning I sent an article about Kwanzaa to the local paper, then after work I got in a workout at the gym. I followed that with another workout at home for my ankle and shoulder physical therapy (playing with the Bosu a wonderful friend got me as an early Christmas present) while cooking something experimental for dinner. A little more work on Wellspring as well, some updates to my website (mostly putting stuff back up that got missed on the last move, like this), and just now a chat with rikhei!

You all are too far away, I swear.

How was your weekend?

• 12:22 Fructose (too much) + Fiber (not enough) decreases insulin sensitivity. Details: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM #
• 17:41 Edward Gorey's Trouble with Tribbles: www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/tribbles/series.php?view=current #
• 17:41 Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants
  www.copyblogger.com/james-chartrand-underpants/ #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

After a friend posted on FB about "nice guys", I was going to write a post about what a misnomer it was, and how being self-absorbed, sycophantic and unable to empathize doesn't make you nice, it makes you an asshole on par with the bad attitude boys... even if you open doors.

However, then I read a link to a "Nice Guys" post, and I wanted to put down my feelings about that.

It starts out really well, pointing out the differences between men who are, in her estimation, genuinely nice and "Nice Guys" as a category - people who use being nice, in their terms, as a badge of entrance to a woman's naughty bits, and are outraged that someone could use any other factor for dating.

I am totally behind her on the idea that "Nice Guys" like these define their rejection by the "object" of their desire in terms of how messed up the girl/guy is, how they prefer a bad boy who will beat or abuse them vs their "Nice Guy" selves. Missing the point that disrespecting a person's right to choose their partner is the opposite of nice.

However, it quickly devolves into a rambling 3-page diatribe that I'm pretty uncomfortable with. She uses three pages to lay out the "Nice Guy" in general, with lots of "they tend to not clean themselves, because they think being nice should over-ride being clean" (a very unlikely reason for a person's hygiene issues).

As she delves into the nitty-gritty of sarcastic responses, inability to pick up socks, and the need for a "sympathy fuck", I can't help but think that she's basing her definition on one person who was particularly terrible to her. And he was clearly a total tool, but I think she's conflating a few different types of people that (surprise) sometimes Venn diagram together. Not every "Nice Guy" can't dress themselves or bathe, and they don't all use the same tactics. Not every "Nice Guy" is directionless.

All that said, I did enjoy her list of suggestions for people who think they might fall into that "Nice Guy" category. Most of them boil down to this: Stop assuming another person doesn't have a perfectly valid and just right to their own opinions. This was particularly good:

"Don't for the love of pete be Mr. Bad Touch. If she just squirmed over a few inches, it's not because she wants you to close the distance.

Flirting without expecting a return on investment is ok. Active seduction when there are clear signs that it is welcome is ok. Trying to constantly slip in "innocent" gropes, innuendo, kisses, or anything else when she's not interested is the adult equivalent of "are we there yet? are we there yet? how about now? how about now?""

When she said "You might think she was oversensitive, but you have no idea what it is like to be a woman in a world where we have to deal with unwelcome aggressive attention all the time" I wanted to say back, "That's totally true, but even moreso, you just plain don't know what it is like to be that person. Even if you somehow grok the former, a person's life is way complicated - don't assume you know how they should react to you."

The most useful part of her post for all people, Nice Guy or not, was this:

Bring something to the table besides basic human decency. I'm not talking about money. Be responsible for yourself, your life, and your happiness. Have good things in your life that you want to share with a wonderful woman, rather than expecting her to fill the holes in your life.

EDIT: Pleased to see that in her redux (seriously, is the word that common?) she said exactly that, that it was a rant that came from a particularly bad experience. It's better for that context.

We are fast approaching the deadline of December 22 to vote for TAFF!

Short version: Go get a ballot and vote! For us, even!

Long version:

The trans-atlantic fan fund sends fans one way or the other across the ocean each year, to either a major event in North America or to one in the UK. This year's TAFF delegate(s) will go to Eastercon in London. See http://www.taff.org.uk for more info.

I have never been on a visit to London. Neither has Brian. We would very much like to go meet fellow fen there, and would probably extend our trip to Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, as well as other destinations in England.

