Quoth Corey to the cat, "Curiosity killed y'all."

History is way cool, and knowing it is even cooler. Philosophy, theory, same thing. But, if I'm reading right, the best organizers tend not to be ideologues. Maybe I'm the classic carpenter, who, hammer in hand, sees every problem as a nail. But I think people organize around bread and butter stuff, unless they are very young, in which case they organize around a passionate battle against boredom. Lots of wonderful and colorful things have come from both.

From a small exhibit at the main library on campus

Dear LAZYWEBZ:

Is there an accounting or tax or other official distinction between a "non-profit" and a "public-private partnership"? I'm a little confused as to whether a PPP could file as a 501(c)(3). I guess it would depend on the structure of the organization, but...dunno. Cornfused.

Update:

From Gloria Guard, President of the People’s Emergency Center homeless shelter and transition program (PEC):
"The PPP is descriptive. Like XYZ is a faith based childcare ctr or XYZ is a community development agency. Its not the legal definition. The non profit 501 c 3 is the legal def of how it is incorporated. Under fedl law. You should be able to get their state form 990 on Guidestar website. "

ZOMG, you mean Zimbabwe's election results are UNCLEAR and CONTESTED? hey Mugabe, don't let the door hit your arse...

And in a desperate fit of escapism, they found themselves in the critiquable position of being nauseated at the idea of eating local for even one more meal. Localvores turn into loco-vores when their passports haven't been stamped in a while, and at that moment, there was nothing in North America that could slake their thirst for the smell of that smoggy, tropical air that drapes over the shoulders, heavy with humidity, diesel particulates, and sticky papaya sweetness, outside metro stations in central Sao Paulo. In headphones, Tom Ze crooned a love-lorn yarn about the stops around Ave. Paulista: "Augusta, between you and Angelica, thank god I found Consolation." The corrosive saudade tasted a little bit wonderful in their mouths, but mostly it just made things worse. Barreling through just didn't seem possible that day.

Most likely, what happened next was that hours passed, and they went to the park--maybe the farmer's market was on that day. Maybe they got some baked goods from Amish country and ate, and maybe drank, and certainly slept, and the smell of spring in their natural habitat created enough instant nostalgia that they could get through another season. But while that was a perfectly reasonable response, reason seemed awfully tragic, and at least one of them surely googled recipes for aipim and vegan feijoada.

Late breaking news, the bike porn people found a last-minute Philly venue.

http://bikeporntour.blogspot.com/

Tuesday March 25th
8:45 pm
Magic Gardens
1020 South St

I'm signed up for Basic Carpentry at Yestermorrow for May 5-9, camping onsite, and hopefully some nature time before and/or after. Who's in??? They're also offering Sustainable Treehouse Design and Construction that week. C'mon, I do everything by myself. You should come. Then we can rip apart the back of my house and rebuild it super pretty and maybe strawbailey or something because I'M GONNA LEARN HOW TO FRAME A MFKN HOUSE. In May. In the mountains of Vermont. In a tent. You know you want to take a potentially chilly solar shower in this:

Anyone have a tent one-person tent I can borrow? I can lend you a HIGH-QUALITY KITTY CAT as collateral.

My AIRQUOTES work boots AIRQUOTES are in the process of biting the dust. What are good and affordable big-girl work boots? How do you properly escape html characters to make fake tags for comedic value? I'll bet it's easy but I've used up my 2 minute quota, cuz it ain't 3 minutes worth of funny.

IMC coverage from San Fran. Really good stuff. The tech team sounds tight. Very, very tight.

And of course Philly Imc.

Let's hope we don't have to do this again next year.

Update: activists got into the Chevron building. They shut down business for the day before 8:30am local time. Chevron is not answering phones. The FM feed is back up.

9:25 PST: ""Balloons have been thrown at the Citibank we're not sure what they're filled with, if anything, but ballons have been thrown at the Citibank."

10:16 PST: Market St is shut down by a die-in.

10:31 PST: im from voip tech volunteer: "wow. so many callins right now. im ringing like crazy"

10:55 PST: "The Black Bloc has turned into more of a pink and blue bloc"

11:46 PST: Live feed from a bike. Cellular card and helmet-mounted webcam

12:47 PST: Legal observer arrested, suspected of having paintballs (?!?)

14:14 PST: Police report "anarchists" on the streets. Seems they have paint-filled balloons. :-)

As highlighted by the Paula Deen Is Trying To Kill Us series, a bacon burger with a fried egg served on glazed donuts. Not forgetting the vegetarian version on whole wheat Krispy Kreme, a brand name that I find confoundingly oxymoronic. NB: This dish was prepared to comply with a Lenten sacrifice!!! All glory to the most high!

Also, fried butter balls.

Also, as seen on Ellen, VELVEETA FUDGE BALLS DIPPED IN CARAMEL, WHITE CHOCOLATE, AND PEANUTS. There is some slightly suggestive, slightly funny banter that is worth 45 seconds of your day. But the real money shot is in the comments:

"Would velveeta light combined with splenda and half the amount of chocolate make a difference? I'm fat enough as it is already..."

LATE BREAKING NEWS aka Comments are Comedy Gold...

• Peanut Butter Balls with paraffin wax!
  
• Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding!
  
• Jelly Beans With Shellac!
  

And apparently Velveeta fudge is an old recipe. Wow.

I'm consolidating old hard drives, and I'm finding old inboxes and pictures and chat logs. I found this, from sometime before May, 2001:

I make my bread and butter huddled over a keyboard muttering obscenities, climbing under desks fumbling with connectors, and scuttering around in a very loud, cold data center following ethernet cables to their (il)logical ends.

