shadro

Wild things happening at my mom's school already.

The window panes were all removed after the previous semester so they could be replaced with shatter-proof, bullet-proof glass. Because, y'know, of course. Except not only was the new glass delayed for some reason, the boards they had covering the windows weren't big enough. Animals have been getting into the building all summer, to say nothing of dirt and rain.

But that's not all.

The school was scrambling to get everything safe and ready for students and they've brought in big crews to clean and fix things up. Which is all well and good but there are children coming in with those crews. My mom said she saw a boy who looked maybe thirteen handling fiberglass insulation. Even younger girls were assisting the cleaners. And not only were they helping clean up hazardous material like mold and animal feces, they were using what seemed to be undiluted Fabuloso (which is not even approved for use) to scrub the floors. No gloves or masks on any of these kids, btw.

So, in short, they used child labor... to make the school building safe for children ._.

aprilangeldollbaby posting in

addme

Name: April Lynn Jolley

Age: 45

My posting schedule tends to be: daily/weekly/monthly/sporadic/etc Mostly sporadic. I may post 2 or more times a day or I may post monthly. It just depends on how I feel.

I mostly post about: All my workout routines, everyday things, random thoughts: some silly, some serious, my thoughts and emotions, politics.

My hobbies are: Being with my husband and baby cats, being with my mom and family, cats, working out, taking and posing in pictures, Psychology, fashion & beauty, horror movies & books, crime shows, the paranormal, fantasy movies & books, mystery movies & books, playing cards, playing board games, Facebook, journaling, ChatGPT, photo edits, graphics, digital design, edits, anime, Unicorns, scrapbooking, Stephen King, Agatha Christie, dancing, writing, poetry, reading, indie rock, pop, and alternative.

I'm looking to meet people who: Are open-minded, liberal, thoughtful, intelligent and loyal I like people who have a sense of individuality. I love expression and anything awkward and imperfect, because that's natural and that's real. ♥
.
My posting schedule tends to be: daily/weekly/monthly/sporadic/etc I post mostly sporadic entries. I might most 2 times a day or I may post monthly. It just all depends on how I feel.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: Homophobia, racism, sexism, judgmental people, really rude and stupid people. People who can't agree to disagree.

Before adding me, you should know: That I've had MS for over 25 years now. That makes my life incredibility hard at times but we all have our cross to bear. I'm very friendly, but I am sarcastic and have a dark, morbid sense of humor. I can get depressed at times. If you comment on my entries, I'll comment back. ♥

Current Mood: hopeful

thepasteldyke posting in

kamenrider

Wrote Kamen Rider fic for the first time in many many years.

Title: Sweet as candy
Series: Gavv
Characters: Sachika/Lakia
Rating: G
Summary: Sachika has Lakia try out a sweet-tasting gift from a friend.
Notes: written for

fic_promptly

Read here on DW, AO3 or my website

dustbunny105

I nearly forgot about a Transformers toy I had pre-ordered through Hasbro Pulse. AotP Sky-Byte was delayed by a month or so and is set to finally ship next week. But juuust before I get paid, so that was a no. Bit sad to not be getting him but it's just as well considering I'm still trying to re-home some toys and I don't even have a display in mind for him yet. He's not likely to sell out and he's already been spotted in stores, so it's not like it was a hard call. Tbh, I'm not sure why I bothered pre-ordering him in the first place, much as I want him.

Three other pre-orders are coming up next month and I'm considering cancelling those too. I'm pretty sure I mentioned these three before-- Masterpiece Rattrap and the two Missing Link Arcee variants. I very much want them, far more so than I do Sky-Byte. And I'm less certain of their availability after release. And I pre-ordered through AmiAmi, which means it'll be a strike against my account if I cancel. But. These premium pieces all release together, which means they make for one expensive order. And they're due out at the end of next month, which is only about a month before TFcon at the end of October. Then there's the AmiAmi thing again. They'd be shipped from Japan and overseas shipping is, uh, pretty tenuous right now. I read that the company has suspended some of their shipping options to the US, including my usual choice. And, of course, currency conversion is always a bit of a gamble when you're a ways out from paying. If I do cancel, my plan is to instead put in a pre-order with DeepDiscount. They're stateside, so it'll be an extra few months before they're ready to ship-- and, therefor, to charge. On the other hand, they've scheduled their shipments for the end of December, which is also a pretty shaky time to be spending money...

