snarp | Reading

Today is our 24th anniversary. Scott took the day off so we could hang out together. We went into Ypsilanti to do some Ingress and got lunch at a diner called The Bomber.

Cordelia spent most of the afternoon with one of her friends downtown. She kept calling us and asking us to suggest things to do. I couldn't come up with anything she liked. They'd already gotten ice cream and didn't want any other type of food. They didn't want to window shop. They didn't want to actually shop. They didn't want to visit any museums. Pokemon Go and Ingress are too out of style to even be considered even if they had either on their phones.

Yesterday, Scott got the lawn mowed and cleaned out one of the two Time Capsule drives. The big problem we've got is that his hard drive is over a terabyte of family photos and videos. We may need to dedicate one of the drives to his machine and use the other for me and Cordelia, but that will require that Scott actually pay attention to what the program is doing and be willing to address the matter rapidly if one drive or the other stops working.

We watched two library DVDs last night and then returned them today (long, long waitlists). Both were amusing in different ways, and we even got Cordelia to join us in watching one of them.

Scott bewilders me by watching TV episodes on his laptop while he's also watching his brother playing games with active voices (and explosions). I think he flips back and forth in terms of the visuals. When I'm in the same room with him, I keep trying to follow what's going on just by listening, and... Yeah. Not working.

I used the c-PAP for a chunk of last night and didn't have any sneezing or runny nose today. Hopefully, that's done. I'm not sure how much the Ativan is actually helping and how much is just that I've got more time for sleeping to make up for the poor quality. I'm having trouble, when on my side, with getting adequate head support without dislodging the nasal pillows. I very much doubt that a different mask would help given that it seems to be the shape of my face changing depending on which bit the pillow is pressing against.

And now we're trying to come up with dinner ideas...

james_davis_nicoll

I finally found out where I misshelved this.

(no idea what review series I can fit it into)

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5934500.html

james_davis_nicoll

I can see my Kobo has about 300 more titles on it than my laptop Calibre does (because I got the Kobo well before the laptop). How do I move the titles that are on the Kobo to Calibre?

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5934302.html

james_davis_nicoll

One issue: I really suck at giving people their free reviews. Would appreciate pointers on how to suck less.

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5933910.html

james_davis_nicoll

There is an interested party. Will update if this changes.

Jasmine's closets are filled with the late MV's comic collection. She's been trying to find home for the 30 cartons of comics for the last decade. If anyone would like them, they are free for the picking up (in bulk, not piece meal. Sorry.).

If she cannot find a taker in the next week, they are going out to recycling.

Please contact me here or at jdnicoll at panix dot com for more details.

Clarification: you can take individual boxes if you like. You just cannot take individual issues.

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5933698.html

erinptah_feed

Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/monday-works-roundup-62617/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=3835

But I’m A Cat Person
Be Indivisible, Caring, and Proud (art | Timothy, Emma, Sparrow, Bianca, Cohen, Bennett, Jany, Henriette | worksafe)

Rick and Morty
Needs Moar Mortys (sketch | Morty/Morty | worksafe)

General/Miscellaneous
Paint Clouds (multicolor textures for sale, worksafe)
Peaks Frame (art nouveau frame, worksafe)

This Week in But I’m A Cat Person:
Last of the sketch revisions. Cover for a brand-new chapter.

This Week in Leif & Thorn:
Our heroes chat about their backgrounds while listening to karaoke, and Leif stresses over his song choice.

Filed under: But I'm A Cat Person, Leif & Thorn, Works Roundup Tagged: Doctor Who, graphics, Muppets, Rick and Morty, textures

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/monday-works-roundup-62617/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=3835

james_davis_nicoll

Their time on the lam sparked a giant rodent romance that gave us Neil, Geddy and Alex

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5933450.html

james_davis_nicoll

Books Received June 17 — 23

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5933151.html

torachan

1. Not only is it my day off tomorrow, but it's my birthday, too! That was a nice coincidence.

2. I bought a couple manga tonight and I have to say, I am so happy I finally discovered how to buy ebooks on Amazon Japan. Not only do I prefer the interface of Amazon to the iTunes store (I hate that you can only buy things through iTunes itself and not a webpage), but I can use my own credit card rather than having to get someone to buy me a gift card. With iTunes I always hesitated to buy anything because once I used up the gift card amount, I would have to ask someone to buy me one again, and I'd have to pay up front for it. With Amazon, I am really casual about buying manga, because it's just like $4 here and there. I also like how it's just automatically downloaded to my kindle app and I can load it on my device or delete it in seconds, rather than having to go through iTunes (again).

