From Invisalign

Here we are at Tray 5R lower. Not much to report, really. Today, I go in for my upper retainer, which will also move one of the upper front teeth forward a little. I complained last time that they seemed faintly uneven. At least I can finally stop wearing upper tray of much grossness. And no more pseudo-button on the uppers either! Seriously, I started wearing that upper tray on March 10. MARCH. It is now November 12. That is eight months of wear for a tray that is designed to be worn for two weeks. No matter how diligent I am in cleaning, it gets gross, and it is yellowed. NEW TRAY PLZ.

what i learned from the game Modern Warfare 2:

• the CIA is perfectly willing to slaughter hundreds of civilians as part of undercover op
• all brazilians are armed to the teeth
• the russian military gives each person a totally different brand and caliber gun
• heartbeat monitors can detect if you’re friend or foe
• and so can UAVs. they even mark foes with little red rectangles in real time
• specops can drive snowmobiles one handed while shooting and reloading an uzi, but is completely befuddled by chain link fences and barb wire
• it’s possible to get good consistant bandwidth in a remote mountain house (note! this one might not actually be true)
• russia can launch a full land invasion of america with 1 day prep

and that famous part to MW2, the “kill the civilians” bit, it’s funny to me that it’s that big a deal. you’re playing a shooter and have already shot dozens of random people, will continue to shoot hundreds more, and because some of them are unarmed it’s a big deal? yes, they get hit in “realistic” means (as much as that applies for computer games) but so does every other character

cmon now, you call in airstrikes in crowded cities and grenade marketplaces, but apparently all those are abandoned and/or no one cares about brazilians.

eh, whatevs.

Originally published at miriku.com. You can comment here or there.

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

As I grow older, war makes less and less sense to me, and seems to contradict particularly what Christ taught, precepts that are not meant to be revered for only an hour on Sunday. My father was a veteran of World War II, as was my uncle. I love and honor them. And yet...

( Why of course the people don't want war... )


( Facing It )


Borrowed from penknife...

( I 'listed at home for a lancer )


And from matociquala...

"When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind."

~ Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1973



Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Last night, Katie, Bob, Ben, and I went to the Imogen Heap concert at the Henry Fonda Music Box Theater. I am no longer equipped to handle standing for 5 hours "for entertainment." Man, I used to be able to stand for as long and dance in heels. I dunno whether this comes from being older, or just out of shape, or because I think I had a drop in blood sugar during the concert causing me to sway a bit. It's the sign of a diabetic not to be able to tell if lower back pain stems from lack of arch support or possible kidney failure. :P

Anyway, lesson learned: any time I procure tickets for a concert that is at a venue that potentially does not have typical stadium or theatre seating (i.e. HoB), I'm going for balcony seats.

For a pro, Imogen's show was kind of "in shambles" (her words, not mine). It started late and she kept apologizing and excusing her inability to remember lyrics by proffering the fact that it was the first night of the tour.

Not to mention that one half of the older lesbian couple that was making out near the front fainted flat on her face right near our group in the middle of the show. That was awkward, worrisome, annoying and kind of funny in a mean way all at the same time. Immi was blissfully oblivious because she misunderstood the guy who was calling out for security and started telling a story and dancing excitedly across the stage. Katie freaked out "like a frightened hamster" and ran (or squeezed her way, rather) to the back of the venue. I myself was torn between wanting to help (since I could have easily been the fainting one if my blood sugar had gotten low enough) and wanting to poke her with my foot (because she and her partner were so obnoxious earlier). It also irritated me that, after the woman regained consciousness, that she was insisting that she was fine and wanted to stay. Um, hello? You fell. FLAT ON YOUR FACE. Fortunately, security escorted her out, presumably to where she could be seen to by a nurse.

I mean, if I thought my emergency candy wasn't going to keep me upright, I would have gone against my sense of hygiene and asked someone to help me to the ladies' room, where there was a fully stocked candy bar.

Yes. There was a fully stocked candy bar in the rest room. I came out of it in a huff and met Bob and Ben in the lobby.

