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Phoenix (凤凰)'s Log |
2009-11-22:
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1449 hours - snapshot |
 What my preferred desktop looks like now. Xfce+Pekwm on Arch Linux, tons of custom panels and Firefox addons, automatic grouping of selected programs together, and more. Click the thumbnail for actual size (1440x900, big file.)
Emotional state:  geekyOn audio: geeky
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[report for duty]
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| 2009-11-21:
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1613 hours - computers, laws thereof |
Phoenix's Universal Laws of Computing:
1) Your computer is stupid, but completely obedient. It will do exactly what you tell it to do, whether or not that's what you actually want or, indeed, what you thought you were doing.
2) Your computer is out to get you. It hates your guts and wants you dead. You cannot let down your guard even for a moment. Save early, save often, and back up everything regularly.
3) Your computer can tell if you're afraid. It will do everything in its power to keep you that way. You have to show it who's boss, and that had better be you.
Emotional state:  powerfulOn audio: powerful
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| 2009-11-18:
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2014 hours - ah, initiative process |
Just got word that this is now in circulation to be put on the ballot next year:CREATES SPECIAL CONSTITUTIONAL RULE FOR SPEECH BASED ON THE BIBLE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
Exempts speech based on biblical authority from existing constitutional and statutory restrictions applicable to all other speech, including restrictions against discrimination and hate crimes. Repeals constitutional provision denying protection to acts of religious expression inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State. -Snip fiscal impact.- Oh, state of California. WHY? This beats out the mandatory Christmas music in schools for the coveted position of "#1 thing Phoenix is most disgusted at the idea of being obligated to vote on in 2010." Driving parents across the state batty is a much less evil thing to try to violate the establishment clause with than promoting violence against queers (and, soon enough, Jews.)
Emotional state:  infuriatedOn audio: infuriated
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[7 checked in | report for duty]
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| 2009-11-17:
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2001 hours - *yawn* |
First day of work = success. Phoenix = tired. The week = just beginning.
Emotional state:  exhaustedOn audio: exhausted Emotional state: Dire Straits - Once Upon a Time in the WestOn audio: Dire Straits - Once Upon a Time in the West
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| 2009-11-16:
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1409 hours - completely unsurprised, but... |
Richard O'Brien hasn't been publicly ID'ing as third sex/transgender for very long, has he? Only it seems so logical that I can't quite believe it wasn't already well-known, but I hadn't heard until today so....
(Typing this post took forever because I am learning Colemak and all the keys are where I don't expect them to be.)
(Thanks to everyone who commented about my grandfather. I still haven't really processed it so I can't really say more on the subject yet.)
Emotional state:  curiousOn audio: curious Emotional state: Tim Curry - Sweet TransvestiteOn audio: Tim Curry - Sweet Transvestite
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| 2009-11-15:
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1717 hours - ... |
My grandfather just died.
I still don't know how I feel.
Emotional state:  blankOn audio: blank Emotional state: John Cougar Mellencamp - Jack and DianeOn audio: John Cougar Mellencamp - Jack and Diane
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[6 checked in | report for duty]
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| 2009-11-11:
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2347 hours - time for another Top Ten! |
Brought to you by the impending release of Avernum 6, I present:
Phoenix's Personal Top Ten Games You Can Get, sorted by license.
-Nethack. I've been playing for years and haven't beaten it, but that's not really the point. It's a D&D-style dungeon crawler with ASCII graphics (unless you play one of the graphical spinoffs) and it is freaking impossible. I love it. Open-source. Systems: Seriously just about anything.
-Parallel Realities' games, especially Blob Wars and Project: Starfighter. Blob wars is a platform-jumping, mad-shooting game, kind of like Mario but with more gore, while Project: Starfighter is a more complex sort of space shooter with a storyline and some devilish hard missions mixed in. Serious frustration potential, not to be missed. Open-source. All systems.