3. Jasper was being super cute and silly while he was napping tonight. He actually got even sillier after I posted this picture. (I didn't think it was possible.)

rydra_wong

sashayed: It’s Not That Bad to F— Up While Calling Your Senator About Something Important

To prove this point, she presents actual transcripts of messages she left on her senators' voicemail, with her reaction gifs.

Sample:

Hi, uh, Sen. [Name]. And staff. [Nervous laughter.] My name is [Rave Sashayed] and I’m a constituent from [place where I vote]. I just wanted to call to thank you for standing up against the AHCA in the Senate. I–it’s an incredibly cruel and stupid and – and vicious bill. You know? And I’m not, like – a person who used to call her Senators all the time! know? I’m, like, a normal person! [Nervous laughter] But this – it’s crazy to me that this bill could become legislation. It directly affects me, it directly affects the people I love. I mean, it kicks millions of people off of Medicare for a tax break for – I mean. You know this. You’re. Uh. A Senator. So. You’ve read the bill. Um.

I would like to remind people that I phoned my MP's office and actually stated (completely incorrectly and randomly) that I lived in a place which said MP does not represent, had this pointed out to me and had to correct myself. AND YET (like Sashayed) I LIVE.

Right now, it looks like the Senate is wavering. Republican Senators are saying they "just don't know" if they've got the votes to pass the AHCA.

If you can't do phoning, you can't do phoning (I am sometimes a person who can't do phoning). But if you can, now's the time. IT IS OKAY TO PHONE AND FUCK IT UP. As long as you can communicate that you are opposed to the AHCA, that's enough.

Also, have some MOTHERFUCKING ICONS (photos of the ADAPT protestors being arrested during their protest at Mitch McConnell's office).

unsounded_feed

Posted by Ashley

http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/ch12-p67/

Didn't escape unscathed after all. Fortunate for Rahm, maybe: one less pain in the ass old friend to come sniffing around for favours.

http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/ch12-p67/

erinptah_feed

Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/erin-watches-scandal-s6-continued-episodes-6-9/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=3837

Our story so far:

PEOTUS was shot and assassinated on election night. Olivia Pope is on the case! So far she has accused three (3) people of ordering the killing, and been explicitly proved wrong about two (2). Meanwhile, the Electoral College is left to decide between the horrible, self-serving, politically-soulless VPEOTUS or the horrible, self-serving, politically-soulless runner-up ticket.

Onward!

—

Episode 6 gives us campaign-era flashbacks of Olivia’s dad reconnecting with an old girlfriend, who turns out to be a lure under the control of…someone.

Different flashback: Olivia asking her dad for advice on how to handle Mellie. Hey, remember when Olivia’s dad orchestrated the murder of Mellie’s son? (The grief put her for months into a near-suicidal depression.) I’m sure his advice will be great.

Olivia: “She’s from California. Why don’t they like her?” Dad: “I can’t answer that.” Ooh, ooh, pick me! Because Californians hate Republican policies, and she’s a Republican!

They keep talking about “calling San Benito County” as if the voting within states is calculated the same as national voting, as if you’re guaranteed a certain number of points (and no more) once you win a county. Even if Mellie got every vote in San Benito (pop. 58,000), that doesn’t mean she couldn’t fall behind once all the ballots are counted in San Mateo (765,000), or Contra Costa (11.13 million), or, I don’t know, Los Angeles (10.2 million).

Dad Pope was behind the Vargas shooting! Although not on his own initiative, it was pushed by the Someones, who had the girlfriend hostage. And then they went to far in taunting Dad Pope about his compromising attachment to her, so he shot her in front of them. Good grief.

—

Episode 7 finds Olivia telling Huck to kill her father. For the second time. He helpfully reminds her that the first time didn’t end well.

Huck confronts Dad on a subway platform, openly aiming a gun at him, and there’s a lot of yelling, which echoes beautifully. For some reason there are zero other people on the platform, and nobody is concerned about metro security cameras capturing this shouted confession of killing Vargas.

Accusations of a mole in Olivia’s company lead to Huck and Quinn aiming guns at each other’s faces. What a team.

Investigation by Huck leads to him threatening his current girlfriend with a syringe of something nasty, all while going “this is hard for me, but you’re making me do this!” Just in case you were starting to feel sympathetic toward him.

Olivia is back for the third time to accusing her dad of Vargas’ murder, but she’s passionately insisting that it was all his idea, based on the admittedly reasonable evidence that he murdered the girlfriend who was being used to manipulate him. Huck counters by passionately insisting that Dad Pope has changed because he was in love and now he’s in pain and…listen, buddy, both him and you are still 100% willing to be violent-to-murderous the minute you feel threatened. You haven’t changed, and people, especially women, should stay away from you.