At least I have time to decide what to do. I don't want to take up all that time deciding, of course, but I do appreciate having it. I might give it until the end of this month and see where things stand then.

dustbunny105

So, work. I've been getting larger case loads pretty consistently since about the middle of last week. I've also been seeing a lot more cases from locations that have been pretty sparse across my desk. The doctor in my suite told me that she'd been informed that this change was coming but, tbh, I didn't believe it. Not like it would be the first time we'd heard that. Cases from those locations have been going mostly to another lab for the better part of a year. That's why we've slowed down enough, overall, that my officemate was transferred and not replaced. I was ready and waiting to write this off as an aberration.

But.

One of the ladies in the lab, one who I knew when she worked for my company, shared some interesting information with me today. Perhaps the most interesting part is that this information was not shared with her. The two most senior lab techs have been whispering about it. And the couriers have been speaking very obscurely about the issue.

Still, she has heard things. And from what she's been able to gather, there's been some kind of weirdness with insurance. See, the other lab is out of state and they're not supposed to take cases from people with certain insurance. Those cases are supposed to come to the local lab instead. But it seems that a lot of them-- like, a whole lot-- have been going to the other lab anyway. And she told me to take this with a grain of salt but some of the conversation she's overheard suggests that money may have changed hands under the table.

Idk how much stock to put in this-- since, y'know, neither is she-- but it certainly does make this sudden influx seem more exciting!

tcpip

I find myself in the situation where I have a number of "almost finished" diverse projects nearing completion and several social activities worthy of mention, but without a common and unifying theme. The first involves an essay I'm composing out of pure love following several Shakespearean events which my mind raises the question: "Why Shakespeare?" After all, there were many excellent playwrights and other artists during the English Renaissance, but here we are still looking toward The Bard almost five hundred years later. It is an extraordinary achievement by any measure, and I have a few thoughts on the matter which I will circulate in the near future. Also in the "coming soon" category is a review of "Bleak Squad" at the Queenscliff Town Hall, a sort of 90s supergroup made up from members of Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds, Magic Dirt, and Art of Fighting, which I attended with Kate R., who rather delightfully took me out to see them and spend an evening at the 19th century Vue Grand Hotel (their website is so bad I won't link it). Band member Mick Harvey was also present at the lodgings, and I took the opportunity to mention how much I liked his work in "The Birthday Party". The overnight stay was also an opportunity to visit my old friend Lyle A., who now lives in the region, and also to see the famous "Black Lighthouse", apparently one of only four in the world to have such a hue.

On the RPG side of things, I notably joined Liz, Karl, Gavin, Phil, and Dan for an in-person session of "Dragonbane" on Sunday. This game is derived from the almost-mythic "Drakar och Demoner" Swedish RPG from the early 1980s, which itself was "very heavily" derived from Chaosium's Magic World booklet from Worlds of Wonder. The latest incarnation still shows these roots, albeit with some newer innovations, but still with a great deal of style and design elegance. The day previous, my dear friend from Ningxia, Dr Yanping, graced my home for lunch with Kate R., and Mel S., as well (why am I always surrounded by such fabulous women?), where I experimented with an Italian-Chinese fusion cuisine. Yanping has been away from Australia for over a year, so it was a real delight to see her again, and I'm very pleased that she'll be here for an extended period, having acquired some gainful employment at Monash University. Somehow I neglected to mention attendance at Brenda L's birthday gathering in recent entries where I played the role of waiter and provider of cocktails; especially excellent conversation with Brenda, Fiona C., Matthew C. and others. This all does sound like an extensive social life, and to be fair, that has taken a good portion of the past several days. Journaling does provide a gentle reminder that I do have other serious ("boring but important") work to catch up on; the batteries have been recharged.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Dvořák, Symphony No 9

dustbunny105

I'm really struggling to find a new stand for Travis. A lot of pieces I've looked at are the perfect length and have good storage layout but aren't deep enough. I'm beginning to wonder if I should give up on finding something that can hold my physical media as well as hold Travis off the ground. I'm pretty deeply attached to that vision at this point, though... Honestly, I wish I had the work space to make my own. I'm no great maker of furniture but I can nail some boards together into a passable media center/terrarium stand, at least.

dustbunny105

It's bad enough seeing people on Twitter tag Grok or some other AI to explain or fact-check absolutely everything. But I've now seen several people ask for AI's opinion on a given topic and I swear I'm gonna lose it.