-The Ur-Quan Masters, AKA Star Control II. Adventure game in space. An alien race known as the Ur-Quan have conquered most of the galaxy, and most other races are enslaved or gone. You are a human, equipped with a starship from a long-dead alien race known as the Precursors, fighting to free Earth and all the galaxy, building alliances with alien races ranging from the obnoxious to the really cool. Oh, and you can't take too long, because if you do everyone in the universe is slaughtered. Open-source. All systems.
-The Battle for Wesnoth. Not so much a game as a game engine, allowing a wide variety of games to be played within it. It's a classic turn-based RPG in a Tolkienish universe, and I'm actually tired of it, but not because of the gameplay. Open-source. All systems.
-Dink Smallwood. Another game engine, this one for single-player RPGs/adventure games. Many user-contributed stories, ranging from the cool/silly to the bad. Open-source. All systems.
-The ScummVM freebies but not Flight of the Amazon Queen unless you're willing to overlook a lot of sexism. Beneath a Steel Sky is an excellent adventure game set in a dystopian future Australia, where a giant supercomputer is running an oppressive society. You have to, of course, defeat the supercomputer. Lure of the Temptress is nastily complicated in that you can make it so there's no way to win more easily than should be possible, but is also a lot of fun. Games are free, interpreter open-source. All systems.
-Privateer: ASCII Sector. Be a merchant, mercenary, pirate, or some unholy combination thereof in a quest to make enough money to buy a better ship to make even more money... you get the idea. Infinite randomly-generated quests that are always challenging, cool ANSI graphics and a wide variety of paths to choose make this my #1 de-stressing game -- when I want to really focus on something other than whatever's stressing me out, I can play this thing for hours. Freeware. Win/Mac/Lin.
-AGDI Interactive's Sierra game remakes. Quest for Glory is a classic adventure/RPG, this one set in the desert city of Shapeir where you, having successfully saved the valley of Spielburg from its various troubles, must defeat four elementals and then the evil wizard who created them, or the world will be destroyed. Three character classes, four major game paths, many more gameplay options. Mazes! Monsters! Magic! Puzzles! Millions of ways to die! Chance of getting Rickrolled! I love it. Then the King's Quest games are pure adventure, less RPG (no stats to build) and heavy on the puzzles -- violence rarely profits you, even in the remakes. King's Quest II remake is breathtakingly complex, especially given that most of the original game was boring. Freeware. Windows, run well in WINE.
-The Avernum series. Above ground is the tyrannical Empire. In the caverns below is Avernum, a former penal colony now a chaotic system of tribal and local societies. You create a group of four adventurers -- D&D style, yes -- and embark on a massive quest made up of many subquests with even more optional side-quests, because these games are huge. The demos alone are so big that it takes days to beat them, if you're playing regularly. Shareware, and not cheap, but worth it. Systems: Win/Mac. I haven't tried in WINE yet.
-Gazillionaire III. I guess I really like space sims. You are a merchant with a huge debt, a spaceship you must fuel and pay crew to work on, and a bunch of cutthroat competitors all cheating and competing to make the biggest profit. It's a game of ruthless capitalism where a combination of luck and knowing when to cheat just might let you win. Shareware. Windows, works perfectly in WINE.
Emotional state:  tiredOn audio: tired
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| 2009-11-07:
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1351 hours - party |
I hate housecleaning. *glares balefully at the embarrassing portions of her bedroom*
We're having a party in about ten minutes. We're using the opportunity to wear costumes because we missed trick-or-treating due to 'flu. So Malcolm's a water molecule, Merlin's the Blue Screen of Death (this being a boy who's never used Windows) and Matisse and I are 1950s instructional video characters. Turns out, related to that, that my hair doesn't do pin curls. That's why I'm being the bad example, with wrinkly socks and a stained skirt and a partially-untucked shirt, in contrast to my neat and clean sister. Dad's being Inigo Montoya, and Mum's... Mum. Hopefully pictures will be forthcoming.