"Can you believe it? There is a candy bar in the bathroom!" I exclaimed incredulously.

"Yeah, isn't it awesome?" Bob replied.

"No, it's disgusting!"

Ben laughed. "I love how you two have completely polar reactions to it."

"Dude, I do not want to buy nuts anywhere near where I sh*t," I said.

To which Ben replied, "Well, I don't have that problem because my nuts are always near where I sh*t."

The show itself was alright, though. I have to say, Imogen is not exactly what I'd call photogenic, but she's very cute in real life. Ben commented that she has a way of talking like Vilmarie (that is, a stream of consciousness type banter with flying tangents and almost only to herself), which is true, not to say that it isn't also endearing.

I bet she could have tacked on at least three more songs and been done on time if she wasn't so loquacious, but she still mostly delivered. I really attended for the showy part of the show. That is, I don't care to listen to much of her recorded stuff, it was seeing her work her magic live that did it for me. Most of the other concerts I've been to have been because I really like the music, but with her it was more because I like the act.

Yeah, the songs are pleasing to the ear, but with her I feel like the magic is mostly in the making. It's like art, like a Happening, birth. I mean, the songs are already written, but the execution is so dynamic, almost organic and very alive and new. She really gets a kick out of doing it, like an alchemist, like a mad scientist.

We still skipped out before the last song and encore, though, because it was already almost midnight and while I was turning into a pumpkin, Katie, Bob, and Ben had work in the morning.

Speaking of work, I should be getting ready for that. After today, I still have a busy week ahead. Yay, weekend of wedding showers!

150 words for the 'Fall' prompt...

( Fools rush in... )

it happened again.

guy on bike: hey, a bridgestone
me: o.o?
guy on bike: nice bike
me: oh, thanks man

i’m still dubious of their sincerity

Originally published at miriku.com. You can comment here or there.

sixwordstories
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Friday night I went over to Casa Menorca for musicking with Mike and Robyn. I wish I'd learned how to sight-read when I was younger.. I'm so bad at remembering lyrics. Anyway, a little later Josh came over and we tested out PYC's Six More Weeks of Winter on Rock Band. It's pretty cool seeing a song you helped come into being play in a major video game. Plus being able to play the different parts gives me a greater appreciation for all the arranging that Mike did on the final album track. It's still pretty much my favorite track from the album, even though I think my favorite song over-all is Tug of War. If I were to go back to a place where I felt I thought we could record it again with feeling, without getting sick of it, I would prefer to do it "unplugged." I think I'd like to try it with Robyn, now that she has an acoustic bass.

Anyway, I left pretty early because Ben, Justin, and I had TVs to purchase at the Sony Employee Tent Sale the next day. We got there 45 minutes early and the tent sale itself was running late but still didn't get to buy the *exact* big screens we were hoping for. Justin wound up coming away with an open box 52" Z-series... the last of the available ones. Still a very sweet set, especially at half the MSRP. We got a 46" XBR. I was a little sad not to get the 52" XBR but only because I know this means 4 or 5 years from now, Ben and I will be up at the buttcrack of dawn waiting on another door buster.

Sunday, we visited my parents and sold them Ben's old PS3 after watching WALL-E on Blu Ray on their enormous 61" projection screen. Yes, their TV is gargantuan, but I could still appreciate the picture quality on our new Bravia. It's definitely sharper. Afterward we went and picked up the newer slim PS3.

Tonight is the Imogen Heap concert in LA... according to her Twitter she's giving it a shot despite her voice sounding "like gravel." If she happens to cancel by the time we get to Katie and Bob's, I figure we could still hit the Chik-Fil-A and have a pleasant evening. I'm looking forward to seeing Immi, but I'd rather she be healthy for the rest of her tour. And not... you know, communicate her illness.

That's all for now, folks.

Lightning strikes
Inside, my chest to keep me up at night
Dream of ways
To make you understand my pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air
Bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare
Once you want it to begin,
No one really every wins
In heartbreak warfare

If you want more love,
why don't you say so?
If you want more love,
why don't you say so?