(I would say “random civilian women,” but this girlfriend turns out to have been planted to shoot a witness, which she gets away with because none of these geniuses thought to frisk her, and, wow, we are never going to get any case-of-the-week episodes this season, are we.)

—

The Someones got to Abby. That explains why she was pushing for Cyrus to get the death penalty ASAP, huh.

In flashback she asks Cyrus “how did you know Frankie was the one, how did you know he could go all the way?” We’ve seen this in The West Wing — Josh asking Leo how he knew Bartlett was his guy, because Josh had found Santos and was starting to think Santos could be his guy. But Abby isn’t thinking she’s found a candidate — she’s thinking she could be the candidate.

Anyway, the Someones offered her $3 million with no paper trail and no explanation beyond “we like you and want to support your eventual candidacy.” And she took it! What’s next, Abby, sending the money to a the next Nigerian prince in your email?

—

So Huck’s evil girlfriend shot the witness, and then shot him, but in a weird way that seemed designed to miss all vital organs. I figured she was deliberately not-killing him for some reason. (He was flat on the floor, she had lots of spare bullets, it’s not like she could miss the heart and lungs.)

Then she sticks him in the trunk of a car and pushes it into a lake. Apparently she’s just incompetent.

We get a nice hallucination-sequence where Huck is back in Pope HQ, with the mental images of his team members talking him through how to escape. And he does it! Not only did she not kill him, she didn’t even shoot him hard enough for the blood loss to slow him down!

…setting aside that part of my disbelief, I do actually like the bit.

Hey, was anyone worried that there hadn’t been enough graphic on-screen torture this season? Well, don’t sweat it. Quinn’s got you covered.

Olivia gets a pep-up talk about how she’s a “miracle worker,” from another of these people who hasn’t seen the show. And sure enough, they find Huck — by tracking the phone of the dead witness, which murder-girlfriend wasn’t smart enough to chuck in a dumpster on her way to the body disposal! That’s not you working a miracle, that’s your opponent being a complete moron.

Gonna wrap up this post here, purely because my head hurts from hitting this desk so hard.

Filed under: Erin Watches Tagged: Scandal

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/erin-watches-scandal-s6-continued-episodes-6-9/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=3837

erinptah

Our story so far:

Onward!

---

Episode 6 gives us campaign-era flashbacks of Olivia's dad reconnecting with an old girlfriend, who turns out to be a lure under the control of...someone.

Different flashback: Olivia asking her dad for advice on how to handle Mellie. Hey, remember when Olivia's dad orchestrated the murder of Mellie's son? (The grief put her for months into a near-suicidal depression.) I'm sure his advice will be great.

Olivia: "She's from California. Why don't they like her?" Dad: "I can't answer that." Ooh, ooh, pick me! Because Californians hate Republican policies, and she's a Republican!

They keep talking about "calling San Benito County" as if the voting within states is calculated the same as national voting, as if you're guaranteed a certain number of points (and no more) once you win a county. Even if Mellie got every vote in San Benito (pop. 58,000), that doesn't mean she couldn't fall behind once all the ballots are counted in San Mateo (765,000), or Contra Costa (11.13 million), or, I don't know, Los Angeles (10.2 million).

---

Episode 7 finds Olivia telling Huck to kill her father. For the second time. He helpfully reminds her that the first time didn't end well.

Huck confronts Dad on a subway platform, openly aiming a gun at him, and there's a lot of yelling, which echoes beautifully. For some reason there are zero other people on the platform, and nobody is concerned about metro security cameras capturing this shouted confession of killing Vargas.

Accusations of a mole in Olivia's company lead to Huck and Quinn aiming guns at each other's faces. What a team.

Investigation by Huck leads to him threatening his current girlfriend with a syringe of something nasty, all while going "this is hard for me, but you're making me do this!" Just in case you were starting to feel sympathetic toward him.

Olivia is back for the third time to accusing her dad of Vargas' murder, but she's passionately insisting that it was all his idea, based on the admittedly reasonable evidence that he murdered the girlfriend who was being used to manipulate him. Huck counters by passionately insisting that Dad Pope has changed because he was in love and now he's in pain and...listen, buddy, both him and you are still 100% willing to be violent-to-murderous the minute you feel threatened. You haven't changed, and people, especially women, should stay away from you.

(I would say "random civilian women," but this girlfriend turns out to have been planted to shoot a witness, which she gets away with because none of these geniuses thought to frisk her, and, wow, we are never going to get any case-of-the-week episodes this season, are we.)

---

The Someones got to Abby. That explains why she was pushing for Cyrus to get the death penalty ASAP, huh.