TAFF, like other fan funds, is supported by donations. Any sf fan who wishes to vote is requested to send along at least a small donation to the fund with your vote. Other than that, any fan can vote (if you don't think the TAFF administrators will recognize your name, you are asked to name a well-known fan who knows you and can vouch for your fannishness. This is to keep us from passing out ballots on the street corner, but is not intended to discourage fen from voting. If you do this, you have to name someone other than ourselves or any of the people who nominated us for TAFF). The voting deadline is December 22.

The TAFF ballot is available online at http://www.taff.org.uk/ballots/taff2010.html. You can print it and send it with a check to vote. Or, if you want to vote online, you can; there are directions at the bottom of the ballot. It involves sending a paypal donation (please add extra to cover paypal fees) to one of the administrators ( e.g. Chris Garcia at garcia [at] computerhistory.org) with all your voting info in the paypal comment. If Brian and I get chosen we'll make sure there's a full online voting form in future years.

We are committed to going to Eastercon if selected, and to administering the fan fund diligently (raising money for it and running the selection process) for two years, as well as of course producing a trip report. As to other destinations we might take on our trip, we're not quite sure, but they would definitely include Edinburgh, Scotland. Here is our platform from the ballot:

Brian Gray & Anne KG Murphy
He's a microbiologist. She's an engineer. Together they run cons, playtest games, sing and dance, concoct gustatory delights, write zines and blogs, perform sketch comedy, and generally have a good time doing anything from reading sf to chopping wood. (We didn't say they aren't weird. Oh YES, they're weird.) They promise to use their powers only for good, and not run scientific experiments upon unsuspecting international fandom... however tempting that might be. But as trained observers, they look forward to documenting cultural differences across the Atlantic divide in a trip report. An eeeeeevil trip report. With photographic evidence. And tissue samples...

Nominated by: John Scalzi, Steven H Silver, Geri Sullivan (North America), Paul Cornell, Cheryl Morgan (Europe)

You can also see more about us, and our friendly competition (Frank and Brianna Spacekat Wu), at Chris Garcia's fanzine The Drink Tank, issue 231.


flinx and I thank you for your support.

My ethernet switch just burned out. I've got to switch an ethernet cable between computers to do my shipping now. Has somebody local got a spare ethernet switch sitting around that they don't want? If you'd be willing to part with it, I'd appreciate it. Newegg has one for $13, so I'd be willing to pay $7 for yours if you don't want to just give it away.

We welcomed baby Miriam today at 1:07 this afternoon. (Middle name not yet decided-we're strongly leaning towards one, but not committed yet.)

Her basic stats:

8 lbs
21 inches
14 inch head
APGARS 9 and 10

Real birth story forthcoming. Along with photographs.

How Not to be Seen
Originally uploaded by Dave Hogg.

"Mr. Nesbitt has learned the first lesson of not being seen - not to stand up. However, he has chosen a very obvious piece of cover."

*piano explodes*

Seriously, there's a piano sitting in the middle of a vacant lot in downtown Detroit. There's a great short story begging to be written here, called "Urban Mozart".

A friend of mine asked me an interesting question recently. She just started working for a technology consulting firm. She is not a recruiter, more of an administrator. But she asked me how a consulting/recruiting firm should go about finding new talent.

I think lots of us in the technology field have stories about head-hunters who've annoyed us, or who have used unprofessional tactics to reach us. Mostly I find them annoying, but her question gave me pause. How would I prefer to encounter a potentially interesting new job? Both when I'm looking for work, and when I'm not looking?

I had some ideas, but I thought I'd throw her questions to a larger audience since I have a lot of technology people on my friends list. What would be the most effective way to get your attention, whether or not you were looking for a job? Given a consulting company whose goal is to find qualified people who want to work there, rather than having to search and search and search and come up with candidates that often turn out to be less-than-ideal. What kind of package/work environment would really attract you?

am i wrong to be suspicious of a korma recipe that calls for ketchup as one of the ingredients?

Sex toy for dogs(NSFW, obv.)

ION I have a job interview next week.

One of the fun things that followed the anti-Me campaign was that several people sent me their stories of being hounded by simple-minded children. To be honest, most of the stories were WAY worse that what I went through last week, so it really put things in perspective.

The one that really made the most impact on me, however, was a school friend named Luke.

You see, Luke apparently annoyed a member of one of his project groups at school; a group that finished its project and disbanded months ago. Not especially enamoured with his group experience, Luke moved on. Group-mate Vamsi Kancharla, however, did not.

