"We are intrigued to find such an object in the galactic halo."

--Black hole discovered in the galactic halo. From Space.com

Earthqu-ache

I was at home when the earthquake hit. The phone lines were clogged, but DSL was working fine. However, the keyboard was not-- neither the "i" nor the "k" was functioning. So, this is the email message I sent out:

The earthquae ht after eye had just gotten out of the shower. eye was able to get outsde and stand wth neghbors. they had been wocen up by the earthquae and were wrapped up en blanquets. the phone lns are not worcng nowbut dsl es. mracle of mracles! ths on ash wednesday of all days. eye am ocay. eye hope there are no bg aftershocs. yes et was scary. Don't tell any one eye sed "help!" before eye ran out sde n my bathrobe and slppers.
--Fareeda

We just had an earthquake. Everyone, especially those of us who've never felt an earthquake before, are a little freaked out.

Update: Msnbc.com has streaming media. Seems that Starbucks lost its facade. The sign on top of Starbucks HQ fell into the parking lot.

Update 2: 17,000 people are without power and there's a fire in South Seattle.

This morning I had my first toddler time of the new session (it runs till early April, and it's completely booked). Sylvia, one of my regulars, is a girl with dandelion hair and wide dark eyes. She participates in all of the rhymes and songs, but traditionally has hung back while bolder young people have charged forth to grab bean bags or jostled for the prime spots to see the picturebooks. This morning, as I held up a picture book, a boy named Charles stood in front of her . "Sit down!" Sylvia said loudly. "You sit down!" (I asked Charles to sit "Criss cross applesauce." He did.) I thought, "Hurrah for you, Sylvia! You tell 'em!" I would love to hear what she says to drivers who don't stop for pedestrians at the cross-walks.

"Tomorrow marks the last day of Library Lovers Month, but there's time enough to note that I especially love those library reference phone folks."

Well, _I_ love a librarian, so I feel it's only just that I should link this article.

GHOST IN THE SHELL 2 coming!. finally got around to renting Ghost in the Shell 1 this Sunday. Some really great astounding animation, and, unlike Princess Mononoke, the storyline consists of something other than a lot of running and shouting.

"I would like to claim it was inspired genius from the beginning, but not at all. Personally, it took me a long time to realize what was so significant about both the blog format and the tool itself."

--Evan Williams, Blogger CEO, interviewed at Write The Web.

EVHEAD! writes:

"Deborah Branscum, the author of the Newsweek piece that equates all blogs to personal journals, has a blog that's not a personal journal. I don't get it."

I wish I'd found this one myself. EVHEAD, BTW, is the personal Blog of Blogger.com CEO Evan Williams.

Two on the same day. Amazing. I just got a note from Green Tricycle, an online literary zine specializing in short short fiction, telling me that they are going to publish one of my stories.

When I suggested to Morbus Iff over at GameGrene.com that he post a news peice about 1000 Blank White Cards, he shot back that what he'd really like was an article on how to extend the game a bit. I ruminated, wrote, and GameGrene decided to publish the result. I Want My 1000 Blank White Cards.

On a whim I ran "All your base are belong to us" through the babelizer. The result was "Its superficial lower whole number is belongs to us." Even more alarming, I ran the phrase "Windows XP will improve user efficiency and positively impact the bottom line" and got "all your base are belong to us."

Who’s Blogging Now.

The degeneration of journalism: an urgent desire to say anything at all about nothing at all. Newsweek's article about weblogs is trite and unresearched. Clearly the writer went to Google and did a search on weblogs. You can also read the Slashdot thread on the Newsweek article.

"You know, maybe I shouldn't feel so bad when I get laid off.

Little Yellow Different is a fine weblog. It grows on you. Honest.

Today I was walking by the Hi*Score arcade on Pine Street and I decided to walk in. There I discovered one of my favorite things in the world, a Bubble Bobble machine. For 12 minutes I was in a world of pure joy. Absolutely nothing else happened today.

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses, and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've split the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring these words to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete."
-- George Carlin
--gleaned from Babel.

Tonite as we were coming out of the Indian restaurant, a group of bikers rode by, speaking in loud voices and shadowed by a pair of slow-moving police cars. In front of the book store, two more cars and a paddy wagon converged. The police stopped the bikers and began loading bikes into the paddy wagon. "Let them go! Let them go!" someone started shouting. The lady from the book store was there. She said, "They're part of a group. They plan these rides in secret to slow down the traffic. It's their message - more bikes, less cars." We paid for our books and walked home. I thought, "Not that the traffic ever moves above a crawl on Broadway."