Drop his name
Push it in and twist the knife again
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air
Bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare
Once you want it to begin,
No one really ever wins
In heartbreak warfare.

If you want more love,
why don't you say so?
If you want more love,
why don't you say so?

Just say so...

How come the only way to know how high you get me
is to see how far I fall
God only knows how much I'd love you if you let me
but I can't break free at all.

It's a heartbreak...

I don't care if we don't sleep at all tonight
Let's just fix this whole thing now
I swear to God we're gonna get it right
If you lay your weapon down
Red wine and ambien
You're talking shit again, it's heartbreak warfare
Good to know it's all a game
Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak warfare.


Alright, so as a woman, i have to say that i can totally visualize the situation described in this song. Recap: Girl and John had a discussion and he was too much of a dumb ass to figure it out. Who knows, she might have told him that she wanted him to be there for her more than he was. She might have been the typical woman who doesn't say what she wants directly and expects her man to know what she wants. I've found out that men don't understand the hints, not even the big obvious hints. Lady in the song, you should have told John that you needed him to be there for you. You should have told him you "needed more love." Though I understand John's perspective, it is not okay for a man to be completely oblivious to everything around him. Saying "i didn't know!" is not enough; its a horrid excuse and it just make women more angry. on that note-- the chorus has absolutely beautiful imagery of war --

Back to my complaints:

A man cant simply say "if you want more love why don't you say so?" her having to say that she needs more love means that the relationship has more holes than just lack of passion. I like that her inability to communicate is whats ending the relationship, according to Johnny's POV. He makes himself the hero in this situation by saying things like "i wont sleep until we get it right."

I am not so sure why I am so emotionally responsive to this song... but I like it anyway. Must say that its a hell of a lot better than "WHO SAYS?"

-M

btw: http://perezhilton.com/2009-10-21-new-john-mayer-2

the first finished, complete song of mine is 15 years old. it’s a 3 minute or so demo/tracker/techno thing

v|scosity – gl

v|scosity was one of my first writing pseudonyms, and the song was gl cause at that point i decided that i would name all my songs with as few letters as possible to make them unique. i gave up after one more, called ‘fl’, trivially.

the song was originally called “glimpse within”.

(it was originally an .IT file, i converted into a mono mp3 using interpolated sampling)

Originally published at miriku.com. You can comment here or there.

Well, I'm finally human again - only a bit of coughing today and I'm feeling basically 98% - I'd say I'm back in the game. Unfortunately now Ron is sick, and doubly unfortunately he had to take an exam for law school today. Suck. Double suck that it prevented us from going to Jon's wedding. That sucked big time when Ron looked up the date of the exam and I was asking him about plane tickets and he realized the two were the same day... But, life isn't always fair. This we've learned. So, we sent wishes from afar and Ron went and took his exam.

While he was doing that, I went to Apple Hill with his parents and now I have a box full of apples, some apple pumpkin butter, some apple cider, acorn squash, more apples, and happy mental pictures. The leaves are gorgeous up in the hills - so many yellows and deep reds - so pretty. It was foggy as we drove up, but the sun tried valiantly to peek through, and by the time we came back it was nice and sunny. Now I'm cleaning up and taking care of the new patient. Ah, and a doggy by my side and another curled up by my feet.

As I was thanking my father in law for inviting me to go with them - he said "We associate Apple Hill with you and Ron - I think Ron likes going to hang out, but you, you really seem to love coming up here." He's so right - I adore it, the fresh fall air, the kids, talking with the crafts people, seeing all the apples and letting my mind fill with ideas of what to make with them. Most of my apples will probably end up as apple sauce, being eaten plain, or chopped up into my oatmeal - but I'll make a pie or two (with or without an actual crust - crustless apple pie = all the apple goodness without the flour and butter). It's happy memories and happy smells.
Good day.

A hundred words for the 'Fall' prompt at blackpearlsails...

( Elizabeth's fall had been the beginning of his own... )

THIS IS IT! The moment you've all been waiting for. Pure Yellow Colour's "Six More Weeks of Winter" being played on my Xbox 360.