In flashback she asks Cyrus "how did you know Frankie was the one, how did you know he could go all the way?" We've seen this in The West Wing -- Josh asking Leo how he knew Bartlett was his guy, because Josh had found Santos and was starting to think Santos could be his guy. But Abby isn't thinking she's found a candidate -- she's thinking she could be the candidate.

Anyway, the Someones offered her $3 million with no paper trail and no explanation beyond "we like you and want to support your eventual candidacy." And she took it! What's next, Abby, sending the money to a the next Nigerian prince in your email?

---

So Huck's evil girlfriend shot the witness, and then shot him, but in a weird way that seemed designed to miss all vital organs. I figured she was deliberately not-killing him for some reason. (He was flat on the floor, she had lots of spare bullets, it's not like she could miss the heart and lungs.)

Then she sticks him in the trunk of a car and pushes it into a lake. Apparently she's just incompetent.

We get a nice hallucination-sequence where Huck is back in Pope HQ, with the mental images of his team members talking him through how to escape. And he does it! Not only did she not kill him, she didn't even shoot him hard enough for the blood loss to slow him down!

...setting aside that part of my disbelief, I do actually like the bit.

Hey, was anyone worried that there hadn't been enough graphic on-screen torture this season? Well, don't sweat it. Quinn's got you covered.

Olivia gets a pep-up talk about how she's a "miracle worker," from another of these people who hasn't seen the show. And sure enough, they find Huck -- by tracking the phone of the dead witness, which murder-girlfriend wasn't smart enough to chuck in a dumpster on her way to the body disposal! That's not you working a miracle, that's your opponent being a complete moron.

Gonna wrap up this post here, purely because my head hurts from hitting this desk so hard.

james_davis_nicoll

Helot-class American travellers may have reading material scrutinized by the stalwart patriots of the TSA.</>

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5932994.html

the_rck

I used the c-PAP for three and a half hours last night. Right now, I'm sniffling and sneezing. I fear the two are connected. I washed the reservoir and nasal pillows pretty thoroughly on Friday. I didn't want to try to wash out the hose, but I think I'm going to have to because this makes three occasions when I've had severe allergies starting the morning after using the c-PAP.

I finished two fics yesterday. Well, one is certainly done, barring a thorough proofread. It's gen, so that's not nearly as hard to arrange as it might otherwise be. The other needs a second opinion if I can find someone willing given the moderately obscure fandom and the explicit and potentially squicky content. I've got a couple of people I can ask, but I was a little too fried last night to do it.

We went out for frozen lemonade at Sweetwaters last night. Sweetwaters gives coupons to the middle schools to hand out to every child who gets at least three A's on their final report card, and the school put the coupons in the envelopes with the report cards. Cordelia got hers and got a cinnamon roll. I got a frozen lemonade and a chocolate croissant. Scott got a ginger tea.

We finished that up a little after 8:00, and as we were just across the street from Plum Market, we went over there for the half price bakery goods.

It's been very cool, in the low 70s, so Scott opened a lot of our windows early yesterday afternoon. They stayed open all night and are still open. I don't think this relates to my sneezing because that didn't start until the windows had been open for about twenty hours.

Cordelia has been doing movie marathons. She's currently got about a dozen DVDs from the library. Of course, mostly what she's been doing is listening to her Hamilton CDs over and over (those were a gift from Scott's brother and his family). We listened to a little of that in the car last night, on the way to and from Sweetwaters. I still can't say that it does anything for me, but I'm glad Cordelia has something she's really passionate about.

Both of our Time Capsule storage drives are insisting that they're too full to allow backups. The program is supposed to delete old backups as needed in order to keep making current backups, and we have backups going back at least two years. At this point, anything from 2015 can absolutely go. One of the drives has a terabyte of storage, and the other has three. We have no idea what's going on to make them say they only have a few megabytes of space left. Scott thinks that wiping them is probably going to be necessary. We'll start with just one in case we need the backups on the other before we have clean backups on the first. Scott keeps saying that he needs a lot of time to do this and then getting cranky with me when I mention that it needs to be done (and later today he will be more cranky because I didn't make him do it while he had time).

Maybe he can figure out how to get Cordelia's laptop to backup via Time Machine, too. We've never managed that, and at this point, she's actually got stuff she'd be devastated to lose. It wasn't so important when she was seven.

james_davis_nicoll

Rogue Queen by L. Sprague de Camp

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5932704.html

torachan

1. The city fireworks show was tonight and it was sooooooo loud and really scared the kitties, but they've all come out of hiding now and seem to be back to normal. I gave them lots of treats when they finally came out.

