27 April 2001 // Hazardous to my health... [a]
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I've come to the conclusion that Neal Stephenson is hazardous to my health. He's too damn good a writer. If I pick up one of his novels, I tend not to put it down until I've finished reading it - this happened again last night. I'd finally found a cheap copy of Zodiac at the used bookstore, and at about 10 p.m., after putting away the groceries and thinking "maybe i'll go to sleep early tonight", I picked it up and started reading.
Big mistake.
I finished it at approximately 4 in the morning. I had to get up at 8.
So now I'm running on four hours of sleep... I figured that was as good a reason to finally update my diary as any. --;;
Diaryland now has webring-type-things. I've joined several - they're at the bottom of the page. Once I get off my duff and get the gold membership, I'll probably create one or two myself: a Dilandau/Dragonslayers one, and/or a Queensr�che one. I've also implemented several other new Diaryland features - the previous/next thing at the bottom, the title in the title bar where it belongs ^_^, other minor design things. I've also started actually posting in my weblog.
Follow-ups to the previous entry:
Our multimedia presentation went great. Our group prepared an informational slideshow on Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS), and "packaged" it on CD-ROM. Ours was probably the most professional-looking of all the presentations, and with good reason. We intend this program to be distributed. The final goal is an educational CD that can be given to doctors, legislators, patients, etc. to teach them about the effects of this growing health problem. The best part of the in-class presentation was the fact that we really got the attention of the other students, and they asked a lot of questions. There were a few glitches in the program due to the fact that it was really only a "beta version" of our intended final product, and done in PowerPoint no less. For the final release, Patrice and I will re-do it in Director, for finer control, more interactivity, cross-platform compatibility, and all that good schtuff. Patrice has been showing the presentation to other members of the MCS community in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and getting tons of valuable feedback. We did one of these showings yesterday evening. It was amazing to hear from people who live with this disease every day what we got right, what we missed, what we could improve - I love brainstorming sessions.
Between the MCS project and reading Zodiac last night, I'm thinking about chemicals a lot today... Zodiac is the kind of novel you wish was just science fiction, because it's too scary to think that toxic shit's really happening - then you meet people face to face who have been affected by the exact same thing, and you hear their stories, and you know it's all too real. Zodiac was written in 1988, but the only thing that "dates" it in my mind was the part where one of the characters was talking about an 80386 being a hot new computer, and a few of the current events mentioned. Other than that, it could be happening right now (and probably is, especially with Dubya at the helm). I'm not vacationing in Boston anytime soon, after reading that book. *sweatdrop* Of course, with Los Alamos and White Sands and Intel and Sandia, New Mexico probably isn't much better. I'm not going wading in the Rio Grande, either.
The day after I posted my last entry, Duc gave his two weeks' notice. He got out of here, bless his heart. He's now in California, housesitting his aunt-in-law's mansion with his brother (i think ^^;;), and hopefully finding a really cool job that will make much better use of his graphics talents than we did. And he told Ken and Al why he was leaving - mostly because of Ken. That was a real wake-up call for them, I think. We had several meetings before Duc left about how Ken was treating us, and how he tended to be an unprofessional asshole at times (okay, not in those exact words - I used ones like "condescending", "disrespectful", "have some faith in us, please"). Things have muchly improved around here since. Now Ken doesn't yell for people, he pages us over the phone-intercom-thingy like its designers intended. I've finally come to terms with the fact that sour looks and muttered threats in Japanese don't accurately convey my annoyance to him, so now I just tell him, calmly and privately (as he actually encourages) when he messes up, and that seems to work fairly well. I'm still doing the work of two computer people, but since the new acqisitions have slowed down, it's not too bad. *looks at the pile of returned gallery opening invitations in front of the printer* OTOH, going through that is gonna be a bitch. -_-;;
I am such a heel. Nyx-sama called my cell on wednesday evening, needing to talk, but I didn't get the message till about 11 that night, and I haven't called her back yet. Then this morning I read her diary entry and found out what had happened. Eep. *kicks self* need to call! will call as soon as i get off work today!
Still haven't updated my website recently, have some new sketches scanned that I need to color and post on Elfwood... got the Hello Kitty tarot deck and just love it, have colored two cards so far (The Fool and the eight of Pentacles, which really wanted to be colored)... tarot class is almost over - last week was the final "official" week, but there are two more "make-up" sessions, which I'm not going to miss... TV-I classes are over, now I need to figure out what to take this summer, probably retake Digital Publishing if I can... I need a cat - my subconscious is beating me upside the head with this and it's coming out in my fanart - witness "Hello Dragonslayer" at left and this scary thing-nyo... eep, i've gotta be a coherent, creative gm for my BESM game tonight, I was gonna work on that last night, see above... we're going to A-kon, David, Cym, and I - the hotel's booked and I've sent in the preregistration, now I just need a Di Gi Charat hat to fit the character I've been in most lately-nyo... 
It's possible to waste so much time on Neopets - my pet even has her own custom homepage now... I'm housesitting again... I've been listening to Maaya Sakamoto's latest album, Lucy, almost constanly while I'm driving - I've bought so many J-pop cd's because of this site *g*... I'm running out of stuff to write about, so, um, I guess I'll go do some real work now. ^_^;;
recent alterations //
21 November 2002 // I'm not dead yet!
03 October 2002 // Snarling bitch to genki fangirl in 0.8 seconds flat! [i]
27 September 2002 // He's got butterfly wings, not feathery angel wings. Geez, people!
25 September 2002 // The Great Oekaki Contest Begins! [ai]
14 September 2002 // The obsessiveness continues...