Emotional state:  accomplishedOn audio: accomplished Emotional state: The Beatles - Nowhere ManOn audio: The Beatles - Nowhere Man
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[1 checked in | report for duty]
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| 2009-11-03:
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2210 hours - mannnnn |
Numbers so far indicate we've lost Maine. Washington looking more promising but too early to tell. My dad came into my room turning the air blue over Maine -- he doesn't swear much, but he was pissed off. Me, I'm just cynical at this point.
I switched to Arch, which looks like the right level of minimalism for my main machine -- I'll revisit Gentoo when I've got a vacation to set it up in and/or a shiny new system to break (I want a cheapo computer for playing with, but I feel I shouldn't buy one for a while.)
In other news, I'm fed up with casual misogyny in geek circles.
Emotional state:  depressedOn audio: depressed
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| 2009-11-01:
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1513 hours - confessions of a hacker, pt. 2 |
I am writing this in links (text-only web browser) just because I can. I have an operational Gentoo system. This makes me semi-elite (I won't be elite until I successfully customize my kernel; right now I'm using a generic one.)
Today, I'd like to talk about why I love Linux. Ahem. ( Cut for length; not scary, honest. )
Hacking makes me happy.
Disclaimer: see relevant xkcd.
Emotional state: accomplishedOn audio: accomplished
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| 2009-10-31:
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1757 hours - confessions of a hacker, pt. 1 |
![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) das_dingsi: Thanks for the card! It helped dispel my gloom today. (Yes, punctuality is evidently not a feature of international mail. But that worked out nice, as it happens, because it's been stressful around here today.)
Everybody's grumpy from being sick and cooped up inside -- I think a fierce bad temper is one of the swine flu symptoms they don't list, because it was the first any of us showed and seems to be the longest-lasting. Matisse and Malcolm had a performance today they had to skip out on due to illness and having missed the crucial preparatory lesson, and Matisse got into a bit of a fight with Mum and Dad over that. I fought with Mum and Dad over some completely different stuff, which was trivial but seemed worthy of an all-out brawl at the time. My grandfather told my grandmother the other day that he wants to die, because his quality of life is so bad, and I'm pretty sure that's the biggest thing bothering Mum, who is snappish of late. Dad was grumpy because his computer (or rather, the printer) wasn't working. Meanwhile, I upgraded my distro with unusually destructive results, forcing me to reconfigure a bunch of files and hack up a fix for Firefox, and it installed Pulseaudio, which breaks my sound every time it sneaks past me.
So I decided it was about time I did the serious-hacker thing and installed Gentoo. I am writing this from my Mac OS X partition because GRUB is now misconfigured and when I booted OS X to have a bit more ease of Google it wanted to update iTunes and had to download the whole big file. Yep. My mum thinks I'm odd for finding new OS installs therapeutic, but the thing about banging your head against a problem like a misconfigured bootloader is that when you're done, you usually have a properly configured bootloader. It feels a lot better than dealing with my grandfather dying and my still not really registering it or having an emotional response beyond guilt at my indifference.
I can hack my bootloader now. Be right back.
Emotional state: geekyOn audio: geeky
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[2 checked in | report for duty]
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| 2009-10-30:
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1632 hours - fuck |
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1337 hours - *sighs* |
I hate to quote Arnold here, but dear administration bigwigs, FUCK YOU. [Further obscenities removed]. You're splitting hairs and BSing outrageously to justify a law that violates the full faith clause of the constitution and the spirit of the idea of states' rights, not to mention the right to equal protection under the law. It's disgusting.
And now, a few key points about rights and freedoms:
1) Rights and freedoms are not granted. They belong to you whether or not society and the government recognize them. They cannot be taken away from you. To attempt to deny you the exercise of them is morally wrong.
2) Rights and freedoms are not earned. They belong to everyone, regardless of that person's level of morality, criminal status, or any other factor. Nobody is so low that they do not have rights.
