9271 - Wednesday

[scottobear]

Forgot to mention that I got a little TF2 in last night (about 45 min), while BHK checked her mail... My stats are still terrible, but I had a good time. I thought I'd gotten some achievements, but I'm not seeing 'em here... probably too few folks on the server for it to count.

My fave Classes are still the Engineer and the Scout, with medic going further back since folks are busy using him for all the unlockable stuff. Gold Rush is a great addition, too.

A new Portal map pack was just released from We Create Stuff. This map pack are actual Portal maps based off of the flash version of Portal, a 2D title that features 40 levels.

The pack places you in the role of a new test subject before the events of Portal. You can download the pack directly from this link, or visit the map pack page for a list of mirrors.

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Substitute teacher does stage magic trick for middle school class, is fired for "practicing witchcraft"

Florida? Not Tennessee or Arkansas?

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Hey!! Reboot is coming back? Possibly more info here, but who knows the rumor level.

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The recipe - Steamed catfish in Banana Leaves sounds really tasty... but is even better as an expletive. Something Perry White might utter.

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Proof that we've been working too hard, yet eating well - we're too tired for ice cream! We have 2 gallons in the fridge that have been untouched since at least Monday.

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1 year ago - mortgage, lileks transfer, change, Altiris skills, Aardvark's Ice Cream, Adam's last HS sports, chat catch-up, good use of dead dibneys, dream, summer coming, kite flying pix

2 years ago - flickr issues, getting a trifle ill, security video feed, dawn of the dead, free streaming video, winamp tracks, star trek cribs

3 years ago - bro search, strongman stunts, blood, mark of beast=50 less, monsters inc, day in the life, fishstories born (long since made dormant), unique id, Chlamydia Outbreak Kills Penguins, tv cars, voice post

4 years ago - quorn, sunset, mean newt face, pet stroller, entertainment pondering, jail hubbub

5 years ago - There pirate quest (still no beards, but eye patches!), first PT, Being D's spokesmodel, orange cat fan club

6 years ago - Slept in, Star Wars Field trip, getting into php/MySQL, brush your cat's teeth, pix of me working on bro's computer, haiku, classic tv

7 years ago - embedding is verboten (back, now!), apartment desc, Mateo's Josie is born!, good stuff, all around

Comments

[blackhellkat.livejournal.com]

Cathy was here for lunch---the ice cream has been breached! I've got the house on lock-down and red alert!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

We have an ice cream breach!!

and I've still had none!

[rhyyss.livejournal.com]

Steam looks like a cool, if potentially dangerously addictive site...

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Steam is pretty hotly disputed good guy/ bad guy site... I've had a lot of good luck with the way they distribute games, but I'm in the USA.. folks in AU and UK complain that some releases on there don't make it to 'em in time.

I've been a member for years - it's free, and makes for a great tracking and info resource!

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

Hi Scott,

I know that you probably avoid anything that even remotely smacks of politics like the plague, and would completely understand why you might send a two word reply to this comment, but I'll send it anyway.

For a long, long time now, many at LiveJournal, including people like myself who helped create it long ago, have been extremely frustrated at the management of the site, their policies, their occasional censorship, their weak response to the Russian government's prosecution of a LJer (http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/03/13/russian-blogger-heads-to-court-after-fiery-comment/) for leaving a comment suggesting that corrupt cops should be publically burned at the stake, etc.

Well, I've created an LJ community called ljunited, where our goal is to form a large, centralized group of LJ members to fight that.

Specifically, our goal is to work towards defending and restoring the original promises made to LiveJournal's members (http://web.archive.org/web/20040401175244/http://www.livejournal.com/site/contract.bml) by LiveJournal itself.

We want to stand up for the free speech of ALL of LiveJournal's members, restore LJ's original strong support for community-based Open Source Software development, and restore community participation in the successful operations of LiveJournal... because frankly, the people managing the site are also slowly killing it (http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/48335.html) due to their poor policies.

The site is shrinking in activity about 1% a month currently, and it's within the management's power to do something about this trend, rather than contribute to it by further alienating its members.

In the past week or so, I have attracted about 150 fairly motivated people to help out. We're also working with helping candidates for the upcoming LJ advisory council elections who embrace our views.

We've endorsed rm on LiveJournal, who is a very knowledgeable, thoughtful individual (http://community.livejournal.com/ljunited/1896.html) with a lot of persuasive oomph who has been on LJ forever, originally as Reive. A talented writer, longtime LJ member, very knowledgeable, very talented individual.

We've also attracted several LJers in the Open Source community, who have their own issues relating to the open source side of LJ that need to be addressed, because LJ has turned its back on working with the open source community for its development over the years, shutting out needed improvements to the software. We want to make the case that they should reverse this policy.

Despite current crap Russian management at LJ's parent company SUP, we have some reasons for hope. Recently, they brought in someone who previously oversaw the internet development at ITV to be their general manager, so there seems to be some recognition that they need a bit of a change. Our job is to basically do a far better job in making the case for it, and to lay out where they're going wrong and what the better alternatives would be.

I'd be curious what your concerns are regarding LiveJournal and its future, because it's our goal to bring people into our group and have them positively effect our policies and ideas.

Sure, it would be a wonderful thing to have you join our community, to have your support for LJ United, its goals, and its candidate... but failing that, I invite you to find out more about us.

Thanks,
Mark

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Hi, I didn't see this until just now.

What is the status on the situation... and how did you locate me to ask?

Thanks,
Scott