This day off has been just what I needed.

I just turned off NWAM so that I could get IPv6 auto-configuration working. That part’s easy:

` touch /etc/hostname6.interface

svcadm disable network/physical:nwam

svcadm enable network/physical:default`

The hard part is that this broke IPv4 DHCP. The trick turned out to be simple, but take a lot of playing to find:

` touch /etc/hostname.interface

touch /etc/dhcp.interface `

This solved errors like Failed to configure IPv4 DHCP interface(s): <var>interface</var> and in.routed: route 0.0.0.0 --&gt; <var>gateway</var> nexthop is not directly connected

I finally saw the optometrist yesterday. My mother set up the appointment with this guy she’s followed through three clinics and now works out of his house – a neat man, and really nice to talk to.

He’s checking both our eyes, and asks “Can I have your glasses to measure, young lady?”, and my mother, being nearer hands him her glasses. “No, the other young lady”. I hand him my glasses, and I get death glares from my mother as I don’t correct him.

He writes down “F” on my forms, and says that my birthname on the forms is a funny name for a girl. My mother extends the death glares in his direction too.

I get directed to the women’s glasses in both of the shops we go into, too. After a while, my mother started relaxing that we were shopping in the same section, and we started helping each other pick frames, she some oval and tawny colored ones, me blue-framed and more rectangular.

Things are good. Pictures coming when my new glasses arrive.

Signal quality is measured in dBm and error rate, atmospheric pressure is measured in bar. Just sayin’.

I’m home again.

The wedding was great. Catching up with who I was able to catch up with was great.

I’m really sad to have missed gorillapotter and instrumentalx and poeticajasmine, and will be trying to get back out there some time with more time.

To everyone who called to chat while I was out, I’ll call you back sometime soon.

Nine years ago right now i was crossing the Canada-US border on my bike, 1600 km to go to get to San Francisco.

Last night we had aechei and hir friend dropped in on us at peaceofpie‘s suggestion. Great folks and an evening well spent.

Now off to Portland I go!

I’m going to be in town for upna‘s wedding to Max Orhai. I’d love to hang out, but I’m only in town two days. Who has time on Monday, June 30?

Also, I’m not positive that I know where I’m sleeping. Anyone with floor space who wants to hang out?

baileyjordan and I are planning a commitment ceremony for August of 2009. We’ve lived together over a year now, and in that time only become closer. We’ve known each other two years, and we’re finding we’re really compatible.

I’m still trying to find a way to express our excitement to my parents, but I’m really having a blast starting to plan ideas for a poly-friendly, very queer party and ceremony.

Invitations will be forthcoming

from lj_policy:

Our policy on Non-Photographic Images of Minors is being removed. What this means is that we will no longer be requiring the removal of this content, or suspending people who have posted it. We feel that with the introduction of the adult content flagging system, we do not need to take any further action on this type of material.

About time. It was the start of a very slippery slope.

“Where do you want to go tonight?”

“Oooh. Why not that blue planet again?”

“The blue one? Why?”

Trelm blushed, skin turning a darker shade of chartreuse. “Um.”

“It wasn’t that interesting. Unevolved bipeds.”

“But … It tickles!”

“Tickles?!”

“Yeah. What are the five senses?”

“Touch. Sight. Smell. Taste. Electrcity.”

“Right. They don’t have that.”

“Yeah, but … what’s that have to do with it tickling?”

“You know how we communicate over long distances, right?” Trelm held up the small black box, just like everyone else’s, and mimed rubbing it along the sensitve patch on hir arms, just in case there was any mistaking hir words.

“Well, yeah, I know the principle. It amplifies the body’s electrical fields and transmits them. And receives them and converts them back so we can sense them. It’s a trivial device, just shifts the frequency up. Lets us have channels. Se we’re not all talking at once. And so we don’t have to touch.”

“Right. But the beings on the blue planet? They don’t have that.”

“Haven’t even invented simple technology like that?!”

“No! No, much more advanced than that.”

“Good, for a second, I thought you were going primitive on me.”

“They don’t have that. That sense. They can’t feel electrical fields at all.”

“That’s so .. so….” Hrml couldn’t find words for the mixture of pity and derision.

“They have this other sense. They can sense vibrations in the air.”

“Well, we can do that. When there’s a big truck. Or an explosion.”

“Not like that. They can feel each other move. They can communicate that way. Not terribly far, but they don’t have to touch. And no devices.”

Hrml nodded a bit more approvingly.

“So why does it tickle?”

“When they want to communicate over long distances, they use devices too. But theirs make vibrations in the air instead of touching the arms.”

“Yes, and?”

“It’s not a simple converter. It’s … complicated. And the signals, there are so many kinds. Some at frequencies you can feel. And billions of people on the blue planet. So many communicating at once. The blue planet tickles!”

A Mathematician’s Lament — anyone who loves or hates math, or loves or hates teaching should read it. It articulates what I’ve been thinking about math and math teaching for some time.

Today, our (upna, baileyjordan and my) pet spider, Guadelupe, (A Guatemalan Zebra-Knee Tarantula, discovered to be physically male somewhat after naming her) died. She was almost 4 years old.

Funny? Estonian guy insulting a Polish guy in English, misusing Yiddish words in the process.

“He’s a smuck”

Five minutes later in the same IRC channel:

“What language is spoken in polon?”

The stupid is burning today.

I had a thought while I was working on replying to a thread on whetherwoman‘s journal.

What are the things that you think most define how you interact with the world? As an example, “I’m a woman” is particularly relevant in that discussion. What informs your reactions to the world?

I have a list that feels as long as my arm in my head.

I live in a small town, and I actively try to keep the good parts about small town culture alive wherever I go. I’m acutely aware of the amount of interconnection between people in any group, and I’m happiest when I can either be in an internally well-connected group, or one where I’m introducing people to each other.

I am a comfortable, confident, happy transsexual woman, who feels no need to play a game of “passing” as a XX-chromosomed woman. It affects nearly every interaction I’ve had in the past years. It’s made my sex life, my love life and my body something that seems very public, and that people are quite willing to start a conversation on.

Within the queer, and especially within groups of transgendered folks, I find that my tendency to be calm, a peace-maker, and my willingness to be out without confrontation is distinguishing.

I’m a spiritual person, and I have a deep respect and interest to understand religious and spiritual traditions. In my teenage years, I’d taken my family’s habitual bashings of all things Christian, and it left a hole in my willingness to understand people, to feel and to relate. Now I’m finding that I have more in common in my thought processes and feelings about things with the average religious person who really thinks about their faith than I do with the atheist liberal culture I grew up in. My own beliefs align relatively well with a lot of Quaker beliefs, and a lot of the traditions speak to me deeply.

I’m white, of a lower-middle class family. My parents have no college degrees, though they’re very smart and well-educated.

I have cultural associations to Argentina, latin in culture and racially white.

I grew up in a family where taking care of things oneself was the normal way to do things. My father can fix most anything around the house. We never called a plumber, handyman or repairman for anything. We educated ourselves, we designed our house ourselves, we built our house ourselves. I’ve watched my father repair cars, roofs, sidewalks, computers, desks, faucets. My mother made a lot of our clothes when I was young. Asking for someone to do something for me is not something I think of first.