"Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal. Nothing is more likely to set any subordinate’s back up, whether they be male or female, than for their boss to come the “mother knows best” routine at them." -- Lois McMaster Bujold, in correspondence with Sylvia Kelso, published in Women of Other Worlds (1999).

I can think of several control freaks who could stand to pay attention to that.

I just bought a few things at the local Bulk Barn.  When I double-checked the sales receipt after I left the store, I saw that it included a 10% seniors/students discount.  (This is a special that the store offers every Wednesday.)

Huh.  I didn't think that I looked that young or that old.

Yes, I've been poking around looking for a post-doc position, but I don't think that would count as being a student even if I found a place.

This afternoon, I took yet another call from an ADT salesthing.  As they always do, he started with a lie: "I'm not calling to sell you anything."  (This, of course, was in response to my usual greeting when a stranger calls, asks for me by name, and stumbles when trying to say it, or otherwise appears to be a salescritter: "What are you selling?")

He started into the usual spiel about how they want to give me a free alarm system, all I would have to do is sign a contract with them to monitor it. (And, of course, I can't take the "free" alarm system if I don't sign with them, and they'd take it back when the contract ended.)

So why, exactly, would I want to entrust the security of my home to a company whose official policy — I've checked — is to have their representatives lie from the get-go?

A friend of mine, one of the people who nudged me towards reading Lois McMaster Bujold's books, has been unwell lately.  She's also a penguin enthusiast.  So when I went to visit her last week, I brought her a little gift to try to cheer her up: a Miles Vorkosigan plush penguin.  (Considering how Miles feels about cold, there's some irony there, I suppose.)

This was the project for which I needed the etched buttons.

As I did with my pictures of the Barrayaran Emperor penguins, I modified the colours in the photos so the vegetation would be red-brown.

I went to see Pixar's latest, Up, in 3D this afternoon. (Cheap Tuesdays.  Might as well take advantage while I've got the time.)

It's very good, one of their better ones.  It's got some steampunky/mad-inventor stuff, starting with a Famous Explorer in his airship.  There's a nice sentimental sequence in the beginning, introducing the elderly curmudgeon (voiced by Ed Asner).  A very weird giant bird, which would be nice to reproduce as a plush toy but is probably beyond me.  And a bunch of dogs (yes, beable , you need to see this one).

Yesterday afternoon, I had a Weed Man moron ring my doorbell to try to sell me some lawn treatments.  Yes, the signs are still up on the front and side lawns.  "NO HERBICIDES.  NO PESTICIDES.  WEED MAN, THIS MEANS YOU."

She didn't want to take "GET OFF MY PROPERTY!" for an answer.

When I yelled at her that "YOU'VE DESTROYED MY LAWNS!  TWICE!", she replied, hurt, that she personally hadn't done anything to my lawns.

Where do they find people this stupid?

By the way, I note that their new biological herbicide, sclerotinia minor, has been deemed effective at killing dandelions... when grains of infectant are applied directly to the dandelions.  And also effective at killing other plants, which is why it should not be applied indiscriminately to, say, a lawn.

I had a good time at my first try at contra dancing on Saturday evening.  Many thanks to popelaksmi  for periodically nudging about going.  I wasn't very good at it -- the patterns were more complex than I could learn quickly, and a number of the standard "moves" are similar-but-different to steps that I know from other dance forms.  But I expect I'll get better with practise.  It was definitely good exercise.  I knew a few of the people there from the Ottawa Folk Song Circle (which meets on the first and third Fridays of each month at floating locations).

Re: a subject that came up in discussion, here's a link to my filk about the Doctor Who episode "Blink".

I've been taking a few days to work on stuff around the house, and to work on a craft project. Details later.  One of the needs for this project was some kind of button or other similar decoration, with a silver maple leaf pattern on a brown background, which could be attached to fabric.

I've had no luck at all finding anything of the kind at any of the local craft or fabric stores.  This was getting frustrating.  I was thinking about having to embroider something... and my embroidery skills are not very good.

Then, on the current Making Light open discussion thread, someone posted a link to a steampunkish site that describes a method for doing electrochemical etching.

Okay, I thought, I can build that.  Or something like it.  With stuff I happen to have around the house, even.

It worked out better than I could have hoped: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpolowin/3618306128/ .

Because of the economic downturn, my employer has been cutting back on some things.

One of the things they just cut back on was me.

I wasn't expecting it at all; I was expecting them to do wage rollbacks, work-sharing, reduced work weeks, that kind of thing.  Apparently they're going to be doing that stuff as well, but they're also letting people go, a significant fraction of the employees, and evidently not just the newest ones.  I guess they had to find that difficult balance between "the experience to know how the accumulated kludgery works" and "the higher salaries" or something.

So: I'm looking for work.  Ideally computational chemistry, but I have a varied background in lab chemistry and theoretical chem, plus plenty of years of software work.  I'd appreciate any leads.  Networking is not one of my strengths.

Crap.

I recently wrote about the dangers of accepting mysterious gifts of unknown natures from strange people.  Sometimes the danger is more explicit than usual.

Envelope waiting in my mailbox this afternoon:


Taking the first part as a syllogism: Therefore, this is not in life.

No, thanks.  I have enough problems.

Yesterday evening, I went to the Ottawa Writers' Festival to see presentations by papersky  and Ursula K. Le Guin.  Both talks were interesting and enjoyable.

I was one of those in the audience who got to ask Ms. Le Guin a question.  I noted that she'd had problems with depictions of some of her Earthsea characters as white, in media adaptations, and asked how she felt about their depictions in cover art for her novels?  "For example, the first copy I owned of A Wizard of Earthsea showed Ged as bone-white and, well, depressed --"

"The first American publication," she said.  "Droopy.  He was droopy."  The audience laughed.