I'm a geeklet.

I got my first computer job because I'd done more muttering, fumbling, and plugging at a college radio station, and had discovered that your web page changes faster if you work right on the unix server. That was enough to get me in the door for digital editing of taped technical courses. Hours and hours of drier-than-drywall rambling about ansi standards punctuated with coughs and clearings-of-the-throat.

So you'd think with this kind of background I'd be able to plug in a speaker.

I thought so too.

The boy and I were at a gig setting up for the night. We plugged in the turntables and flipped on the amp. McCoy Tyner tumbled gracefully out of one speaker, but not the other. I did a little trouble-shooting and before Boy quite understood, I told the owner we had a bad 1/4 inch cable, and he went to get another.

He found one and came back to the turntable area. I stood in front of him and held out my hand.

He handed it to the Boy.

1 bedroom apartment available March 1 or later. Roomy for one, comfy for two. Perfect for a couple, or a couple of close friends. 1.5 blocks from 34 trolley, Satellite coffee and Firehouse bikes. Amazing light during the day, fresh paint throughout. Newish stove. New fridge, windows, and heating system, all Energy Star. Whole-house fan cools significantly in summer, 1 window A/C unit. Sharable porch and back yard, including space for growing stuff. Cat, queer, and gardener friendly. $725/month including heat, hot (and cold) water, wireless. First/last/security to move in. Owner (me) lives downstairs, so you can expect prompt response to problems. Contact: beleza99@gmail.com. Pictures under cut. x-posted to west philly.

( ooh pretty )

A Safety Third blessing from jg3, on the occasion of using D's air-acetylene torch because propane is so not bling enough:

"Good luck and good safety. May your eyebrows live to express your thirst for life tomorrow!"

"As a Valentine's Day card smoldered, more than 100 members of the Hindu extremist group Shiv Sena gathered in central New Delhi chanted "Death to Valentine's Day" and "People who celebrate Valentine's Day should be pelted with shoes!""

Also, A Late Decree declaring that Manufactured Romanticism Day be changed to honor Joshua, Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.


With thanks to Christina.

This is the first year I'm really, truly, like not just trying to be cool or anything, completely apathetic about valentine's day. What would be nice is to hit up a migra rally with Juntos or something. Also, years ago I was informed that v's day has actually already been repurposed into Plant Day, the day when you sketch out the garden and order seeds. It is customary to exchange small gifts of seedlings or gardening supplies to remind us that spring thaw is right around the corner. Though someone forgot to send the memo to the bulb flowers that it's still only February, and they are already popping up. Man, they are gonna be pissed about today's snow.

I leave you with this:

""My heart is like a cabbage, divided into two; the leaves are for others and the heart for you."

# uname -a
Linux lolserver.domain 2.6.18-53.1.6.el5xen #1 SMP Wed Jan 16 04:10:44 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ ls
10201_database_linux_x86_64.cpio config-assistant-failures database install.txt kernel-requirements

You caught that, right? x86_64

INFO: gcc -m32 -o ctxhx -L/opt/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/gls/ctx//lib32/ -L/opt/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/gls/lib32/ -L/opt/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/gls/lib32/stubs/ /opt/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/gls/ctx/lib/ctxhx.o -L/opt/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/gls/ctx/lib/ -ldl -lm -lctxhx -Wl,-rpath,/opt/oracle/oracle/product/10.2.0/gls/ctx/lib -lsnls10 -lnls10 -lcore10 -lsnls10 -lnls10 -lcore10 -lsnls10 -lnls10 -lxml10 -lcore10 -lunls10 -lsnls10 -lnls10 -lcore10 -lnls10 `cat /opt/oracle/oracle/product/1
INFO: 0.2.0/gls/lib/sysliblist`
INFO: /usr/bin/ld: crt1.o: No such file: No such file or directory
INFO: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
INFO: make: *** [ctxhx] Error 1

# ls /usr/lib64/crt*
/usr/lib64/crt1.o /usr/lib64/crti.o /usr/lib64/crtn.o

You caught that too, right? gcc -m32, .../lib32. Fixed with yum install glibc-devel.i386. But I'm just sayin. Is there a good reason for this?

I tend to be vague about the technical details of my job. Exclusive to this blog post: things to know if you are considering dropping a couple hundred grand on IBM servers and SAN stuff!

( Abandon hope all ye who enter here )

I do NOT expect to pay a bajillion dollars to have a SAN that is such a delicate Princess and her pea, that faeries, sunspots, bad karma, or a slight breeze in the data center can cause my production NFS server to flop.

( It gets better. )

My experience with IBM is that the only way to make it work is to drink the Kool-Aid and try not to breathe too hard. Anyone have history with IBM hardware that confirms or contradicts this experience?

"Once upon a time, BIND only understood units of seconds for the four fields we just described. (Consequently, a whole generation of administrators know that there are 608400 seconds in a week.)"

from o'reilly grasshopper book

It's carnival and lunar new year season, and today spring breathed on our necks just a little, first breath of the year. Baltimore Ave: huddle of dudes at wusrt/best house, mix of nerdy, cute, awkward, outspoken, freewheeling and principled. You guessed it, a linux user's group. Almost stopped to chat about fibre channel cabling. Fiddle music out of a matte silver mac on a porch, two listeners, a human and a dog on the human's lap. Kulture Shop's new spot next to the coffee joint across from the gas station looks really good. The propane heater in a restaurant looks like a elliptical concentrator, and it is turned off because it's light sweater weather.

Bitter treats me bad but I stay cuz it's so sweet.

Nom iz teh new lol.