Now let me begin by saying this…I have no problem taking folks to task over the web or really any public medium. In fact, it is probably one of the things I find the Internet most useful for; once we suffered indignities or injustices quietly and without numbers to help spur change. With the Internet, we can broadcast our displeasure and join with others similarly disenfranchised to make a difference of some sort. That belief, though, is predicated on a few things:

1. You must drop some knowledge on us. You can’t just bitch about how airline A sucks and they can rot for all eternity in the fiery depths of hell…no, you have to explain what happened and give us a chance to determine if a sleight happened at all. Vamsi Kancharla’s temper tantrum did not do that. He devoted 10 of his 12 twitter messages on @vam_si to telling Luke to fuck off (he has since cleaned it up, no doubt because the lack of wisdom in linking his homepage to his tantrums became apparent to him), but none to what Luke did that was so terrible. Perhaps Luke is the worst human alive, but the world will never know.
2. You have to display maturity and intelligence. I initially used the word wit there, because my method is to try to be witty and amusing, but you don’t have to be…but you do have to be mature enough to present a case that the public can get behind. Another friend recently got dicked by a travel agency and ended up receiving great effect from very simply laying out her complaints to a listening public and allowing the public to decide what to do. No humor, no snark, just a mature (if not frustrated) explanation. Tantrums get you nowhere.
3. The web has a long memory. Vamsi went out of his way to ensure that his uber-witty baldman website was linked to Luke’s name; check out the metatags lifted directly from Luke’s own homepage and repetitive use of Luke’s name. Clearly his hope was that a prospective employer, friend, or associate would run across this page (which, for the record, has failed so far), but it would take a moron to look at that page more than 3 or 4 seconds and not realize what it is. But if Vamsi’s name ever gets associated with that site (like, by his name being listed at the domain registrar for example...or if a bunch of people were to link to baldman.org with Vamsi’s name as the link text like so: Vamsi Kancharla *cough*) then his name gets to be associated with childish tantrums, really poor web design, and poor reasoning skills. Not a wise plan.

In the end, who is he hurting? I can’t imagine many people have even seen this site, or take it seriously, so I have a hard time considering Luke an injured party here. I mean, annoyed party, sure, but it’s hard to be injured by the Internet equivalent of being called a ‘poopy head’. No, the only person really getting hurt here is Vamsi himself…because in the time he has wasted on a stupid vendetta, he could have been taking much needed web design courses and (looking at his resume) boosting his GPA.

I’m just sayin’

[Edited 2009-12-11 19:42] Vamsi has taken the relatively wise steps of protecting his twitter feed and removing his antagonist site. He has, however, redirected baldman.org to my website...but...well...since I've been shaving my head bald for several months now, it seems rather fitting. Good times.

[Edited 2009-12-11 21:13] And the antagonist site is back up, but now Vamsi has gone ahead and put his name on it (now that he's been outed, that is). Manic much? Oh, and he explains his side in commentary where he a) points out that it was all an inside joke, b) posts from the same IP as the anonymous poster to prove that he wasn't the anonymous poster, and c) makes sure to note that I'm old. Clearly, I have wronged the boy.

[Edited 2009-12-12 07:49] It's as if the universe has given me a new toy, he just keeps coming back! Now he has posted a largely incoherent rant, and updated baldman.org to point out that I, too, am bald! You guys might be bored by this, but I get the feeling he never will be! I hope not, this is like a play.

For one, do you take measures to protect it?

Some people I know ask people not to use their last name online. Other people guard their web servers from being trolled or scanned. Some people use different names at all of their social media sites.

Personally, I turned off search engine access to my LJ and I don't usually post my full name and my most common user ID together. Otherwise, I do nothing.

Second, how effective do you think you are at maintaining the privacy online that you are comfortable with?

As a favor to my more private friends, even though my picasa gallery conveniently recognizes the faces of the hundreds of people in my gallery, I do not allow it to make that public. I do not expect other people to do the same for me.

Partly, I am protected by my rather common name. When you go to IMDB, you have to hit the sixth or seventh iteration before you find me, and that's just my field. Now that the Ved Bok film company site doesn't exist online (which I worked so hard to make popular on google), you can't find me in google, under my name, for multiple pages, which I think is sufficient. Frankly, I think what privacy I have is solely related to my irrelevancy for most people.

I'm not particularly worried about it. I treasure the ability (such as we have) to make some things private if I want, but I also enjoy not needing it.

