Timelies all!

We may get some sort of "wintry mix" tonight. Or we may not :shrug:

Feeling a bit down, I don't know if any of you knew Mikey from VA/'Mike T from Table Talk, People's Forum, etc., but he passed away this morning from cancer. He was a terrific guy, he lived in Arlington, so we were friends in meatspace as well. We're on another board together, and one prevailing sentiment is that people are saying that folks outside of The Box don't understand why this is so upsetting, like someone can be friends or family if you don't see them in person. So. For the record, you guys are my family, and like a real family, I love some of you more than others, but every one of you matters to me.

I never knew him, but that is sad. And yes, other people don't get it at all.

In nice news, the store downstairs accepted a package for me! That's like NYC-style nice. Now I feel bad that I don't shop there.

ask them if they have a facebook page and you can like them.

I have CRANKED out work today. I did 2 tasks that had been looming over me for months because they were never urgent. Also managed to get 3 of the 5 personal things done today that I wanted. YAY!

[link]

ask them if they have a facebook page and you can like them.

It's a chain, so I don't care thaaaat much, but I will consider them for any future vitamin needs I might have.

folks outside of The Box don't understand why this is so upsetting

Yeah, I was trying to explain to my sister this morning about the damage done by pseudicides (like Lennay Kekua or the weremonkey), and she didn't really get it.

So, Vortex, let me say that I'm sorry. Cancer sucks.

I had astigmatism--identically shaped in each eye, I learned, the least useful unique talent to have-- and got LASIK five years ago. So I just want to point out that it's not a complete bar, if anyone thinks it is. But I imagine most of us are too old for it now anyway.

I'm in one of those meetings where I need to explain what the effect of a site map that doesn't match the site has on the user (there are screenshots to show a place where the site map is missing pages on teh site).

Why does anyone need that explained to them? You don't have to be technical to understand that, right? The site map is wrong. Fix the fucking site map. Why do I need to write down "the user cannot use the site map to navigate the site"?

I think people need to relax, breathe deeply, and pretend that things aren't complicated. The problem with flinching is that you can't investigate during a flinch. You can't collect information during a flinch. You're not learning during a flinch.

There is definitely a degree to which being unashamed of not knowing is a good thing--but it's good if it helps you know. If it instead bolsters your lack of knowledge by making sure you never have to think, it's a negative. You will not catch up.

And it's not that people are stupid--they clearly know complex things, and not such alien things that a site map is way outside their zone of comprehension. They work on web applications for a living. They just hear one or two keywords and boom! Interpretation shuts down.

None of that was what I came here to type.

I'm desperately trying to draw a shippy pornish picture and there isn't room for all the arms. Which, clearly, is like life, but I can't work out how to solve the appendage issues.

That wasn't it either. What...right!

I don't get the point of this up-goer five text editor other than as an exercise is semi-pointless simplicity, but I'm finding it more interesting to read than to write. Premise being: explain something using a vocab of the thousand most common English words. So, apparently, this results:

EVEN MORE SPACE FIGHTS

Remember how the space driving guy got sent to the other bad guy in a really cold box? When he woke up, he was at the bad guy's house and there were bad guys ALL AROUND. But soon, the kid and the lady and the computer guys showed up to save him, and the kid had got so good at SPACE POWERS that soon all the bad guys were falling down into a mouth in the ground. He'd even got a new hand! Everyone got away, but they learned that the man in black had made a new big space house with big space guns, and even with all their best space fighting cars they couldn't make it go on fire because it had a space bag around it. The kid went back to the little old green man to learn more about SPACE POWERS, and everyone else tried to break the space bag so they could make the big space house go on fire. The kid came back and let his dad catch him and take him to his crazy old friend, who said it was okay to be sad or mad or angry because it made you better at SPACE POWERS. But the kid didn't believe him, and they had a big fight. But just when it looked like the kid was losing, his dad picked up the crazy old man and threw him away. Then the dad died. The kid escaped just before the big space house went on fire, and there was a big party. You would think that the kid and the lady would get married, but it turned out she was his sister, so she married the space driving guy instead, even though he was kind of a jerk to her sometimes.

What we can learn from this story is that being happy is the best SPACE POWER.

That is kinda cute.

xkcd is unsurprisingly adept at this. He is a poster boy for stripping things down. Is he really just one guy? How can he turn out pretty consistent quality for so long? I mean, I don't think I hate anything I've read of his--not all of it is the best, but most of it's not the worst. Impressive.

Now, back to the hand job logistics.

ita !, this [link] is a distributor for the U.S., including California.