2. McDonald's has these really tasty blueberry cream pies right now. Carla loves the strawberry ones, too, and has gotten them a bunch, but while I thought those were okay, I wasn't super into them. But these blueberry ones are so good! And it's weird, because I usually like strawberry more than blueberry, but idk. The blueberry one is so much better.

3. Everybody loves this box so much. It's got nice flaps to make you feel hidden, and rustly paper inside to play with. Just the best box. Three out of three kitties recommend.

zarla

I'm back home, and so far everything seems to be okay. I saw a bee the first night and the second which I found super confusing, since HOW ARE THERE STILL BEES AFTER THE FUMIGATION??? HOW but I haven't seen any today, so maybe that was the last of them? Still, I do not want anymore bees. Tired of bees. All the bags of food seemed properly sealed and everything, so everything SHOULD be safe to eat. Still, some part of me is still worried about it...

I should put together a more substantial post about stuff, but I already feel like I'm behind on things since I spent so much time playing Zelda while at Alix's place, I should get started on that. I might post something later. I also made some macaroni from the bagged food, and so far I feel okay, so hopefully I won't die. Of all the stupid ways to go if I do.

All my dreams lately have been horrorshows of varying degrees, which isn't unusual or a surprise to me anymore. Last night in particular, I dreamed that Nana was alive again for a brief period of time through some kind of unexplained medical miracle. Then after I think maybe a week, or ten days, the medical miracle had taken its course, or had faded, or something like that, and it was over and she was going to die again at any moment. When I heard that I just started sobbing non-stop, I just couldn't handle losing her again after getting her back. Everyone else just tried to talk around me or ignore me while I was weeping uncontrollably, even Nana who usually did try to comfort me when I cried. I just sort of collapsed onto the table we were all sitting at, still weeping. Then all of a sudden I was somewhere else entirely new, and everyone was doing other things, and when I asked them what happened, they said I'd apparently blacked out for some twenty minutes. I didn't faint or anything, I was awake, although they said I was disoriented and hard to understand while I was talking, but I had no memory of what happened during the twenty minutes. Like I'd blacked out without actually losing consciousness. It was a really disconcerting feeling. I woke up feeling really heavy and tired.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Ace Waters - Surface of SR388 / Main Caves Theme (Metroid II)
Crossposts: http://zarla.livejournal.com/659968.html

james_davis_nicoll

It takes roughly 3 hours to pack 4000 MMPB.

I had an amusing thought: donate them to UW, to keep the B. P. Nichol Library of Science Fiction company.

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5932422.html

the_rck

Cordelia is now saying that she doesn't want to go to camp in August because she doesn't think she can handle a week without me. She also says that she's sure all of the other kids will be awful people and that there will be so many people present that there's no hope of her managing to spend any time with the people she actually knows.

She's been wanting lots of hugs and cuddling and reassurance that I'll always be there for her. She's also afraid any time she lets herself stop and think (mostly in the evenings). Her days have been pretty full, but she comes home and tells me that, even though she had fun, she missed me horribly. I think she's got some sort of worry that, if she's not checking up on me regularly, I'll just vanish.

I finally listened to the voicemail Cordelia's psychiatrist left. She says that the Celexa ought to stay at a steady level for twenty four hours on a single dose and that this may mean the dose is too low. Cordelia is afraid of upping the dose because she's connected her tiredness to the medication. I need to call the doctor back on Monday to discuss it.

Cordelia has more or less mastered swallowing small pills. Last night, she asked what I take for cramps, and I gave her a naproxen. It took her two swallows to get it down, but she did, and she was astonished to discover that it did help.

Her report card came today. It's all A's with an A+ in gym and an A- in algebra. Cordelia's of the opinion that they can't have counted the algebra final in that grade because she thinks that would have taken her down to B+ or even B range. I can't tell from PowerSchool whether or not she's right. It doesn't actually matter. B grades are good, too, and that particular class has been nasty for all the students due to the teacher not being very good.

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snarp's blog

Reading

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One bonus of packing up thousands of books

Dumb Calibre/Kobo question

Thanks to all the people who have sent money or supported my Patreon

Free comic book collection

Monday Works Roundup, 6/26/17

Canadian rock trio Rush thrilled Toronto's 'capybaby' triplets named after them

Books Received June 17 — 23

Daily Happiness

Sashayed makes a vital point and backs it up with evidence

Ch12 - p67

Erin Watches: Scandal s6 continued (episodes 6-9)

Erin Watches: Scandal s6 continued (episodes 6-9)

Good News!

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Rogue Queen by L. Sprague de Camp

Daily Happiness

~Just go in the other room please

I now know

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April 2017

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