(crossposted)

So. There seems to be a somewhat common meme (is that the right word?) with aunts being magical. Anyone have a clue where this comes from? Am I making it up? Samantha had lots of magical aunts. The aunts in Practical Magic are there to take care of (most of) the stuff. Sabrina (some versions at least) has two magical aunts. Charmed, maybe? maybe not. Books - Wise Child & Juniper; Witch Child (haven't read it, actually); something with a kid named Mary Smith perhaps by Joan Aiken? A housemate says the Puppetmaster is another (haven't read that, either) ... etc.

Who am I missing?

A different housemate suggests that maybe the magical aunt thing started with the realm of Roman superstition. Does this sound right?

Anyone have any ideas?

(crossposted.... similar text)

My immediate family have finally (after nearly 50 years) determined that swapping gifts at this time of year is not necessary. I did, however, have others to shop for, and had a nice holiday (three days running, through yesterday, really) complete with wonderful Stuff going this way and that; my chosen family is turning out to be Splendid!
But someone (on facebook?) reminded me of other ways of giving (and someone else here just posted about Kiva), and here's what I chose to do: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/develop-women-jobs-in-afghanistan/

Develop women jobs in Afghanistan - GlobalGiving
www.globalgiving.org
Women learn to weave beautiful carpets, preserving their ancient Persian
traditions. Carpet sales earn women income to support themselves and their
families.

I only forked over $50 this time, but hope to do more in the future. I've had an interest in learning more about Afghanistan for a while now; perhaps this will get me going.

GlobalGiving, in general, looks pretty good: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/opinion/24kristof.html?_r=1, and there's also Kiva for high-impact microloans (you get your money back, so you can do it again and again): http://www.kiva.org/

Maybe I should think about that for my birthday.

(crossposted)
So, I got this invite, because I looked over googlewave's stuff many months back and it looked promising.

Now I've clicked the link to start a wave account.... and my username ('betonica') is taken. I'm betting it's taken by me, somewhere in google-world. There seem to be others who have had this problem (there's a "Problems setting up account and integration with Google Account" thread in their support forum... with no answers from anyone at google).

Any of you net-geniuses know what I should do? I'd rather not have a different name over there.

Thanks in advance.

I was wondering what I did with my really cool swiss army knife thumb drive - the one that my jr advisor gave me, that has Dr. T. written on it.

Found it in the bottom of the washing machine.

I've left it sitting out, hoping it will dry and be fine.  Anyone have any idea?  

Leaving in five minutes for Boston and a talk on my phud research .... which I haven't thought about in three years.  Fortunately, my diss is only 65 pages long, so it was pretty easy to review.  Pity I don't have a flashy new powerpoint presentation, and haven't read the relevant lit for three years.  But I never did like pp, and a chalk talk should be perfectly sufficient.

BoN Fluff (n). see usenet, ssm.

over on facebook.

(Do spoons for specific topics exist? if so, I've used up all my spoons that would help me search for 'spoons')

So I've been telling local folks about depleting one's spoons, and wanted to give them a link.  I can't find the post (by piranha? porcinea? serene? firecat? someone else?) with the definition/description, and the link to the original.  By a woman who I think I've met, whose name I can't remember.  Someone want to help me out?

Must be a low-spoon day.

A perfect day!

Thank you, everyone who came and did marvelous work on the cabin, and hung out and made food and ate food.  It was truly splendid. 

(note: crossposting)

This looks promising:

http://wave.google.com/
(There's currently an 80 minute demo there, just so you know - I watched it in bits over a day)

I'm not interested in it for all the bells and whistles, or even for the largely open code and the hope that everyone and their grandmother will write cool programs that interface with it.  Although I'm sure all that will provide an endless amount of amusement, as well as some large bucket-loads of  functionality that I can't even imagine.  I don't have any idea if it will completely change the way we communicate, as they seem to hope/imply.

What I'm most interested in is just the ability to have conversations that aren't owned by one person.  Someone starts a particular 'wave', sure.  But anyone jumps in anywhere, and it seems to thread and branch pretty well.  I'm not sure how easy it will be to keep track of a 500-post conversation, and I didn't see anything specific about "mark as read" or a similar way of keeping track where you've been and where you haven't been (but I have asked them to look into it).  It looks plausible.  

Anyone with more knowledge of these things have comments?

Check out my friend Serene's new amazing magazine:

http://42magazine.com/

Actually, this is the first issue, and I haven't read it - but the cover is stunning (do click on the link), and if I know anything about Serene and her colleagues, the content is going to be equally amazing.  I'm looking forward to it.

