HEAR YE! HEAR YE!

F2F 2005 Preliminary Vote:

This vote is to narrow down the choice of locales for F2F 2004 (May 20-22, 2005).

Please vote for two choices. The four cities with the most votes will be looked into in depth with regards to available hotels, costs, etc. etc. Armed with this additional information, we will have a final vote to choose the location for F2F 2005.

The choices are as follows:

• Austin/San Antonio
• Cleveland
• Kansas City
• Minneapolis
• Nashville
• New Orleans
• Toronto

The ballot box will be open until 5pm, Wednesday, July 14 (one week from today).

Questions, etc., should be directed to the F2F Thread.

VOTE NOW

A Shiny Sixpence, Packed with ~Ma!

Brides and grooms to be, the silver sixpence is now ready to be sent to the next Buffista bride or groom. It began with Topic!Cindy, who sent it to JZ, who gave it to me.

I can attest that this little coin has major ~ma: due to the sixpence, my wedding day was warm and sunny; due to the sixpence, my guests all travelled to and from the island safely; due to the sixpence, everyone felt love in the air that day.

If your date is coming up in July or August, and you would like to be part of the tradition, let me know at my profile address!

International Firefly Meetup Day July 10th!

[link]

As most of you probably know, the Browncoats invaded meetup.com a couple of months ago, and this month's meetup day is this Saturday, July 10th at 2pm. Check out the site for a local meetup near you.

Boston is definitely on for 2pm at Tealuxe on Newbury Street (had to plug it, sorry).

If you want to attend a meetup, be sure to register and RSVP. (Firefly Meetups are normally the first Saturday of every month at 2pm, but July's was pushed back because of the holiday.)

HEAR YE! HEAR YE!

Voting is now open for the following proposal:

To have a Book Club thread wherein a specific book would be discussed, Buffista style, on a specific time rotation. The initial basic structure for the Book Club thread (subject to unrestricted modification as contained below) will be:

1) One book a month. The first 3 books will be chosen at the beginning of the thread by participants in the thread with at least a month of lead time for the first book, and every book thereafter. The method of choosing will be suggestions from participants, narrowed down by consensus and, if necessary, a Mr. Poll. Literary diversity will be encouraged. Only books that are readily available at your public library will be eligible.

2) Book discussions will not be officially moderated. "Benign" moderation in the form of discussion points, questions and suggestions from readers well-versed in the text will be welcome.

3) All the details of the book club operation (including method of book selection, number of books per rotation, length of rotation, and length of discussion period) are flexible and subject to change to suit the preferences of the thread denizens.

The purpose of the thread is to accomodate an expressed desire by a number of Buffistas to have such a thread to allow focused and uninhibited discussion on a particular text as well as providing us with an opportunity and excuse to read and discuss books that may be outside our usual genre. And to have fun doing all that!

Discussion started here: DXMachina "Voting Discussion: We're Screwing In Light Bulbs AIFG!" Jul 5, 2004 5:21:42 pm PDT

Voting closes Monday (July 12, 2004) at 9 PM (that would be "Board Time", i.e. PDT).

Vote Now!

A quick update for the twelve Buffistas who requested citrus cookies this baking:

I'll be baking them all Tuesday morning while awaiting a furniture delivery, then getting them packaged up and taking them to the post office Tuesday afternoon. They'll all go Priority mail.

Hey folks --

Congress is going to vote within the next 48 hours on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would amend the Constitution to deny homosexuals the right to marry.

In addition to being hateful and divisive, this amendment would, for the first time, alter the Constitution to *deny* rights to US citizens.

MoveOn.org has made it easy for you to e-mail your Reps. and Senators, as well as King George, in one fell swoop, here. There is a space where you can add your own message into their boilerplate text, which I urge you to do, if you decide to participate.

Voting results on Wolfram's proposal, with 100 voters:

YES: 68 votes (68%)

NO: 22 vote (22%)

NO PREFERENCE: 10 vote (10%)

So I guess there is going to be a Book Club thread. Good luck!

NYistas: Anyone interested in checking out Buster Keaton's The General in Prospect Park tonight at 7:30pm, drop me a line. Complete details are below. Profile addy is good.

The renowned ALLOY ORCHESTRA performs its newest original score to THE GENERAL (1927), a wild train chase/love story starring Buster Keaton set during Civil War that is one of the great accomplishments of the silent era (1hr19min @ 8:40). Come early to catch INVERT, a maverick Brooklyn based string quartet that confounds expectations by folding jazz, rock, and world music flourishes into its new music repertoire.

Through various sundry methods and illicit schemes, we have settled on a genre-busting book to kick off the action.

The first selection for The Buffista Book Club will be:

The Intuitionist, by Whitehead, Colson.

Discussion begins August 15, 2004.

Job posting:

My company is in the market to hire one Java developer.

If you're a Java developer in the Boston area (we're based on the North Shore, about 25 miles up the coast from Boston), and you think you might be interested drop me a line at my profile address (add 'Buffistas:' to the subject line to avoid my harsh spam-filtering).