You know what happens if you go to sleep at 21:30? You wake up at something like 3:45.

I accidentally just got drunk. I’ve never been drunk before… the liquor store was out of my usual (Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout)… the beer I chose to try instead is 10% alchohol, not the usual 5%. I was tipsy in Victoria at the pub once, maybe even to this point. I didn’t enjoy it then, so I haven’t since.

I’m glad that typing is nearly entirely subconcious now, since I can manage to make this entire post without visible typos (rest assured that I am making them, though I do realize it and do care enough to not let them slip into LiveJournal).

I can’t believe I’ve never accidentally done this before. I got tipsy once with my coworkers in Victoria when I was hanging out with them on a friday. It’s totally not something my family would do — my father drinks a little wine before bed, and my mother doesn’t like any alchohol. I never saw it around when I grew up.

My first beer was when I was 19, legal age and in a pub in Victoria. Every friday, work would end at 14:00 instead of 17:00, and we’d go a few doors down toward the waterfront and spend a few hours in the pub. We called it “Beer O’ Clock”. I really liked hanging out there. I developed a taste for really good beer that way. I got tipsy once, and I didn’t particularly enjoy it, so I’ve always been really moderate in my drinking, almost entirely for flavor and social value.

This time, though, I accidentally bought something really strong. “The Reverend” beer is 10% ethanol, and since it comes in 22 ounce bottles, really surprised me. My usual is Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout, a meagre 5% alchohol. This really caught me by surprise, doubly so because it tasted so good. My eyes aren’t tracking quite properly, and I am making more typos than I usually do. I can’t say this is entirely unpleasant though, since my tendonitis isn’t hurting at all, and I can play the cello much more accurately without my brain in the way. I have to hold the handrails going downstairs, but I do that anyway since my blood sugar gets wonky sometimes, and I’m liable to black out on occasion after standing up.

Music is much more musical this way. I feel it, rather than than thinking it. I really like that. I don’t want to have to subject my body to alchohol to get that, so I might have to train my mind to not censor so heavily without it. I could do that, I suppose…

I wish Jem were here. She’d have something insightful to say.

I’m really up and down today. I woke up really, really, really depressed. A decent breakfast smoothed me out for the morning, but I’ve been mopey all day. I wish I had an easy fix.

This is the first day I haven’t wanted to be in Ridgway at all in a long, long time.

On the upside, chewing on stick cinnamon makes me at least temporarily happy, and I might just go home in a few minutes and weed the garden.

What’s most important to me in a relationship?

• Honesty, most of all.
• Humour. I didn’t realize how much I cared about it, but I really do. Being able to joke is my favorite fun.
• Self-sufficiency. It’s so much better when you’re around each other because you mutually enjoy it, not because you’re supporting each other.

I don’t know why this crossed my mind this evening.

• GNOME menus that only contained relevant programs. No lftp, no bc nor dc, perhaps not even the standard X stuff like xterm, xeyes nor xcalc.
• An installer that doesn’t suck. All distro’s installers suck these days, PLD’s not the most, but still. I want something that lets me partition with fdisk, and then install some pre-set package lists. Being able to customize the installer disk with set listings would be nice.
• Metapackages for major stuff: a gnome metapackage that contains only but all of the main GNOME release. A KDE metapackage that installs the main KDE release, and a tetex metapackage that installs the whole tetex release. Sometimes I do want to test software as the authors intended it, after all.
• Theme metapackages.
• A different init system, preferably as an option. I’d love to see simpleinit coexist with SysV style. Some noop functions in combined scripts would rock.

An idea.

Live tagging of chat conversations. Imagine chatting with someone, and hitting a button, and flagging that spot in your talk with a tag. “To Do”, “Work”, whatever. Let it be indexed automatically by your favorite metadata search engine. When you pull it up in Spotlight or Beagle, your conversation is indexed along with the rest and easily findable.

More than that: transmit the tag over XMPP while you’re talking, and their client can suggest that tag, too.

wince

I think my hunch that drawers on the gnome panel are rarely used is correct. The UI is pretty horrible. It should pop open on mouse down like a menu, not on mouse up like a launcher icon.

[23:53:16] Colossus says “OK and Cancel are just so … ambiguous.”

[23:53:38] Vruba says “Colossus: you might like Apple’s HIGs.”

[23:53:41] Aredridel says “Not really. Cancel’s a pretty obvious “abort!”, which covers “none of the above” nicely.”

[23:53:48] Aredridel says “And yeah, buttons are Apple’s HIG style.”

[23:53:52] Aredridel says “GNOME’s HIG says radio buttons.”

[23:54:05] Colossus says “HIG?”

[23:54:10] Aredridel says “Human interface guidelines.”

[23:54:11] Vruba says “(I want [mu] [.].)”

[23:54:27] Aredridel says “(hah. You need a “flakey buddhist” l10n.)”

[23:54:35] Vruba says “(Totally. In fact….)”

I would be very pleased if the dialog asking whether to replace an existing file in GNOME looked like this.

From $(fortune) as I logged in:

I think the world is ready for the story of an ugly duckling, who grew up to remain an ugly duckling, and lived happily ever after.

— Chick

from Vruba: Check out the Party Party.

For halloween, I want to go as The Patchwork Girl. That would be so much fun I’d even enjoy halloween for the first time in ever.

Sonny came home to her favorite room Sonny sat down in the kitchen She opened a book and a box of tools Sonny came home with a mission

She says days go by I am hypnotized I’m walking on a wire I close my eyes and fly out of my mind Into the fire

Sonny came home with a list of names She didn’t believe in transcendence It’s time for a few small repairs she said Sonny came home with a vengeance

She says days go by I don’t know why I am hypnotized I’m walking on a wireI close my eyes and fly out of my mind Into the fire

Get the kids and bring a sweater Dry is good and wind is better Count the years, you always knew it Strike a match, go on and do it

Days go by I’m hypnotized I’m walking on a wire I close my eyes and fly out of my mind Into the fire

Light the sky and hold on tight The world is burning down She’s out there on her own and she’s alright Sonny came home Sonny came home…

Random fact about Ari #301: She first heard Ani Difranco’s music at a talent show in 2000. She first heard a recording later that year.

Random fact about Ari #287: She first heard a Beatles song at age 14, “Birthday”, which we sung around the piano. She first heard a recording at age 17.