"The Roman Catholic Church is giving its support to a new research centre, which it believes could provide an alternative to the use of human embryos for medical research".

This might fall into the weird category for some people, but for me, it falls into the interesting. I'm interested that the Vatican, which has had a lot to say about ethics in science and reproductive issues, is putting its money where its mouth is, so to speak.

--CNN online

toxic waste There's a class 2 (i.e. potentially pretty serious) toxic waste contamination site 2 blocks from my house. I walk past it every day on my way to the cafe where I have my first coffee in the morning. It's just a block past the QWest garage and the giant laundry facility that does work for the hospitals and the Ethopian Restaurant next door. I remember looking at the sidewalk, which is sinking in places, and the barrels labled "non-hazardous waste". Today the Seattle Weekly broke the story. More images coming click for full-size image.

Welcome to the Library! This way is the information desk, where you can find answers to all of your questions. Can you tell the difference between the true questions and the false (i.e. made-up) questions?

1)"Can you point me to the religion section? I need to do an autobiography on God."
2)"Can you show me on the map where Hippopotamus, New York is? (Librarian: Do you mean Buffalo, New York? Patron: Oh yeah, I knew it was some large animal.)
3)"Do you work here?" (Librarian is sitting at the desk after having just finished a phone reference question.)
4)"My son is really intelligent. Can you find me a version of Kafka's Metamorphoses for a very advanced first grader?"
5)"Can you help me find a chapter book on water-pollution in the Industrial Age of America?"
6)"What does 'Storytime sign-ups begin February 20th' mean....? But can I sign up now?"
7)"In what month is the Fourth of July?"
8)"Would you go to dinner with me?"
9)"What does ON ORDER mean?"
10) "What do you mean, the children's room is geared for children? Adults have rights too!"

Answers: 1)False (2)True (3)True (4)False (but you can get a chapter book about a cockroach who turns into a boy. It's called Shoebag, by Mary James, aka M.E. Kerr.)
(5)True (6)True (7)False (but very close to True.) (8)True (9)True (10) True

If you answered 8-10 right: Way to go! You must be married to a librarian, or have one as a good friend. Huzzah for you!
7-5: It's time to polish up that library card and hang out at your local library. At the very least, you'll get some good material for stories.
4-1: Don't be hard on yourself-- some of the questions are pretty wild.
Less than 1: Wow! You haven't hung out with enough librarians.Go drinking or dancing with a group some evening, and you'll discover many of the wild, weird and wacky anecdotes that make life at the information desk so unusual!

Speaking of Goth.... Slashgoth.

A company called Stor has a technology that allows you to create a little avatar of yourslef. "StorTroopers is a small drag-and-drop java avatar-creator that can be embedded into a webpage (normally a member-profile page) with the idea being that a site user can upload an image to represent his or herself without the site owner having to moderate (as the case would be with photographs)." Apparently,there's a "goth fashion" addon. Kinda silly if you ask me, but I had to try it out (yes, that's supposed to be me).

I remember Mosaic and the days when there were so few personal pages on the web they were really personal. I thought they mostly sucked, even back then. I couldn't beleive any of these people really thought I gave a damn what their favorite song was or how they cried when they saw this movie. I remember when searching the web meant finding people, not instutions. I felt contempt for most of the people who put up web pages, even as I put up my own. It took a long time before I could even make a page that looked good enough I wasn't embarrased for it. It's no different in the days of blogger. I still surf the pages. If you're reading this, maybe you know why. We read so that we may know we're not alone.

"I'll strangle the guy with my bare hands if he helps George W. Bush beat Al Gore".

Mike Dukkakis on Ralph Nader

--Evelyn Nieves interview with Nader in the NYTimes.

"It was tremendously important that we create a partnership that would have the ability to globally support the power and magic of Harry Potter."

Harry Potter, it would seem, drinks Coke.

--From Salon.com

"In some markets,'' Ballmer says in the ultimate back-handed compliment, "crummy has been OK.''

--Link gleaned from Disobey.com.

Berkley Breathed is alive and well and someone found his phone number.

"I ignore Hallmark Holidays. And this comes from a guy who has sold a million Opus greeting cards. This is the sort of sell out that makes Watterson break out in hives".

--PvPonline.com

There are some new pictures up, as well as some photos of my latest modeling project.