3) Rights and freedoms have no meaning if they cannot practically be exercised. If a resource -- education, clean water, shelter, transportation, electricity, gainful employment, medical care, what-have-you -- that is vital to life, decent quality of life, or opportunity is prohibitively difficult to get, that is a violation of the basic rights of the people affected. This includes things being too expensive, not disabled-accessible, remotely located, etc.
4) No right or freedom extends to violating other people's rights or freedoms. Your right to free expression doesn't mean you can assault people, your right to your beliefs doesn't mean you can have people imprisoned for disagreeing with you, your right to use the public roadway doesn't mean you're allowed to mow people down, etc. This is the only restriction on rights and freedoms that is unquestionable, and that's why people can be imprisoned and otherwise penalized for robbery and assault and other crimes that directly violate the rights of others. Where crimes that don't do that fit in is a stickier question.
5) Rights and freedoms are not limited commodities, which must be denied to some because there aren't enough to go around.
6) Being of higher status than other people is not a right. Rights belong to everyone, remember?
Emotional state:  angryOn audio: angry Emotional state: Stevie Wonder - A Time to LoveOn audio: Stevie Wonder - A Time to Love
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| 2009-10-29:
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1409 hours - so, yeah |
The thing that sucks about this illness is that I don't feel that bad, except in the mornings, so I feel guilty for not being in class. Then I think about how sick Merlin was, and I think "I can't risk doing that to someone else" and then I wonder if I'm just inventing excuses. But he was pretty much unconscious on the couch for two days, zombie-like and mute when he was awake and vomiting frequently, burning with fever. This is a bizarre illness, because it seems to have hit me and Malcolm very lightly, Matisse more severely (she's almost never sick) and Mum and Merlin worst. Usually, I get it as bad as Mum, and Malcolm is the one who vomits at the drop of a hat.
Mum rented some videos to make her feel better. We watched Monsters vs. Aliens (my suggestion; it's actually good!) WALL-E (overhyped in my opinion) and some episodes of Underdog, which Mum insists she loved when she was little ("how little?" Dad asked her, and she said "oh, maybe three" and we believed her because that was so not something we would've ever chosen to watch. I've lost my exposure-to-racist-cartoon-portrayals-of-Asians virginity now -- I mean, I'd seen the WW2 propaganda posters, but I hadn't heard the horrible accents. Oh, and there were "Indians" too, and believe me, those quotation marks do not begin to cover the wrongness here.)
Yesterday I picked up the copy of The Ear, the Eye and the Arm I bought on my birthday. It was a remarkable book. Here's the basic outline: the year is 2194, the place Zimbabwe, where three children who are perpetually confined to their parents' mansion to protect them from their father's many enemies sneak out for an adventure, get kidnapped, and end up spending a while enslaved in a former toxic waste dump, living with a group of people who have shut themselves off from the outside world to keep African tradition alive, and nearly being killed by evil interdimensional beings. Er, not at the same time, you understand. Meanwhile, a detective agency made up of three mutants -- the titular Ear, Eye and Arm -- is trying to track them down. It's my favorite genre, the coming-of-age story, set in a setting I'd never seen before. Oh, and it's not-so-subtly feminist, but if I told you much or any of why I'd be spoiling it, because all the Crowning Moments of Feminism are bits where a woman/girl suddenly does something cool when the narrative seemed to be leading up to a man/boy doing it, and they're mostly plot-relevant.
Incidentally, another book we got on my birthday was And Tango Makes Three, because Matisse insisted it was our patriotic duty. Sure enough, there's a good reason it was banned -- Merlin read it and soon announced that he wanted to be a penguin when he grew up. I knew it was promoting the penguin agenda!
Meanwhile, the world keeps on turning....