I am resting on the comfort of who I am. As a reasonably liberal-minded person in a creative industry, I have some flexibility. I don't make public incriminating photos (except in the embarrassingly geeky way), and my online persona, in my belief, is identical to who I am in real life. Perhaps slightly more pedantic. I'm a white male nigh-married professional with no major disabilities, unsurprising hobbies and political beliefs for my career - I have the luxury of being myself and not worrying too much about what a future employer might find.

Of course I'm also idealistic enough to believe that ANY job in which I have to completely bury who I am in an utter falseness will A) totally suck, and B) never work out. I don't need to chat about who I am to the people I work for, but I don't hide it, either, and I'm not very good at lying anymore.

Ultimately, I think that everything is available to anyone willing to search long enough or pay enough for it. I think any actual privacy we have is the illusion afforded to us by our irrelevancy to the vast majority of the population, which is why we know every tiny little detail about famous people. They've lost the only real protection we have.

How is it with you?

Do you not understand the concept of a prescribed course of antibiotics? The rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in the world is caused by bacteria that are only lightly dosed with an antibiotic and survives! When they do that in your body, you're still carrying around a version of the same sickness with a higher tolerance for what you were taking.

I truly cannot understand the mindset of otherwise intelligent people that only take part of a course of antibiotics. You're not killing them all! You're breeding them stronger! That's why they always have "Don't stop taking this just because you're feeling better" label on them.

Sigh.

for some reason, i have never managed to buy the same type of space heater twice. i own four of them now, all bought at different times, all relatively inexpensive, all scattered to different places. one of them is here at work. the brand name is wexford and i tell you all, for your edification, that is is the most frightening space heater that i've ever encountered because the knob that controls the heat/fan keeps falling off. it's easy enough to replace, but it's so flimsy that it makes me wonder each time what else about this thing is poorly made!

I thought this may be of interest to the community.

Cory Doctorow reports that Canadian SF author Dr. Peter Watts was stopped and searched in Port Huron while returning to Canada after a trip to Nebraska. Dr. Watts reportedly got out of the car to question the nature of the search and was beaten, pepper sprayed and arrested on a felony charge of assaulting an officer.

There's a story at boingboing (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html#more) along with information on fund raising for a defense fund.

Adults shamed a girl into taking her own life because she texted a photo of her breasts to a teenage boy. Are those adults someone who I would want to have in my life? No. Do they have part of the blame? Yes. Do they deserve scorn and condemnation? Yes. Should they visit her grave in penitence? Yes.

Did they kill her?

NO. This is so frustrating, it makes me ashamed to be a liberal. Since moral panic led to this, it does not help to add moral panic in reverse.

Hope Witsell is to blame for hanging herself, not because she showed a boy her breasts, but because she hanged herself.

Nobody likes you? I've been there. What you need to realize is that nobody who is in your life right now matters. Fuck your parents, fuck your teachers, fuck your peers. That was all an accident of birth. Soon you'll get a new life with people who you choose, who are not worthless. In the meantime you can dull the pain by choosing to stop placing value on them.

And that's what your supporters should do with you, to dull the pain now.

Who in the world is taking their kid to Buffalo Wild Wings to see santa?

"If you're a good girl, I'll leave drumsticks in your stocking!"

(Don't make that weird. ...weirder.)

I lost someone I know on livejournal today.

The reason why is that they pointed to something that was rather horrific and said, "HA! That be funny!" I turned around and said, "No, it isn't."

They said, "Chill." I said, "Why, didn't you just approve of this message by laughing at it?"

Instead of taking that as "Wow, what you just did was sexist" they took it as, "Wow, what you are is sexist."

Since I didn't get a chance to reply to her last post let me just state right now.

I have never, ever, EVER, written anything about sexual assault and tried to play it off for laughs. I don't play video games that use sexual assault for laughs. I don't read books that use sexual assault as a joke. Why? Because we live in a rape culture and I don't want to help perpetuate it.

Am I perfect? No, but I hope when I make a mistake people tell me that I made a mistake so I can not make it again.

Not that she's going to see this, but in the end I guess I'm fine with that. I'm disappointed, and maybe I would like to apologize for hurting her because she was reminded of horrible things (which makes it all the more jarring that she didn't have sympathy for the person in the video), but in the end I stand by what I say.