As you can see, shit is working! I noticed the tubes for the vocals don't connect, and repeated pitches look odd, but I'm sure I can get that worked out. Both the guitar and bass seem fine, but the drums and vocals still need to be checked. And all that's just for expert, of course. Gonna need some people to try it out on the other difficulties, too, to make sure they make sense.

DUDE! It has happened. It took me about a month to get it all working, but it does, in fact, work. The RBN store doesn't open for another few weeks, so I can't get it vetted by the online community/sold in the DLC store just yet, but rest assured, I'll get it in there somehow soon.

This is hella sweet.

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
( Read more... )

OMFG! I got it to build! I got to build!

To make this sensible to non-people-who-have-been-working-on-a-piece-of-RB-DLC-for-several-weeks, I'll say that the program that compiles all the audio and MIDI together finally got through its compilation with no errors.

I spent about an hour tonight trying to fix its (sometimes perplexing) error messages and was about to give up. I had it down to one left, but I wasn't sure what was causing it. I shut down my VM with XP in it (I use Reaper on a MacBook for all the sequencing of audio and MIDI and Magma, the RB DLC "authoring" tool, in Windows cuz it don't got a Mac version), ready to call it a day, when I looked at Reaper, thought about the error, and then made a change which I was fairly sure was going to make everything all better. Fired up the VM again, fired up Magma, crossed my fingers, and BAM! No errors.

All that's left now is for me to either pay $50 for 4 months or $100 for 12 months of FULL-ON Microsoft XNA membership, necessary for uploading my finished bundle to my 360. I figured if I actually paid it tonight and it uploaded successfully, I'd be up ALL night playing and tweaking it, so I'm gonna hold off. But, damn, man. It's gonna work. It's just a bunch of playtesting and customizing from here on out.

Pure Yellow Colour WILL be on Rock Band...soon.

From Invisalign

Tray 4R, as I mentioned before, has the distinction of being the first tray in which I cannot feel my snaggle tooth behind the others. Progress.

Much progress, however ancillary, has been made tonight.

With help from Robyn, the vocal chart has been improved and should be pretty done. Also, I successfully added lyrics to each "note tube" (as Harmonix calls them), so when you try to sing, words will help guide you :P

I added Left-Hand animation cues for Guitar/Bass, but no Right-Hand, as I think the defaults are probably fine. As far as custom lighting or character animations...it's kind of overwhelming what they let you do, and at this point I'd rather just get a working song, so they're gonna stay at their default randomness for now.

I redid the Overdrive sections I originally, and haphazardly created, and added Unison sections, as well. Not sure they're spaced out/positioned correctly, but only a playthrough will fix that.

Speaking of playthroughs, I tried building the .RPA file for the first time tonight. That is the proprietary format Rock Band takes for custom songs. It's a mish mash of MIDI and WAV data, and I've already run into several show-stopping bugs in my MIDI that I need to fix before I get a clean build. Once I do, I think it's ready for testing!

This thing is totally going to work. All my hard work over the last month is going to pay off. And if it goes well (whatever criteria I come up with to judge the "wellness" of it all is TBD), I may go through this craziness again, albeit with some experience under my belt and a sweet-ass template ready to go.

For now, time to unwind with some TV and then hit the hay. G'night, all.

My greatest flaw is finding these absolutely amazing men, and then falling in like when i am not supposed to. A couple of months ago McDreamy told me that I was the "Mc" to "Steamy." I know to most of you this doesnt make sense, but to the few who do, McDreamy was absolutely right. The last couple of nights w Mcsteamy have been awkward because i am at the breaking point where my brain is forcing me to tell him that i like him, in that way. However, I am denying it as much as I can by telling myself that I am in love with McDreamy. I mean i am, right? I still smile whenever i think of him, and feel sadness whenever i drive by his old place. I get a tear or two listening to songs that remind me of McDreamy. So why is it that before I go to sleep at night i think about McSteamy? and that I log on hoping he's online too? That we can talk for hours and not get sick of it? I think its because McDreamy will always be a part of me, of that amazing summer, of the transformation that took place that summer.

ugh so silly