Old Economy The other day I had breakfast with a good friend who’s been in the computer industry for about the same amount of time I have. Six months ago he had a coding job with a very up-and-coming dot com. Two months ago they appeared on fuckedcompany.com for the first time. A month ago he and everyone else at the company was laid off. he was taking it very well. He's a talented programmer, the kind that doesn't have much trouble finding a job even now. But I know he was disapointed. I thought back to something that happened when I first moved to Seattle. At the time I was young and idealistic and I had stars in my eyes. We were going out to a party where some Microsoft people had just vested. They had moved the furniture out of their rental house and moved in a bar, a keg, a roulette table, several tikki lamps, a jazz band, a small portable dance floor with disco lights and a fountain that spouted whiskey sours. It was an Alice in wonderland experience for me, a fresh graduate school dropout recently of Washington DC. I’d never seen so many beautiful wealthy successful people my own age before. I struck up a conversation with a woman in a black dress. She said to me: “No one likes a good man. When someone does something good, it means there’s less good left in the world for the rest of us. That’s why no one likes a good man.” It is something that has stuck in my mind since then. What did she mean? Did she mean that we should apply the economics of scarcity to abstract qualities like good and evil? Did she mean that goodness invites envy and so brings badness along behind it? Or did she mean to say that there’s an economy of greed that’s more fundamental than money? Maybe this was her weird way of hitting on me and I, fresh out of studying Heidegger and Sartre, just read too much into. Maybe I just heard her wrong. It's possible I did. There were a lot of people at the party.

"I'm not happy living in a tent but while I've got breath in my body I'll get up to work".
--BBC News

"so it's just me, here, and my watch ticking".
--blushiorange is a blog, as good as any

What is the most bizarre experience you've ever had in the library?

Rennovations complete, stumbled into Cafe Vita, 8am today. Took me a minute to figure out where I was. Hardwood floors, matching tables, good lighting. It's nice, but I miss the old Paradiso.

Wake up now

The researchers believe their results are the first evidence that GM organisms could have catastrophic consequences on their own species.
CNN.com sci/tech.

Some people give you a choice: A or B. When you choose A, funny looks cross their faces. "We were hoping you'd pick B," they say. "Yes, well," you say, "I can understand that. But I still want A." "You should really pick B," they reply. And when you still choose A, they give you B. It turns out they: (1)Never had A to begin with (2) Want A for themselves (3) Were testing your maturity-level. Had you been mature, you would have picked B without any prompting. Too bad! You've just lost your power to choose. Maybe next year, when you're a little older, they'll give you choices again. (Those choices will be, of course, A or B.)

Card by Nathan McQuillen.

I have no idea what it is either.

Link cribbed from Zannah.

I've been meaning to post this for a while. Wargaming.net has an impressive turn-based ancient warfare game up and running. The game's based on the De Bellus Antiquitatum miniatures rules. You can play with the trial version for free. Subscription gives you longer games and the ability to play in tournaments. The community is excellent. The interface has good production values. A look is recommeneded. http://www.dbaol.com.

CNN.com Spacecraft may take off after landing on asteroid
A NASA robot ship ended a deep space odyssey on Monday by succesfully touching down on an asteroid it had orbited for almost a year.

Shortly after the first landing on an asteroid, excited mission managers were considering an almost unthinkable encore: coaxing the craft from its resting spot for another flight.
FULL STORY

CNN.com February 11, 2001 -- Updated 03:33 p.m. EST, 2033 GMT
Astronauts explore Destiny
Astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis and international space station Alpha today entered the $1.4 billion science laboratory Destiny for the first time since it was attached to its new home 225 miles above Earth.
FULL STORY

The old WotC gaming center in the University district had a game called Magic: Armageddon. I used to routinely post high scores on it. Presumably this game, the most unique upright I've ever played and apparently the only copy of the game in existence, was carted away with the rest of the equipment when the place was sealed up last week. If only I'd know about Twin Galaxies - The Official Electronic Games Scoreboard. I might be famous now.

I have been working out of my home office for six months now. I like it, but sometimes I crave human company. They replaced the checkout girl with a machine today. If they replace the baristas tomorrow I'll be completely alone. If they replace me, not even I will be. Click for large image.

Snow! It was so unexpected, I didn't know what it was at first. I paused in mid sentence because I thought the neighbors had somehow changed the color of their roof. Click for large image.

At the company party a month ago, I overheard one of my bosses correct someone: "it's not 'theInternet, just internet now". I penned a memo about it which I sent to my boss and some of the other principles in the company. They were amused. The memo, in edited form, was submitted to NetSlaves, who published it.

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I decided to set up a weblog. This is the result.

My name is Tony D. Lately I've been having trouble sleeping.