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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 |
mrrules
|
5:18p |
OMG: US Drug Ads I had forgotten how truly wierd and wonderful drug company ads are in the US. In Aus, drug companies can't advertise directly to the public, so patients don't ask their doctors for particular drugs; they relay their symptoms and the doctors decide what medication is best. (And kickbacks, and sponsored events, etc. are controlled, too.) In the US, the drug companies can advertise, but they have to include the likely side-effects and counter-indications. Which leads to ads like this: You'd have to be really depressed to want to ask for this drug after hearing the potential side-effects! I think the tag line should be, "Depression hurts; Cymbalta hurts more!" Current Mood:  amused |
| Monday, November 17th, 2008 | |
eclecticlibrary
|
11:54p |
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elisem
|
8:23p |
The Big Buy: genuine progress!
Just got the confirmation notice: except for the stuff mentioned in the earlier post as being out of stock, the order has shipped.
Whew! And silver prices didn't spike* suddenly or anything, so I think we're cool.
*Well, OK, they were forty cents per troy ounce higher when the order was actually pulled and charged than they were when I quoted prices, but I still think we'll be OK. |
generalist
|
5:47p |
Delicious silliness
Hi!
Ok, this is just too silly. Did you know that in some alternate-alternate world, that the Matrix runs on Windows? Well, watch this and find out....
Cheers! ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) generalist
Current Mood:  silly
Current Music: It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) - REM |
elisem
|
4:34p |
ow.
I am being absolutely felled by the usual chronic pain today, for some reason. Dunno why it's harder to deal with today; maybe the weather's changing. In any case, if you expected me to make sense today, I'm sorry, because it'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'll be in the bathtub with a lot of hot water until further notice. |
d33ann
|
12:44p |
Knee Pain
I saw my doctor today, and yup, I have exacerbation of my knee problems: patellar tendonitis and/or patello-femoral syndrome, which is a bunch of medical terminology for "one fucked up knee." She wants me to continue with PT (duh) and gave me percoset to take when I'm not working or driving. Hopefully that will kick in real soon before I have to augement it with scotch.
Needless to say, I've written off today for anything productive. Hopefully the pain will subside enough for me to clean up around here a little bit...I've been in too much pain to clean. When I say too much, I mean so much pain that I don't feel safe driving, because I'm that distracted. I realized that when I was driving Rox home from her doctor appt. (same clinic, we made simutaneous appointments so I could drive her home, she had to take a sedative for the blood draw, poor thing.) Of course, being depended on for a ride home is not the time to announce that you don't think you can drive. But I managed to not get us killed, I just had to be hyper-vigiliant since my reflexes were all off and my mind was unable to focus on anything other than STABBY HOT POKER OF KNEE PAIN DEATH.
I ran into neighbors on the way back from the store to pick up the percs after dropping Rox off, and two separate neighbors were like, "oh you don't look well, are you ok?" "I will be OK as soon as I take these percosets and have a bubble bath and get going on the ice."
Yup, just finished lunch, which is what I needed to be upright for, so now I'm gonna go be horizontal for the rest of the day. Must do PT exercises, too, but I've only got a little wussy leg lift with weights to do. I do that in between ice changes.
Feel free to email me long emails to keep me entertained. Otherwise, it's back to the director/writers' commentary of Lord Of The Rings. Which I have to say, I'm enjoying quite a bit. Its interesting listening to their discussions of "minor changes" (their joke) from the book, and how much hey apparently loved Tolkein's writing and tried to "preserve" as much as possible, while at same time making a movie that would keep people on the edge of their seats. |
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bluepoof_bikes
|
11:30a |
You may now have a medical emergency around me (until 2010). http://bluepoof.blogs.com/motorcycle/2008/11/you-may-now-have-a-medical-emergency-around-me-until-2010.html Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I didn't post all weekend. But I have a good excuse! I spent all day Saturday taking an Adult First Aid/CPR/AED class at the Palo Alto Area Red Cross. I'd last taken a first aid class in 2004, before Tony, Steph, and I rode to Alaska. We all took the class together, figuring that we should probably be able to splint up one another should the need arise. Fortunately, it never did arise, but it piqued an interest in first aid/first responder info for me. Some of that is just my personality -- I have panic disorder that I pretty much never talk about on this site, but it manifests in some severe hypochondria sometimes. Learning as much as possible about anatomy/physiology has helped me keep that under control. Also, I just like being prepared and helping people. I've always wanted to take EMT classes but have never been able to work it into my work schedule, so CPR/AED it is for the time being. I was the only person in the class taking it for personal interest; most people were there because their jobs or some activity required it. There was a woman who taught horseback riding to disabled kids, an arborist, a personal trainer, two high school kids who needed the class for graduation requirements, and a woman who wanted to lead her daughter's Girl Scout troop. The first half of the class (9am-12pm) focused on CPR. I'd last taken CPR about 15 years ago, so it was a great review for me. The mannequins are creepy as ever, especially with the little fake "lung" that inflates its chest when you give it a rescue breath. Uncanny valley, anyone? The second half of the class (1pm-4pm) was First Aid, which was a breeze for me since I read up on it fairly often. I don't think I really learned anything new, but it solidified skills I already had, which is important. First Aid certification is good for 3 years and CPR certification is good for 1 year, but since I do it for "fun" and not a job requirement, I'll try to take the classes every 2 years. 