And, yes, I know bots account for a lot of that activity. But some of those posts comes from real people and I cannot stand it.

dustbunny105

I don't know what changed but I clicked that "switch back" link at the top of my Yahoo inbox and it actually worked this time! I only clicked it to send more pissed off feedback, so that was a pleasant shock.

One of the few stand-outs of my day, ngl. My sleep schedule is borked and we've had this really nice rain all day, so I've been OUT of it. Read a little and got some crochet done but that's about it.

dustbunny105

Last month was not a god reading month for me-- my grand total was one measly book. That puts me a ways behind where I hoped to be at this point in the year. Gonna have to try to do better this month to make up for it. I don't really have a lot of shorter books left on my bookcase but I've lined up a few that seem like easy and/or engaging reads. Sticking with fiction this time, too, at least to start out. I don't think I'm up to properly parsing anything academic, which is all the non-fiction I have left.

Wish me luck!

dustbunny105

Took the little crochet tunic to work and the doctor does think it'll fit her granddaughter. So, that's that thing successfully found a home. She offered to pay me to make a matching diaper cover and I'd be happy to do it but Idt I've got enough yarn of that color. I've been so tired since I got home that I'm not sure why I'm awake, lol, or else I'd have tried just to see. Might take a crack at it in the morning. Granted, it's not an expensive or difficult to find yarn, so if I don have enough on-hand, I may ask if she's willing to add the cost of a new skein to what she's willing to pay.

dustbunny105

I made a cute little tunic that was supposed to be a Christmas gift for one of my nieces but I followed the instructions for the wrong size. So, I now have something that wouldn't fit any of my nieces if I gave it to them now, never mind at Christmas. The doctor at work thinks it might fit her granddaughter, though, so I'm going to bring it in to work tomorrow so she can have a look at it. Here's hoping she can give it a home, because Idk what to do with it otherwise, lol.

On a brighter crochet note, I successfully fixed the mermaid doll I gave my brother's littler daughter a few years ago. She's loved on it so much that the head was coming off :,)

fox_in_me posting in

addme

Name: Mr. Fox

Age: 30-something

I mostly post about:
Stories from my life — my thoughts and feelings, especially during this time of war in Ukraine. I try to capture emotions honestly: memories of a peaceful past, reflections on the present, and tales from my life as a mariner and traveler.
This journal is still in its early days, after a long break from writing. Each entry is posted in both English and the original language. I also share my own photographs — from different times, chosen to reflect my current mood.

My hobbies are:
Photography (almost professional), lomography (daily photos of interesting moments), music (acoustic, alternative, instrumental covers), psychology, and classical literature. I love discovering new things — ideas, places, people.

My fandoms are:
Honestly, I’m not active in any specific fandom. But I enjoy reading and learning, especially to improve my English.

I'm looking to meet people who:
…feel connected to what I write — kindred spirits or simply those who find meaning in my words. I’m open to everyone (with one exception: I don’t welcome those who support or excuse the war). My posts are open and honest. I’d love to find new interesting people to read and connect with.

My posting schedule tends to be:
Currently daily, or a few times a week — depending on my free time.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are:
No major dealbreakers — most of what matters is already said above.

Before adding me, you should know:
I’m an open person without any particular agenda. I’m Ukrainian — and perhaps that matters now, just to avoid misunderstandings.
Welcome aboard. These are my messages in a bottle.

Watch on YouTube

dustbunny105

I was on Marketplace and I found the perfect stand for Travis's new tank, only to realize that I have no way of picking it up. Not only is that specific piece too big for any vehicle that I might be able to make use of, so too would be any piece that suits my needs. Idk why that particular part of buying furniture on Marketplace hadn't struck me before but it was a heck of a wake-up slap this time, lol. So, yeah, that's out. I'm gonna probably have to buy something from a big box store for delivery, unless I can find something on eBay. Might have to give myself a hard time limit on looking, though. I don't want the new tank taking up space for too long and I want to get his current tank cleaned up and ready to be listed.