Fairpoint took out my DSL.  I'm betting that, anyway.  Mom's is out, too.  When I called at 6:50, they said they were having trouble with my type of modem and they were going to try a "global fix."  And that I should call back in a few hours for an update.  I called back after about 3 hours (modem still not working) and they said they'd ship me a new modem.  They were doing a whole bunch of changes and "upgrades" over the past few weeks, and I'm guessing that at 5:30 this afternoon, they "upgraded" something such that it now refuses to talk to my modem.

So, don't expect me to be posting a lot between now and next week.  Not that I normally would anyway.....

Maybe I'll do some solid stuff for the next several days, instead of electron handwaving.  There's a novel thought.

So.  There's this Really Important Software that I was trained to use today, having to do with emergency stuff.  It will only run in Explorer.  Explorer, apparently, is no longer made for macs, and the more recent macs (OSX) won't support the older (available) versions of Exploder.  Or so some web page or other told me.

I could complain to the manufacturer of the Really Important Software, or to the people who have purchased said software and have disseminated it throughout the region.  And I probably will.  (Exploder?  Really??  Couldn't they have gone for a civilized browser?)  But complaining won't actually do much of anything, and certainly won't get me access to said Really Important Software before the next ice storm hits.

So, you net gods and goddesses - who's got a way for me to use Expldr on my mac?  Do I have to resort to Parallels (which I'm suspecting is, itself, a bit antiquated), and use a non-mac version of IE?

Of papers.  Not counting what's at the office at school.
This is what comes of not filing anything for over ten years.  Well, okay.  Periodically I've filed stuff, but the file folders are in the boxes and drawers too, in no particular order.  And I should go through all of the filed stuff anyway, throwing much of it away and combining duplicates.

So, who wants to bet what odds that I can overcome my packrat genes and burn at least 75% of it?  (Maybe I should offer prizes for whoever comes closest to predicting how much I get rid of?  What should the prizes be?)

First, I need to finish the pile of "do this now" papers, but that's down to a few inches, and mostly consists of the binder for the adoption agency.  Then... what.  Start on whatever box is closest?  

I guess I don't have to worry about kindling for the wood stoves for the rest of the winter.

From my friend debbiethedogged  - to my student friends who've struggled through the Writing Requirement ... and everyone else:

a story

Does anyone know how to get a username and password in order to comment on the change.gov discussions?  I've been trying to figure it out for a while, now, and I'm getting very frustrated.  I've sent them two queries, but not gotten any response.  There are places all over to log in, but if I don't have a username I can't do that.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Wondering who among students (and others) are sticking around through the winter break.  If you're just sitting around watching the snow pile higher and higher, maybe we should think about all getting together for an evening or something? 

Another Ice Storm bit of trivia:  Mom was delighted the other day to see one of the many line crews drive by with a Canadian flag waving out the window.  We got crews from all over the place (Ohio, North Carolina, Canada, Maryland...).  We're back up, now, so either they've headed home, or over to NH for more work.

Thanks, everyone!

The local power company reports via their web page (updated every 15 minutes, according to them) that there are only 4 houses left without power as of now.  They're all supposed to be back up in an hour.  That will be great.

Remaining will be individual homes that (1) the crews didn't know were out when they went by and (2) owners/renters didn't call in and say their power was out.  I'm not sure how to find those people, but Vermonters are resourceful, so chances are they'll all take care of their own problems.

Tomorrow: more phone calls to my list of 30 or 40 people in town who might still need some help.  Chances are, they don't.  Terribly self-sufficient, these folk.

And then, ten inches of snow!

Happy winter, everyone.

-AT
(note: when I said earlier and maybe elsewhere that this is what we do for fun, I was serious.)

Got back power at 7:05 pm.  Only 139.5 hours after it went off.  That was easy.

Well, actually, it was a helluva lot of work, I'm wiped, and I'm heading off to bed shortly.

But it was also a whole lot of fun. 

There are still houses in this town without power, I'm sure, and the town directly South is even harder hit than we are, I think.  But hopefully most of our town's residences will have power within the next 24 hours.  Then I'll check out our neighboring town and see if they need any help.

But first, sleep.  And then, a break! - going to have breakfast with lorres , where I will be out of range of the pager.

How are y'all?  Anyone in my neck of the woods without power?  (Do post, with your gas-powered computer.)