Tonight was talking architecture with my brother, my cousin Aaron and his father Dan. We all want such similar things. He wants to build “a mud house” — cob or so — and starting to live green. Thomas (my brother) wants to build an ecologic apartment complex, and use inexpensive materials (straw and cob, probably on metal or timber frame) to make green apartments affordable.

We all agree that permaculture thinks too small and doesn’t often involve engineers and investors. If we’re gonna make this earth a better place, we’re going to have to start integrating into the mother culture here. We can make steps — large steps, but not leaps — to make things better.

Anyone want to start a green complex on a section in a city? Maybe the idea’s time has come.

Dear girl on the train today:

You and your schoolmate made my day. Talking about digital signal processing theory loud enough to be overheard, and not being ashamed of being easily the two smartest and most interesting people on the entire car was awesome. There’s a reason I said “Thank you”.

Coming out to my family was decidedly non-awkward. “So what should I call you?” was all my cousin said. That was the most overt anyone said.

A good party. Overwhelming numbers of conversations I wanted in on at the same time. Such is my family. We are a tribe for sure.

This part of Denver feels cozy. All my childhood, I was warned to stay off Colfax Avenue, it being dangerous, or scary, or both. Stories told of drug deals, dirty locked-up storefronts, protitutes. I’m in a coffeeshop and, the coffee is good, the music is good, the people are nice (and every single one has a laptop out at the moment). The stores look like the kind run by thirty-somethings who found affordable rent on a relatively walkable street.

I’m on my way to another coffee place up in Capitol Hill, about eight blocks away in a few. I’ve needed to explore the city under my own power. A few more minutes in the car goung from east Denver where my brother lives to Littleton where the rest of my family is and back again was going to make me mad. So today is sneakers and backpacks and stopping for coffee to look at maps online. It’s not an easy city to navigate. Neighborhoods run together, mazes of one-way streets snake around parks that crop up out of nowhere.

I’m hoping to find some decent places to hang out here, so I can stop loathing this city for its outskirts of sprawl, Big Box® after Big Box®, wide, curved eight-lane roads that seem intent on showing you how many big businesses there are rather than getting you where you want to go.

I’ve needed this time to myself. I don’t really get to know a place until I can walk it.

Denver is as I remember it. It’s a concrete sprawl, and the outer fringes are no fun. The town I grew up in is now a soccer-mom sort of suburb, with safe schools and large shopping centers. We drive through it on the way to my brother’s in Denver proper. He lives in an apartment in the sort of complex we made fun of as kids. “They all look the same!” we’d exclaim.

We drove six and some hours to get here, and we had to drive over the continental divide on the way. We hung out with my brother for a little while, and I got polis.nbtsc.org back on the air after a power supply in the router nearby did something strange for the second time. We went to meet my ~aunt Rosemary at her apartment, not far, but nearly 20 minutes in the car.

Rosemary isn’t actually my aunt. My family survives my mother’s parents divorce, remarriage, large plurality of half-relations and step-relations by simplifying things to any of cousin, aunt, uncle or grandparent. Rosemary was my mother’s maid while she was a child in Argentina, and followed my mother’s mother to the United States after they moved back. She’s from Bolivia, originally, though she spent most of her life in Argentina and the US. She’s now in her seventies (And going on fifty!), and has a wicked fun sense of humour. We went out (through an hour of Friday evening traffic and hellish parking near an Oktoberfest) to the Buenos Aires Pizzaria, and stuffed ourselves on empanadas after a good half hour wait to be seated. Another drive home, not so long, and I’m rather glad to have wireless and my laptop to chill out with before bed.

It’s fun. I really want to travel. I want to go to Argentina again. We talked about the small-scale terraforming of Mendoza, Mendoza, Argentina, immigration from Bolivia, the hassle of Argentine bureaucracy and trying to get a passport for an immigrant (Rosemary’s mother, 90 going on 70 but not able to live on her own anymore). We lamented the restaurant not actually having a real yerba maté on the menu, and laughed and joked about our mixed-up family and how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.

Tired and happy, I guess, but mostly wishing I were in Ridgway now. I come out to my dad’s side of the family tomorrow. Unless they’re so dense as to not notice. But that won’t happen.

The Internet Company just had a repair job for a laptop, which when the user tried to log in using Windows XP Professional, would display a box for nearly a minute saying “802.1x Authentication Status” and a message “Windows is waiting for the wireless network and DHCP — Google didn’t help much, so we had to guess a lot. She wasn’t using 802.1x at all, she’d only used public networks. There was nothing indicating that it should use 802.1x at login time, no group policy setting to force it, nothing. baileyjordan found several good-looking but ultimately fruitless Microsoft KB articles.

The fix? Uninstall the driver for the wireless card and reinstall. I suspect that there was a registry setting that was reset by doing that. If I could reproduce the problem, I’d figure out which, but we’re in good shape now and going to call it done.

You win again. Your dollar is bigger than our dollar. Anyone want to adopt a queer and her boyfriend?

Hungover. Even I feel no pity for me.

So it turns out that Czech bluegrass is a thing. Possibly quite a big thing. (there are a lot of Czech bands)

I’m listening to Křeni right now, and they’re really quite good. It’s fun to hear a pretty distinctly American style of music in a non-English tongue.

There’s also G2 Bluegrass Band (Swedish), Meantime (Slovak, and I’d actually heard ‘em before), Four Wheel Drive (Norwegian), and Rawhide (Belgian)

Now that Liferea supports remote OPML files (this in version 1.4), I’ve set up my livejournal feeds to automatically come and go based on my friends list. I wrote a little CGI script that transforms the LJ FOAF file into an OPML file (including the authentication that’s needed to read protected LJ entries.

The code’s at http://dinhe.net/~aredridel/projects/ruby/ljfoaf-to-opml/ (GIT repository), if anyone wants to adapt it. It’s obviously not secure, but it should work in a pinch.

I also discovered that there were about 150 journals that I wasn’t reading because my manual process managed not to add them. I’ll be keeping up with people better now. Sorry about that, folks.

Chumbawamba’s music video Homophobia makes me really hopeful and happy for some reason.

Mine’s in relation to computer repairs. Always test with the case on, then close it. Not vice versa, that just invites trouble.

Just made lentil soup with borage greens from my garden. Makes me think of jwitchbaby

I picked up the cello for the first serious practice session I’ve had all summer. My hands hurt and I’m happy and tired and can play the first few bars to one of my favorite slip jigs. I’m amazed at how much muscle I’ve lost this summer. My hands are so much less muscular than they used to be.

I’m seriously wishing I had one more string on the cello, since it’d make playing a lot of fiddle tunes that I find on The Session a lot easier.

Since then, I’ve been going through the recordings I have on my computer and tagging them with genres (and more specifically the kind of dance they are) so I can actually search for things a bit better. I can’t tell you how apalling having everything filed under “Celtic” is. I don’t mind groups that play music from all over the celtic world calling themselves celtic, but I like knowing the Irish tunes from the Scots ones, and being able to see origins and influences and be able to find tunes when I want them.

Had dinner with my sister.

Well, with her guests since she had an abulance call. But it was fun!