Several years ago, I messed up something in my rotator-cuff. It healed up, but somewhat clumsily, such that I often feel a twinge when I exert any strength in my right arm while it's extended above the shoulder. If I don't stop and rest my arm at that point, it keeps getting worse ( Read more... )

I’ve lately developed some sort of mania for preservation and fermentation. I’ve canned a bunch of soups and other foodie glop. I’ve got home-made yogurt in the fridge, home-made bread on the counter, and three different vats of stuff bubbling away in various other parts of the kitchen: oatmeal stout, sake, and sauerkraut. I’m not sure why this ( Read more... )

LiveJournal circling the drain? (includes how-to-backup hints)

Several years ago, in a dream, somebody told me a joke. It wasn't a great joke, but it was a good joke, and I hadn't heard it before, and when I woke up I remembered the joke and it was still funny enough to make me smirk ( Read more... )

Dear Friends,

If you feel you must post advertisements for politicians on your LJ, could you put them behind an lj-cut helpfully marked with something like “basically the same sort of horseshit spam lying about power-hungry phonies that the mail carrier is pushing through your door at the rate of about ⅓ of a rainforest per week these days ( Read more... )

The Democrats are eager to demonstrate that Palin is an empty aw-shucksing Miss Congeniality without any grasp of the issues while Biden is an experienced policy mastermind, which is a brilliant strategy, given the history of U.S. Presidential elections: Empty SuitExperienced Wonk WinnerLoser Jimmy CarterGerald Ford Ronald ReaganWalter Mondale ( Read more... )

First, a brief excerpt from an article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle about a fellow who was arrested for hanging up signs lamenting the war crimes of Bush & Cheney:

They searched him and wrote a citation containing several misspellings, including “fail to disobey a lawfull order” and “demostrating without a permit.”

Second, this delightful T ( Read more... )

• jedipussytricks got one of those Kill-A-Watt things for us (PG&E will loan some out to you for free if you ask). I’ve been measuring how much electricity various things use. I’m an electricity n00b: it’s been a while since I took the one electricity-for-idiots class that was required of Computer Sci students, and I've long since forgotten the difference ( Read more... )

I haven’t much been following baseball this year, but Zannie scored a couple of tickets to last night’s Giants game. I dunno how the rest of their season has been going, but they sure looked bad last night. A team that has more errors than baserunners over the course of the game doesn’t look like they’re playing in the right league.

( Read more... )