"He looked kind of like Hamlet," I said.  "I've found better covers since."

She explained briefly that authors don't generally have much input into the cover art (which I knew), but noted that although publishers used to believe firmly that showing people of colour on book covers would kill sales, things have slowly been getting better, and that perhaps with Obama's election, things would be different now.

As I was walking up to join the end of the line to ask questions, there was a rather odd character at the microphone.  I didn't get a good look at him; I could see that he was barefoot and there was an elaborate tattoo on the back of his neck, extending down below the collar of his shirt.  He was choked and somewhat incoherent, apparently overwhelmed at being able to address Ms. Le Guin.  He said that she'd been a great inspiration to him, and begged her to accept a gift from him.

There was a somewhat awkward pause; she was kind of on the spot.  She hedged that she hoped it wasn't too heavy, as she could only carry so much home.  Then she accepted the gift: a cylinder wrapped in blue paper, about the size of a large wine bottle in a tube, perhaps.  The guy was leaving the microphone, and Ms. Le Guin asked if she should unwrap it now or wait until later.  "Probably later," the guy said.

The whole thing seemed kind of creepy.  I know that it was probably harmless, at worst something like the fan who sent Isaac Asimov a marijuana joint in thanks for all of the thrills that Asimov's writing had given him.  Old wisdom: you don't look a gift horse in the mouth.  And to refuse the gift so publically would have been discourteous (though not, perhaps, so discourteous as such a public presentation of a mysterious gift).

But... Maybe it's because of the fantasy theme of that evening, maybe because I've just finished reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.  It occurred to me sometime in the wee hours this morning that -- older wisdom -- you don't ever accept a gift from a stranger without knowing its nature.  I'm a scientist and a skeptic by nature; I'm still cautious about open-ended promises.  Never summon or invoke anything you can't be sure is benevolent or controllable.  And so forth.

I just had an idiot from SpringMasters ring my doorbell, trying to sell me something.

No, damn it, they can't read.

<*facepalm*>

On Thursday evening, I put lawn signs on my front and side lawns:


Inelegant, but I thought that they would be a starting point, at least.  The sign on the front lawn was partially messed up in the strong gusty wind we had on Friday (or so I assume); I fixed it up when I got home from work.

On Saturday, I noticed that the sign on the side lawn was partially pulled out.  I'm pretty sure that couldn't have been done by the wind.  I put it back.

This afternoon, while I was doing lawn cleanup, I had a couple of people stop by to chat about the signs (they'd previously hired Weed Man but had been unsatisfied with the work, and had had trouble cancelling the contract).  Others paused in passing and read the signs, then continued on their way.

This evening, returning home from an outing, I noticed that the sun shining at an oblique angle across the sign on the front lawn was making some very odd shadows.  On investigation, I found three loops of transparent adhesive tape stuck to the sign.  It appears that sometime between late Friday afternoon and now, somebody went to the time and trouble to stick a message or something on top of my sign, on my front lawn.  And then somebody removed the addition(s), leaving some pieces of tape.

This is rather weird, and more than a bit disturbing.

Since this is one of those family-holiday days.

No, it does not involve penguins in corsets.

An actual sign in front of an actual church.

I'm not sure what to make of this.  Somebody needs to have his/her level of TV/movie watching drastically reduced?

What would Dr. Wertham do?

The creatures who work for Weed Man are presumptively Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons.  Or they wouldn't work at spraying toxic chemicals all over the place.

They are demonstrably illiterate.  Or they wouldn't have sprayed their crap all over my lawns last autumn, because they would have read the street sign right by my driveway, and would have gone looking for the correct street a block and a half away.  Several of my friends and colleagues have had similar problems with them: stubborn attempts to spray where they are not merely unwanted but abhorred.

So how do I keep these damn kids off my lawn?

Also, the creatures who work for Springmaster are the worst infestation of street spammers this city has seen in years.  Possibly ever.  I don't want them around either.

A little while ago, cadhla posted about a sewing pattern. I went and looked.

And said to myself, "I can do that. In fact, I've got a few ideas..."

Sewing happened.

( Construction details lie beneath... )
I haven't decided on a name yet.  Bo Squiddley?

(And a "thank you!" to Emily for creating the pattern and making it available!)

Yesterday evening, beable  and I were chatting with our friend D.- and described someone as a "wingnut".  It was a term that D.- hadn't encountered before, and she asked us to explain.  It wasn't as simple as I'd have thought.

I've been trying to come up with a way of clarifying the concept.  Looking over some recent silliness on a mailing list, where one participant was reading a whole lot of her own Bad History into a discussion and seeing stuff that not only wasn't there, but which was the opposite of what really was there, I got a glimmer.

A wingnut is someone whose attitude and exposition are such that even people who fundamentally agree with his/her basic position wish that s/he would shut up, because s/he's making that position look bad.

... without being a big fan of Britcom The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin.  A satire about a mid-level manager in a dysfunctional office ("Sunshine Desserts -- They're flan-tastic!"), it used to be a regular repeat on PBS.  It's finally being released on DVD in North America in May. 

The show is much less cringe-inducing than The Office, largely because the R.P. characters are much more over-the-top and played for laughs.  (The original book that the series was based on is much darker.)  I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

In today's Doonesbury, Alex describes herself as "a shovel-ready girlfriend".

Maybe I've been reading too much Girl Genius.  (Volume 8 is due for release in May!)  But... Alex is at MIT, yeah, full of Mad Engineering, not so much Mad Science, I thought.  I didn't know that grave-robbing was a big attraction there..?

(I had to do a bit of web searching to find out what the phrase was intended to refer to construction projects.)