Category: Uncategorized

So, in the past, my best roommates have been friends of friends, or kinda distant friends. So, I’m asking you all, if you know anyone who is or will be looking for housing in chicago within the next 2-3 months.

Because it’s been awhile since I ripped a bad argument to shreds, and I’m feeling the urge. If you want to see the source of this, it’s a link I pulled from my subscriptions page recently. I have a distant affection for the guy who posted it, despite, or perhaps partially because of, our civil but intense disagreement on a great many issues. (We also vehemently agree on many issues, such as this one.)

But I digress. Here’s a link to the screed he admired. Please read it before reading my response, if you want to form an opinion on your own.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009531

Here’s my commentary.

During my time as the first-among-equals (not really first by my choice, but more by consensus) co-officer of QGPA, we put on something that I called organizational speed dating (which wisely renamed the event “Building Bridges”). Basically, my original idea was to let a bunch of minneapolis queer orgs get up on stage and talk about their organization for a bit. Mostly so people could find out about interesting opportunities, but partly as a showcase for intra-community diversity. This turned into something resembling speed dating (hence my name for it) where we had people pick a table with one or two orgs (generally thematically related when more than one shared a table) sitting at it, and talk about it. And then they switched and went to second one after 15-30 minutes (I can’t remember any more, it’s been awhile) It went pretty well. I was surprised by the popularity of the religious orgs, but just goes to show how selective my own view of the world is.

Last night, I saw my original idea brought to life in a very different way. It’s the environmentalist happy hour (green drinks) for chicago. There are many similar regular events around the world and across the country, though I don’t know about the formats for the other groups. (check out http://www.greendrinks.org/) And 27 orgs came up and gave us their spiel in “2 minutes”. Some went maybe 90 seconds, some overstayed their welcome to 4 minutes, waxing passionate about the importance of organic farms, and how they really can be economically viable, and how this one person saved their family farm, to the disinterest of 90+% of the audience. The minority actually gave significant ways to get involved. All or nearly all, provided websites so people could find out more.

Seeing it put into practice helped me appreciate the flaws and advantages of the approach. Obviously different from the route we took. I would say the choice depends on your purpose.

Say goodbye to sinusitis, and say Helloooo to post nasal drip. *sigh*

This too shall pass. =)

today was a really good day at work. I spent 60+% of it in meetings.

first post with LJ mobile. Maybe I’ll have something to say during the workday now.

I have a headache, and a fever. It was really bad on monday. Not especially bad now. I think it’s a sinus infection (unless it’s the brain rot!). It was better before I went to work today. I didn’t notice the swollen lymph nodes under my jaw until this morning. But I really did need to go. I needed to construct and send out agendas for two meetings tomorrow morning. Which I also have to attend. Sleep soon. did I mention that I have high deductible health insurance?

My performance review group meets on thursday. I completed my self evaluation two weeks agoish. There are six competencies. You can rate yourself meets, exceeds, or does not meet expectations. When I first thought about it, I was thinking two exceeds, three meets, one does not meet. Then I heard the advice to toot my own horn and I talked myself up to 3 exceeds and 3 meets. In a fit of egomania I made it 4 exceeds and 2 meets. I’m not present for the thursday meeting. I get to hear the summary on friday. Fun times.

So, I figured out my patching difficulties, or at least I have a theory. I think my bit torrent client never relinquished ports that WoW’s bit torrent client needed. (Why WoW can’t use your default bit torrent client, well, that’s another story). So, with that, everything installed successfully. I log in, and it’s a 35 minute wait to get onto my usual server. oy. 973 people in the que. Ugh.

So, I switch over to some random, not-fully-populated server. And I figure, what the hell, I’ll create one of them there new draenei characters. Well, first, I’m totally disappointed by the lack of texture and detail on the male draenei characters. They seem so featureless and bland, like, even worse than smurfs. Maybe it’s just that I’ve only been seeing them in the animated video things, but I think they’re disappointing compared to the other species, so maybe not. So, I make a throwaway chick draenei shaman, and I log in to the grand central station that is currently the draenei start town. Logically, this should be no surprise, but it was still a little overwhelming. =)

So, then I go back to my home server, things proceed pretty quickly, then it hangs looking for my characters. I shrug, go to another server, get my characters, but can’t actually log in with them. So … yeah. Great expansion guys. I’ll let you know how it is in a week or two, when I can actually log on to play.

One of the hair styles available in WoW inspired me to make a Marge-Simpson-looking undead character. I’m somewhat bemused by the idea of an entirely undead simpsons family. But you can’t make fat characters, and you can’t vary height.

Lisa – Mage, Homer – Priest or Warlock, Marge – Warrior or Priest, Bart – Rogue. Maggie would be the trickiest.

So, my posting frequency has definitely declined. Anyway, a few highlights from the past couple weeks:

• My intestines are now working normally
• I have a level 50 WoW character and passed me in the leveling. Considering he started 3 months after me, this is no minor feat. =)
• I am looking at apartments.
  • I’ve found one in an amazingly good location (just north of belmont on broadway). But the place is tiny, and the roommate doesn’t seem like a vast improvement on my already decent roomies. Rent is the same as here.
  • Another one is in wicker park. halfway between two blue line stops. The location itself is uninspiring, but it’s about a 20 minute walk from all sorts of cool stuff. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly easy to get from there to andersonville, the shore in lakeview, or anywhere else. Also, no really convenient gym (hello to working out downtown). The roommates seem great, though they labeled me more socially conservative than they (and I have to agree). Also, the straight one is H.O.T. (this is not good.) Rent would be $367/month.
  • Still checking out other places.
• I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and I’m about halfway through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
• I finished the first three books in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series (Napoleonic wars with dragons. But not exactly what you might think. Not bad. Not sure if its approach to Chinese history/culture is any better than Memoirs of a Geisha was towards Japanese history/culture. It certainly has alot to say about such. Especially in book 2.)
• I want a Nintendo DS, but they were big christmas sellers and are not easy to find.

That’s about it.