|
allonymist
|
1:38p |
Apparently I am vulnerable to memes this month. from maradydd 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions. 5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest. "As a rule this reaction does not take place until at least 15 days after the sore has started. The test in fact supplements the microscopic test just where the latter fails. "The serological test is also of the greatest importance in the diagnosis of the syphilitic nature, often unsuspected, of a large number and variety of diseases. The evidence was conclusive as to the special value of this test in the diagnosis of cases where a history of infection is unobtainable, or the clinical value is doubtful." This is from a small sex-ed book printed called " The Report on Life: Men's Edition." The copyrights are given as 1921 through 1934. It had been sitting on my computer for a while since I'd had trouble cataloguing it in LibraryThing, and needed to enter its information manually. ( Sex advice was awful back in the day. )</lj> |
elisem
|
1:29p |
The Big Buy: a little bit of unprogress, and still in limbo
Just called my supplier, and we do have a few things on backorder:
Lindstrom Rx round nose
Lindstrom Rx set of four
Lindstrem Rx replacement biosprings
some bails that Daniel added on
30" french rope chain
20 gauge GF wire
The wire they expect to be in within the day, if not within the hour, so that part's fine. The tools, though.... They told me that Lindstrom recently moved locations (presumably manufacturing locations), and that they do not have a solid date for expecting them in. Given the quality of the Rx line, I do not recommend that we replace it with any other item, so our only choice there is just to wait.
I've instructed them to go ahead and send the rest of the order now, so we don't have to fret too much about fluctuating metal prices. Turns out that they don't actually price it until the moment they pull it. The nice customer rep thought they were pulling it right now, which would be handy because silver went down ten cents this morning. However, I won't know for sure until I get the confirmation from them. So it's back to nail-biting for me, and watching the precious metals commodities markets.
I'll let you know as soon as I know something. I'm sorry for the delay. Guess everybody wants Lindstrom Rxes, huh? A testimonial of sorts, them being out of stock, I suppose. |
vintage_look
[ gottxistxtot ]
|
3:24p |
Vintage Look  JUMP for a bigger Pic! ( JUMMMPP ) |
james_nicoll
|
11:01a |
Open question
If you were going to recommend a handful of basic economics texts for SF writers to use, which would they be?
For that matter, how about fantasy authors? Which econ books would help them write better novels? |
corsetmakers
[ ifonlyuntil9 ]
|
7:30a |
Wow, I totally screwed up big time
So here's the problem. I totally made a mockup of the dore corset, tried it on, thought it was wonderful, retraced the pattern pieces from the tissue onto new heavier pieces of plastic, cut it out of my good fabric, basted and sewed and all sorts of things and just realized I cut out the wrong cup size! Now the main issue is that I exhausted my coutil supply and i'd like to have this thing done by saturday. And I see three and a half ways to attempt to fix this error. Looking at the Truly Victorian Site, evidently, the C cup size that I cut out corresponds to the size I was supposed to have cut out in the D pattern measurement-wise, i.e 14D is a 40 inch bust, and 16C (which is what I ended up cutting out) is a 40 inch bust, the only difference between the two being the cup size and the waist size.
So now on to the solutions, I figured since this is going to be underwear and the only people who will see it will not know exactly what they are looking at, I can 1) suck it up, make it as is and just wear the thing. 2) At the suggestion of a friend, attempt to add gussets to the front. I have enough scraps to cut those out. 3)Or I can use a different fabric as a strength layer for those 2 (4 if I count the other side) front panels and recut them. and then 3.5) using what scraps I have, attempt to piece it together. In truth once I'm finished with this, if I try it on and don't like the way it fits, I'm thinking I might go with the gusset idea. Any thoughts or suggestions?
P.S for those who worked with the dore before, does the gusset idea seem plausible and if so, where should I place them exactly? |
d33ann
|
7:24a |
Tweets for Today
From my Twitter account. |
james_nicoll
|
9:38a |
Question
Which font do people consider most readable?
This is mainly with regards to e-MSes but I will admit there are LJ accounts out there I don't read except off my flist because the font they are using is unreadable to my eyes. |
russos
|
4:36p |
По танкам!
Из-за новой атаки пидоров-ботов включил тест на человечность (Слава Роботам!). Как волна пройдет, выключу. |
russos
|
3:23p |
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| Sunday, November 16th, 2008 |
serge_lj
|
9:42p |
ways to a girl's heart
I found out on Friday night that one way to a girl’s heart involves a ladder.
No, my wife didn’t ask me to climb on the roof because some thing had died up there. First, Sue was still at the hospital, recovering from her surgery, and she was so out of it that she turned in early. I took my mom-in-law back to our place then went to the local SF club’s meeting.
This month’s meeting had local writer Walter Jon Williams read from a story of his, followed by questions & answers – with us asking the questions and him answering them. When it looked like the meeting was all over, Duke, one of the fans, brought up a big box to the podium. While two other fans held a blanket in front of the table, Duke could be seen doing something, but we knew not what, until the blanket came down.
And there was a Jacob’s Ladder, sparking and buzzing.
While shouts of ”It’s alive!” erupted in the room, Pat, another fan, approached the device and took a closer look. She was quite impressed by Duke having set up the electrodes inside a large glass tube so that people were less likely to get themselves zapped. When Duke announced that it was a birthday present for her, she was so excited that she actually did a little Happy Dance then declared that she’d steampunk up the generator’s wooden box.
By the way, another way to a girl’s heart is to talk nerdy to her, according to the t-shirt worn that evening by a fan who works at the Atomic Museum. (And, yes, her name really is Jessica Coyle.)
I wish I had known all of this when I was going to College. |
codemonth
[ eichin ]
|
10:34p |
Day 16 We're halfway through the month; over at that other project they're hitting the 25,000 word mark. Hopefully you're plinking away at something at this point; how's it going? |
yesthattom
|
9:03a |
|
corsetmakers
[ eggies_red_dres ]
|
12:34p |
This is why we do mockups. ( Gah. Good thing for mockups. )http://cfilson.livejournal.com/17751.htmlSo this was inspirational. The pattern looked nice, and the finished product is time wise where I need to be for my costume that's lined up next. So I make it and not only does the pattern look nothing like the reference she posted, the corset looks almost exactly like a badly fitted simplicity pattern. I used the measurements posted on the pattern, but it didn't enlarge true to the printed shape. Either I screwed it up bigtime, or the author of the refernce book dressed up the pattern to make it more pretty. ( This is what the pattern looks like. )I then enlarged to accommodate a "34 finished waist with one of my other corsets, so I'll have a four inch reduction and a one inch gap. It's rather comfortable, so no complaints there. But that bagginess at the bust was unintentional and there doesn't seem to be good height and contour over the bottom center. Probably because the tummy fullness pushed out the hemline making it appear straight. I measured where I want it to sit, I won't change the shapeing on me, that's fine. But the style lines are BAD looking. I want it lower over the hips and tummy, as well as to *pass* the bust point a little bit rather than just wave at it distantly. Any tips or additional critique? Its' all about the pattern right now. |
james_nicoll
|
1:37p |
I'd rather not say why I want to know this
Is broccoli bad for cats? |
yesthattom
|
9:03a |
Tom Tomorrow on Saving Detroit: When it comes to bailing out the auto industry, count me in the “let them starve” camp. The auto industry has been outsourcing American jobs for 25 years now with little regard for the devastated communities they’ve left in their wake (seriously, re-watch Roger & Me sometime). The big three have also used their lobbying might to oppose every environmental regulation in their sights. And on top of all of that, their cars suck. Bailing out the auto companies whose single-minded devotion to SUV’s made them blind to the hybrid revolution is like bailing out a record company that hasn’t had a hit since “The Macarena”. Screw them. Wait, he has a solution too |
d33ann
|
7:48a |
Tweets for Today
From my Twitter account. |
james_nicoll
|
9:56a |
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_nicolai_
|
12:35p |
I have to admit that the main use I have for the MacOS character palette for entering Unicode characters is finding new code points for use in spoof heavy metal band names with a tilde over the V and so on. Current Mood:  amused |
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