At least the tank stand/media center is the only piece that would be too big. Everything else I hope to find is of far more manageable size. Less urgent, too, so I can take more time looking. Not that I want to wait for too much longer but it's nice to have that freedom just the same.

dustbunny105

Frikkin Yahoo updated and I can't go back to the old version of my email anymore :/ The most annoying part is there is a line of text telling me I can switch but clicking it doesn't actually change anything. I actually called tech support over that and was told if it wasn't working, it wasn't available.

At least the woman I spoke to tipped me off that I could change my settings so my inbox isn't "categorized" and, more importantly, I don't have to deal with their godawful AI services. I went ahead and expressed my disappointment with Yahoo going in on the AI nonsense, considering the environmental damage. Not that it's new at this point but, y'know, I was being asked for feedback anyway so I figured I might as well.

tcpip

A couple of weeks ago, I made initial preparations for an upcoming trip to South America and Antarctica with my friendly neighbour Kate R., and last week, payments were made for said voyage. In addition to the tour's planned route to Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, the Antarctic Peninsula, the Falkland Islands, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires (again), we've added a couple of nights in Santiago. To say the least, the trip isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a great deal of ruggedness involved on the itinerary, and volume makes a difference as well. There are many practical tasks to be undertaken between now and December, including improving my questionable competence in the Spanish language. I have smashed my way through the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile introductory course in Spanish over the past fortnight, at least in part helped by an existing "fairly good" B1 level on Duolingo.

Eschewing the numerous optional activities offered by the tour company that are not really to my taste, I am scanning attractions that suit my inclinations toward museums, art galleries, archaeology, natural beauty, and, in the South American style, anything relating to their surrealist and magical realist literary traditions. I already have firmly marked out "La Chascona", built by Pablo Neruda, who, apart from winning the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature for his surrealist love poems, was also a career diplomat and politician. Another site of this ilk to visit will be the "Centro Cultural Borges" in Buenos Aires, dedicated to the mythologist, writer, and poet Jorge Luis Borges. This said, the pair of them come with certain controversies, as if often the case, the art and the artist make a troublesome union.

It seems fitting that so much of the trip will be an exploration of wondrous landscapes in reality, history, archeology, and the literary tradition of surrealism and magical realism, and, I readily admit, I will be drawing a great deal of this travel experience in writing my "Call of Cthulhu" project "Fragments of Time, Slices of Mind". As that is being written, I have decided to run a short campaign using "ElfQuest", based on the comic series by Wendy and Richard Pini with their palaeolithic and telepathic characters. In the most recent months, I have been quite involved in a game run by Andrew D., "Night's Dark Agents", which is a story involving modern European special operations teams versus vampires. Finally, on this trajectory and of marginal interest to anyone not deeply into the lore, I have picked up (at an incredibly cheap price) an unpunched copy of Chaosium's "Dragon Pass", close to fifty years old and in "almost new" condition.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Talk Talk, Spirit of Eden

dustbunny105

After all the trouble I've gone through to maintain Phil, I think I'm going to have to give him up soon. The updates keep coming and I can only delete so many apps. I'm going to look into micro SD cards, since he does have a slot, but I've never used that kind of storage for a phone and so I'm not sure what to expect.

I really don't want to have to switch. You guys might've noticed that, lol. But something I remembered recently is that I didn't like the size of Phil at first either. And while I still consider my previous phone to be the perfect fit for me in that regard, well, I have gotten used to handling Phil. And I can admit that the backup phone I've used the last couple times he was broken was less annoying after a while. I still don't and might never like it but it's a minor annoyance, not the constant inconvenience and even discomfort that I imagined when I first had to pick it out. If I must make the switch, I know it won't be as big of a deal as I've made it out to be in my head.

At least I don't have to make the change right this moment. Which is especially good news because, uh. You guys know all that rearranging I've been doing? Yeah, I put the backup phone somewhere safe while I was doing all that and... Well, let's just say that it's very safe. Like, even from me.

dustbunny105

Another civilian ship trying to reach Gaza with aid has been intercepted and kidnapped by the IDF. As far as I know, the current status of the abductees is unknown. The aid has probably been destroyed again too.

I'm not surprised and I guess I didn't have enough hope to be disappointed either. I'm mostly just disgusted and frustrated, as I have been. We have a lot of media and politicians right now feigning shock and indignation over the famine they helped to manufacture. Some people are worried it means something even more awful is coming and they're trying to get ahead of it but I agree with those saying they're free to say these things now because so much of the population has been starved beyond the point of no return. Even still, there's been no material push for policy changes that might still save lives and prevent further suffering. Even still, this one boat can't get through.