Emotional state:  aggravatedOn audio: aggravated Emotional state: Stevie Wonder - A Time to LoveOn audio: Stevie Wonder - A Time to Love
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| 2009-10-26:
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1004 hours - well, it's here |
My mum thinks we probably have H1N1 in the house. Merlin's sick as I've ever seen him, I'm having respiratory issues, Matisse isn't awake yet but was snoring (congested-sounding) earlier, and Mum was feeling dizzy last I heard. I'm probably not going anywhere until this is gone, exams notwithstanding. *twitches uncomfortably*
Meanwhile, in profoundly weird news, Crash writer Paul Haggis leaves Scientology over Prop 8 support and I'm left trying to understand why the CoS's homophobia didn't register with him sooner. Trying to "cure" queer people isn't exactly pro-gay action.
Emotional state:  worriedOn audio: worried
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[1 checked in | report for duty]
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| 2009-10-24:
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2135 hours - and the post-celebratory update |
So, uh, I apparently still can't take Merlin along on a series of errands without him melting down, even if they include the book and game stores. But I had a marvelous time looking through records and CDs and the godawful clothing people abandon at thrift stores, and we went and had a beautiful dinner. I asked for a Margarita and the waitress (who's known me my whole life) solemnly requested my ID and teared up as she examined it, talking about how she remembered when I was a baby and how can this be happening?! Then after dinner my mum conspired with her to have me brought a scrumptious piece of Mexican chocolate cheesecake and everyone in the room sang "Happy Birthday" to me and clapped when I blew out the candle. It just felt right, somehow, sharing that rite of passage with those people in that place.
Mum and Matisse were at the Meeting's retreat today, and apparently Mum -- who wasn't really paying attention to the time -- happened to glance at a clock and realize that it was the exact time, to the minute, that I had been born, and so she'd been a mother for 21 years to the minute then. Afterwards she told me about it, saying she hadn't been watching the clock -- it just happened to be that exact time. Which sort of makes up for the fact that she forgot to wish me a happy birthday when she burst into my room at early o'clock to get something she needed for the retreat. Uh.
Anyway, yeah, pretty good day.
Emotional state:  fullOn audio: full
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1033 hours - hm |
I started getting automated birthday emails from websites I don't use any more last night. I think Mum's going to have to stop being in denial about my being 21.
My dad gave me my present from him -- my NAACP membership card. We're going into town later to try not to buy too many books or records while fulfilling my desire to browse them, and we'll go to the restaurant where the staff's known Mum since she was in college and me since before I was born and I'll order some alcohol to shock the staff.
Emotional state:  awakeOn audio: awake Emotional state: The Kingston Trio - Where Have All the Flowers GoneOn audio: The Kingston Trio - Where Have All the Flowers Gone
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| 2009-10-23:
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1851 hours - in brief |
Today was Mole Day, and I did nothing remoletly appropriate. But, hey, do you know what you get when you have a bunch of moles acting like idiots? A bunch of moleasses, that's what. What d'you mean, it's too late for mole jokes?
Emotional state:  thoughtfulOn audio: thoughtful
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| 2009-10-21:
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2151 hours - today a smile |
I went -- if that's the right word -- to Gavin Newsom's online town hall meeting today. (Refresher for non-Californians, i. e. the majority of you: Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco who illegally married same-sex couples in 2001 and successfully fought the Supreme Court over it, made San Francisco the first and only city in the US to provide universal healthcare, housed thousands of homeless people, prevented statewide budget cuts from affecting San Francisco schools, and is currently running for Governor.) At this point that guy is carrying my hopes for the state. He comes up with strategies to solve unsolvable problems and they get results, and he's not afraid to gamble his career on the chance of making a change for the better. We need leaders like that.
Then I read about Dr. Marci Bowers, who's using her experience providing SRS (she is herself trans) to help victims of female genital mutilation get functional, normal-looking genitals -- for free, since US health insurance doesn't cover "cosmetic" procedures. And I've got a partly-written email to her I'm trying to complete telling her how wonderful I think she is for doing that, because that kind of healing goes so far beyond just the physical, but I can't come up with words.
Emotional state:  hopefulOn audio: hopeful
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[9 checked in | report for duty]
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| 2009-10-19:
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1122 hours - take a moment |
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crushed