Penny Hero (dot) Net

Edit: comments are fixed now! stupid wp-comments-post.php had the wrong permissions again!

About a month ago, my domain expired. I did not know this… because I am a web slacker extraordinare and never bothered to check if my blog was still accessible or not… in fact, I only noticed it when I tried to ssh into my server and download the flac copy of Tundra 4 by Squarepusher I stashed there months ago so I could listen to it at work… and discovered that my domain was dead.

:( I’m sorry dear blog readers (yes I’m talking to both of you.)

Anyway… some IM Fu later with my domain name registrar super hero (also my previous roomie) had my domain name up and running again. I now appreciate you, dear blog and dear blog readers (yes, both of you again) even more now, so I decided to write a blog post.

*clears throat loudly*

In the news:

I’ve moved into a new apartment as of today. I’m very happy about this. :) Extremely!!! happy about this. :) It’s a 1 bedroom place, with a full kitchen and a freaking washer and drier!! Friends came over to help me move, which was awesome and amazing. new and old friends (Thank you Polvi!!) Then the whole mess of us went and hijacked another friend’s TV to watch season 3 of BSG, which I bought the day it came out, and have been dying to share it with people before season 4 starts.

So that’s the news.

In Other News: PranQster is the best beer on the planet. srsly.

Paul, of CANADA, sent me flowers yesterday for Christmas!

No one has EVER sent me flowers before. He apparently tried to get them delivered to me at work, but our Eugene office moved in July and the interweb hasn’t updated itself or overwritten itself enough to make that clear. So… he IMed me at work to get my mailing address and they were waiting for me at my house when I got home.

Crazy crazy awesome stuff.

Anyway, Paul’s awesome. I <3 him. :)

Thanks to Marineam, “full text” in wordpress rss feeds now work for me.

So… I used to live with Cody Sheehy, who runs Autonomy Productions and makes amazing documentaries and other creative video things (on top of being in grad school studying rangeland sciences! heh.)

He made a documentary about my/our other roomie Marci a while back and her nuclear reactor design that could take people to Mars. (linky to the teaser page)

Anyway, he recently got contracted to do some video clips to be shown at the 2006 2nd Space Exploration Conference and he just finished them.

Watch them here.

They’re only a few minutes long each and they’re really powerful and insightful. It’s a dude (named Chad) in a space suit interviewing real people on campus and in Portland (I assume) about their knowledge, interests, and perspective on NASA, space exploration, and where we’re at.

So, I’m a little sensitive of course, so duh I started crying a bit at the end, but really the tone and style of the project is very light-hearted and fun, but the impact of the whole film is amazingly powerful, especially if you were ever inspired by the idea of exploring space as a kid (or now).

WATCH THEM. I have to admit that I only knew a few of the questions they asked people, so it made me realize a lot about my own knowledge of where we are and what my priorities are too.

A couple of my friends plus two of their friends (who are no-doubt equally cool) are trying to get to linux.conf.au and need the internet’s help to get there.

You can do one (or more) of the following things to help:

1. Digg this: How to raise 10,000 grassroots style
2. spread the word by blogging and linking to their website
3. DONATE!!

I donated $50. Beat that, suckers!

It was Beth’s Birthday yesterday.

And today is a bad day for google videos to temporarily be unable to accept more video… because I had to go to Youtube to upload the clip of her getting a “lapdance”:

Click here for Beth’s lapdance. (this’ll go on google videos instead as soon as they let people upload again.)

Those crazy kids. (yes, she DID give me permission to post it, although she had been drinking a little. I think it’s cute and funny.)

Seriously, though. Happy birthday to Beth.

Even though we didn’t have any candles on the cake Mike made, I think it was a good night, and I’m glad I drove up to see her and say goodbye. She’s going back to Ecuador tomorrow and we won’t see her again until January. :( Beth, I’ll miss you lots! blog lots and lots please! Find another skeleton!

Dear everyone on my friend’s list.

My friend is conducting research for his Master’s degree on the use and understanding of wi-fi and wants people to take his survey. Don’t ask me about this method of “spread the word” survey distribution. I’m sure that will come up in the analysis of his data.

It’s about 3 pages long (just a few screens of questions).

Whether you’re interested in wi-fi or not, this is an official call for participants:

Click here.

And, spread the word if you’d like to help him get a larger number of respondents. His research is very worth supporting, in my opinion. He’s interested in making information about public and private wireless networks more easily obtainable. in other words, identifying what information about accessibility and laws is not easily available to users and maybe even coming up with ways of making that available.

Before I met him in the writing center, I had no idea about this kind of problem but now I’m really really interested.

I need to be the first to blog about this, damnit. because I’m that much of a nerd. However…

“I don’t think I’ve ever impressed a girl with my yo-yoing skills,” Polvi said

That’s complete bull, and he knows it.

Polvi, you should be proud to be a nerd. It’s never going to change. You’re a gentoo buff, you wear nifty geek shirts. you work for mozilla. Yoyo-ing isn’t going to make you any more of a nerd than you already are, silly. You should celebrate that.

Ok, I’m fired for still not reading my book.

btw, polvi’s blog is here, and the link to the news article is here in case you don’t know how to click on the link in the subject of this post.

I didn’t take a shower today. I sat around in greasy hair playing video games and reading.

And I had the shock of my… life? Ethan came back from Portland and asked me to help him get something from the car. I walked outside, and two Japanese girls jump out from around the corner of my apartment building… I looked at one, and then the other… and then back. I slowly slowly slowly realize I recognize her. Her eyes light up when I come out, and even before I start to realize that this is not just a familiar face, but that it’s HER face, I’m saying “oh my god oh my god oh my god” because she’s taking my hands, and I’m hugging her… and I still don’t really comprehend that it’s really her. I don’t believe it.

It didn’t sink in for a good three or four minutes of just gawking and hugging… I cried. She introduced me to her younger sister. It still hasn’t sunk in. I’m still feeling like I’m about to cry.

Even now I don’t believe it. The voices in my living room aren’t theirs. It’s crazy. How could she have come here from Japan without me knowing? How could they have kept it a secret for 3 weeks?

So much has changed since she left. I’ve got anxieties about how I’ll (not) fit in with the group we all hung out with. How she may or may not meet my literature-nerd writing friends.

I want to cry again. I’m so glad she’s here. And I’m partly mourning the crazy adolscent-ish life I had my sophomore year when I was infatuated with only asian bilingual men… and I hid that I liked academics from everyone except her.

Her sister is a shy sweetheart. And she plays video games. :)

These next two weeks are going to be the most difficult and the most stressful and most awesome and most :) :) :) :) :) :).

If I can keep from going insane, I will. I’m so glad she’s here.

I’m sick and tired of forgetting important people’s birthdays.

If I ask for your birthday, and you think I should already know it, please don’t get mad at me. I’m trying to fix my evil ways… I’m writing them all down on my calendar.

(P.S. also, please don’t be mad if I don’t ask you. maybe I remembered it. or maybe just I missed it 2 days ago… *cries*)