And, ngl, I'm frustrated by this mission in and of itself. Why only one boat, for a second time? We all knew they weren't going to make it. Why not a fleet? Israel is holding back on firing on these civilian vessels, so there's reason to believe there's safety in numbers. That isn't to discount the bravery of those involved, don't get me wrong. But. We're beyond stunts to raise awareness, which is exactly what this feels like.

tcpip

The past couple of weeks have resulted in some rather pleasing work-related events. The first followed a meeting with representatives of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia which has resulted in me acquiring a test account and becoming the responsible person for approving projects that are seeking to upgrade from UniMelb's Spartan to systems like Setonix, which is the most powerful in the country and number 59 in the world (this time last year it was 28 - the landscape moves quickly!). The architecture is somewhat different to what I am used to (HPE Cray OS, HPE Cray MPI), so I'll be doing some additional learning myself and some hand-holding for researchers as they navigate and migrate data and code to this system. At the other end of the scale for the newcomers on Spartan I conducted two introductory workshops last week with some fifty attenedees. Quite a few times now, I have met researchers several years after taking my introductory courses who express their significant gratitude that I led them on the path of using high performance computing to process their data with efficiency, and hopefully, there will be a few of that nature from this cohort.

I often make the point of how supercomputers are utterly critical for current economic development with an ROI of 7:1 almost all through positive externalities, and literally save millions of lives. Could you imagine COVID-19 vaccines without HPC systems to do the simulations? We'd still be living under lockdown. Well, on a smaller scale, I was very proud to organise a researcher presentation last week for Research Computing Services (RCS) and Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP) with Dr Debjyoti Karmakar who is developing a non-invasive fetal monitoring device to prevent perinatal asphyxia for high-risk pregnancies. Dr Deb's presentation was very well received, even if he had to take a brief emergency call in the midst of it! He has been making extensive use of both the Spartan supercomputer and our Mediaflux-based data storage system, which dovetailed quite nicely with a virtual meeting a few days later with several representative from Princeton University who also are interested in integrating the HPC systems with Mediaflux, which is not as simple as it should be, but that is the nature of our work.

In my own research, I am still making good progress on studies in the psychology and sociology of climate change denial and have recently made contact with a long-standing member of the UNFCCC Accreditation Panel of Experts and Methodology Panel of Experts who shares this interest. Over the next two months or so, I am hoping to elaborate from this member's own interest on the psychological need for "belonging" and "club membership" which leads to climate science denial being strongly correlated with ideology rather than scientific evidence, and to draw a stronger correlation between this and vested interests in political economy. Ideological positions are usually strongly associated with political economy, so it should not surprise me to find such a connection, and when it comes to the damage done, there are those who are responsible, and one thing we do know from institutional and individual analysis, very few people like to take responsibility.

Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Leonard Cohen, Complete Studio Albums

dustbunny105

This weekend kinda sneaked up on me, ngl! Trying to lay out my plans now. Nothing too structured but I have things I want to accomplish, as per my usual.

I want Saturday to be my productive day. I'm going to finish my first letter to my penpal tonight so I can get it into the mail first thing tomorrow. Then I want to get chores out of the way, which shouldn't take long. After that, I've got lots of crochet I ought to do and I also need to make myself get some writing done. Oh, need to get more stuff listed on eBay too.

Sunday I want to be more of a relaxing day. Mostly, I want to finally finish the book I've been plodding through this month. I should look around more for furniture pieces too. Which is still productive, I guess, but I don't want to risk getting too distracted by the internet on my productive day, lol. I've seen some fun floating shelves that have given me Ideas and I'd like to shop around based on those.

Profile

shadro

Navigation

January 2014

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Night Sea for Tranquility III by branchandroot

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Aug. 9th, 2025 12:17 am

Reading

(no subject)

Add me, perhaps?

Gavv Sachika/Lakia fanfiction

(no subject)

(no subject)

Unfinished Tales

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Voyages to the Real, the Wondrous, and the Surreal

(no subject)

(no subject)

Supercomputing Teaching, Researchers, and More

(no subject)

Profile

Navigation

January 2014

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags