The Mono

16 Round Table Pizza locations in Contra Costa County will donate 15% of the payment for your order on June 29th to the Contra Costa County arm of the UC Cooperative extension, if you bring in a copy of this flyer. This is at no additional cost to you, beyond the paper and ink needed to print the flyer. If you eat pizza and you can get to one of the locations on the back of the flyer between 11am and 10pm on June 29th, please make the effort.

For those unfamiliar with the Cooperative Extension, it brings you the Master Gardener Program, which provides volunteers for school gardening education projects, booths at most farmer's markets in the area, the Master Gardener helpline (which offers gardening help for anyone in the Bay Area), support for 4H, and more. As a Master Gardener myself, I can tell you this program does a lot more than most people think, and its funding has been completely cut as of June 30th. We've got some help to continue to at least December while we search for new funding sources, but we still need some operating expenses for the second half of this year, and the Round Table fundraiser could help a lot.

Check out the flyer and the participating locations, and help out if you can, even if it's only by spreading the word. Thank you!

I have been made aware of the phenomenon known as the "salmon bot".

It connects two random people on AIM by sending both of them the same random message (it just happened to me on Yahoo IM, so it's there too). The other user's visible handle belongs to the bot, and is made up of "[adjective]salmon". I got to talk to "shimmeringsalmon", for example. There are other fish bots with similar characteristics, such as Trout-bots and Coho-bots -- shimmeringsalmon told me my handle was "WhitelistedCoho".

So if you get a random IM from someone with a fish name, and they think you started the conversation, it's a fish bot at work. The Wikipedia entry linked to above has an opt-out command if it bugs you, how to poke the bot if you want, and more information on who is behind them.

I'm finding I don't mind so much now that I know what's going on. I'll try to explain it to the next person I get connected to, so that at least they understand (and can opt-out themselves).

Contra Barn Dance (PDF)

This is in Pacheco (a little north of Concord/Pleasant Hill), quite near 680. It's put on by the Rainbow Community Center, our local GLBT group, with help from SF Queer Contra Dance. Donations help defeat Proposition 8, which has a lot of support in Contra Costa County.

It runs from 7 to 10pm at the Pacheco Community Center; the suggested donation is $12. Bring friends! :)

It's been over a year; I figured I should brush the dust off the pages and repost them.

If you are in a position where you may at some point either 1) feed me/take me out to eat or 2) host me at your house, you may find these useful:

My food restrictions
My chemical sensitivities, including a list of safe and unsafe products.

Thanks for the books, even the ones I haven't read yet. I'm sure Aahz is polishing off a cask or two in memoriam.

I'm glad I didn't try school; I'm weak as a kitten today.

I've given in and compiled a couple of lists:
My food restrictions, and
My chemical sensitivities.

I feel horribly self-conscious making lists like that, but hopefully they'll work toward drama-avoidance.

It has come to my attention that I have a hot button that not all of my friends know exists. It's probably a good idea to mention it.

If anyone -- and I mean anyone -- brings up the topic of indoor vs. outdoor cats in more than a discussion of simple logistics, or mention of what they do with their own pets (not why), it is the fastest way to get me dizzy with fury. I am aware of this, and I will leave a discussion politely if it turns to the philosophical angle, but do not ever try to tell me what I (or people in general) "should" do with their own pets.

It is not productive to have this button. I am not cultivating it. Yet every time it comes up, it seems like an avenue by which people can preach freely and impose their own views with the confidence of self-righteousness, rather than a weighing of real-life factors. It's happened so often that I'm not rational about it anymore.

No further discussion, please.

Frontline tonight is doing a series called "Media War", about why investigative journalism is becoming extinct. The paper said it was the first of four parts, the Tivo menu says "1 of 2"; the paper also said that the third and fourth parts hadn't been through final editing, though, so it may be that they're airing the first and second and will do the third and fourth a bit later.

It's a subject near and dear to my heart, and to Nick's as well... I thought I should mention it for whoever's currently reading my journal. There are cures for the affliction that grips modern journalism, and I trust Frontline to find them.

( on to the daily trivia )

Do you know anyone who has a use for semi-precious cabochons?

I have a whole bunch of them, mostly ovals with a few square or round lozenges. There's a lot of rose quartz, some very nice opals, a couple of blue agates and a whole set of small amethyst round cabs. I also have a full gross of small gold-fill screweyes, suitable for mounting half-drilled beads or pearls.

I don't do jewelry beyond beading and a little wire-work, so I have no use at all for these. Free to anyone who wants them.

AfterhoursDJs is trying to cover their bandwidth costs; the plea seems to be more desperate than usual at the moment. It's a really great channel, to the point where I rip the stream to put it in the car, and I've been really happy with 75% of what I get. If you like trance, check out the live feed at http://www.afterhoursdjs.org (click through at the bottom) and think about tossing a little change their way.

He posted a link to the Ian Knot, the first I had heard of such a thing. I've taught myself how to do it now, and it seems like my shoelaces don't come untied as easily anymore. (Even if they do, it takes me about two seconds to tie them now, no joke.) My shoes almost always come untied normally.

It's a nice shoelace knot, really, and it's so easy to learn that I wonder whether it would be easier to teach it to kids than the multi-step, rather complicated standard knot.

Genetics may play a role in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Reeves said the study demonstrates that people with chronic fatigue syndrome are unable to deal with everyday challenges and adversity. That could include injuries, illnesses, divorce, even stressful jobs, the researchers said.

[...]

Among their findings: Chronic fatigue patients tested with high levels of allostatic load, which is a stress measure of hormone secretions, blood pressure and other signs of wear and tear on the body. The patients were about twice as likely to have a high allostatic load index as people who did not have chornic fatigue syndrome.

The researchers also found that certain genetic sequence variations in five stress-moderating genes showed up consistently in chronic fatigue patients. And they identified at least five subtypes of chronic fatigue syndrome, classified according to criteria that include their genetics and the way their symptoms unfold.

So someone finally did The Study. The implications are huge, not the least of which that it finally begins to provide a metric for diagnosis; maybe we'll be able to start training doctors away from the "it's all in your head" meme.

People always seem to ask me "So what happened to give you CFS?" I've answered that I don't know, but I just seemed to have some sort of congenital disadvantage. That explanation might have been right on the money -- this study suggests that if you are genetically susceptible, adding enough stress will create the syndrome. And heaven knows, if you combine the genetics with things like my body's tendency toward systemic inflammation and my own stressball personality in college, it was probably inevitable.

Validation feels good.

Probably best known in sci-fi circles for his role as G'Kar on Babylon 5.

His website mentions that he passed away after "a long illness". CinemaBlend says that he was a heavy smoker, and succumbed to lung cancer. Far be it from me to wish he had suffered any longer, but he was taken far too soon.

Me, I was a huge fan of G'Kar, and liked him in the few other roles I had seen him in. Maybe it's time to look up his filmography and start renting.

”I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station, when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.” - G’Kar (“Objects in Motion”)

There's a Bay Area Monitor article on off-hours bus service around the bay area. Various routes running from one BART station to another, and a few other points of interest, during the hours the trains aren't running. Definitely worth a read if you're one of the people who always seems to be racing for that last train of the night -- and who of us doesn't from time to time?

Like pusifoot, I'm already pretty out, but I figured I'd take this opportunity to say that I'm polyamorous, kinky, and an animist pagan.

I'm still waiting for my toaster too... though I've heard that the bisexuals get waffle irons! Maybe I'm missing the boat on that one.

Chief Justice Rehnquist has died.

I can't add a lot more to that.

There's been lots of buzz about the law allowing hybrids to use carpool lanes. If you're looking for clarification on how exactly this might affect you, San Francisco Bay Area Transportation News (BATN) has sent out (via Yahoogroups) a press release from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. It seems to be a little clearer than some of the articles zooming around.

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