random links, plus, filter

[solarbird]

Here, let me badly emulate fark.com for a minute:

[CRAZY] Mayor Resigns, Claims Abduction By Satan Worshippers
[BAD ARCHITECTURE] New approach to embassies for US: bunkers, bunkers, bunkers
[AWESOME] Wingsuits are awesome
[EVIL] Saudi Arabia increases rape victim's punishment for being raped to six months in prison and 200 lashes, primarily for having the gall to appeal her original sentence of 90 lashes handed down for being raped
[NOT THAT IT MATTERS] Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative
[COOKIES] Better writing than usual in The Stranger

Also, I have a Promaster 80A 49mm filter that I can't use. It's for using daylight film with a clear (standard) flash, typically indoors but wherever. The glass is in pristine condition and is the one in the photo Blue. Anybody interested?

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I might be interested in that blue filter... I can't remember whether my Canon takes 49's or something else. (I've got the standard 35/70 zoom that comes with your garden variety Canon Rebel G, and an F2 50mm fixed...)

[solarbird]

Your Canon probably takes 58mm filters. But not always! If you can find your lens on the web I'm sure you could get the specs from that.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'll look when I get home.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

we were both wrong, 52's. Bummer.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Yeah. Really good writing in the Stranger. Made me think, probably gonna make me think some more.

Thanks. I think I needed that.

And.... thanks for just being yourself. I say that both because folks don't hear that nearly often enough... and because it's true. You make a difference for me that's hard to English, but it's a good one.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Mmm, thanks for the tip about yon Stranger, suppose it's time to ask one of the Usual Suspects to mail one up to me, since I won't be down there anytime much soon. Sigh, small horrid wet-snowy coal-towns don't ever e'er never have good newspapers.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You can get much of it online, including the... interesting... advertising... there's something to be said for a dead-tree edition, but still. Free is good.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Coolness, thx -- as vide the high price of the ferries and all, I don't get down to Sno/King anywhere near as much as I would like, so seeing this stuff online is good, and it's of course also good that D. scouts the nifty story-links out in the first instance. I likely wouldn't have the patience (or sufficient bandwidth) to go find them in the first instance.

BTW, have a front cover of the Stranger magnetted inside my nice steel front door here, as ephemeral house-art: the one that had the artist and the spaceman locked in a death struggle...

And it's still snowing. And it's sticking. Am watching pickup trucks full of loggers slide sideways down the hill - at least I knew well enough to park behind the bollards last night.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

One is curious: how long of a ferry run? One doesn't have to answer, but the business of snow makes me wonder...

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Don't mind answering at all; I may live obscurely, but not that obscurely.

Ferry run is two hours ten minutes, bank to bank (diagonally southeastward from Duke Point>Tsawwassen). I live 1.5 hours up-Island from Duke Point, up in the village of Cumberland in the Comox-Strathcona regional district. Nearest "big" town in Courtenay, if that helps.

A smart person allows for getting to wharf half an hour early, otherwise there is a fair chance of being left behind. The boat is what we call the "truck ferry", which lets one avoid driving the Trans-Canada mish-mash through Vancouver, and as well lets one bypass Nanaimo (on a highway I helped design, tra-la!)

And it's snowing like a barstid here right now; CBC says snowfall warning also extends to western Fraser Valley. Depending on where you are, you might get snow, too (though I am only guessing you are somewhere quasi-Seattle, as I am some part of the time, too).

They claimed we would get 5 cm. Just re-measured the back roof-garden, we are at 25 cm level fall and it's still coming down like an explosion in a Kotex factory ^_^ Am very bloody glad I don't have to go anywhere until Wednesday...

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*LOL* oh, jeez, now you've given me the giggles... I'd call it colorful language, but it all seems to be white (as is the rest of your world right now... 25cm, jeez, that's a lot even for the southern Appalachians where I grew up, nevermind down here by the big hill overlooking the lake of floating bridges... (yes, this Yank Johnny Reb speaks Metric and other forms of Queen's English... :)

I've never been on that particular ferry, but I know it's the one to take out to the island; the other boats wallow a lot and the chow isn't as good, so I understand.

We're not forecast for snow, but it's gonna be dicey; it's supposed to get down to 1C tonight, and that's down at the airport in the urban heat island; I wouldn't put it past a dusting on the top of the hill. If it gets down to me (only 30m or so) I'm frelling working from home tomorrow, chained buses or no. (It's two klicks and over 100m vertical to the bottom of the hill where the buses run... )

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

The real attraction for the truckers is that the coffee is always good, and refills are free on the earliest and latest runs (which have refreshingly few squalling tourii aboard them). Food's not quite as good as that place up near Bow-Edison, which advertises "great food -- lousy service", and they are square-up on both counts.

The Duke Point run is long enough that I get at least ninety minutes of quality sleep, which if on the 0515 or 2245 runs makes a big difference to whether I'm liable to pile the car up from falling asleep. I budget seven hours for the trip from Y Plas (up here) down to the Fir-Garden (in Brier); that always seems to be about right, unless the pooper-troopers are having a bad snigget day. NEXUS card really helps -- I really don't care if DHS has my fingerprints, I'm a nice grey-haired lady who votes and pays her taxes, both of them on time. Anyway, whenever I get down there the very first item on the agenda is a another nap, always.

Which side of 520/I-90 are you? I'm picturing Mt Baker hill in my mind's eye, but mainly since I just drove that way the last time I came across back from Fry's. (And the weather was a damnsight nicer, that weekend).

If there's any doubt, stay home tomorrow. The buses will be sliding around and thumping things, and they won't be playing the Blue Danube while that dance goes on.

Gotta be gone -- Citizen Angharad must now go do her thing a la Norman Rockwell, being a committed villager who slogs her way uphill through the snow on a nasty night, to perform an act of empowered and rather acerbic demarchy. Stay warm.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Brier? That's not too far from "my" hill... if you know where solarbird is you're not too far either. And thankfully I rarely travel bridges these days, being as it's kindof a moot point... :)

*LOL* Yeah, it'll look like a really screwed-up version of 2001 if it does snow... da-da-da-da-da *wham wham* *wham wham*

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Ayuh, we're not that far away from you and D./A. et al as the car slides, altho' just on the northern side of the county line from y'all. I more often come in from the Ballinger Way side, from I-5, and across; despite the best-intentioned of directions, I can and do get lost trying to wobble my way in from 405 via Kenmore. It's just not the easiest way.

Not that I am driving anywhere at all, tonight. The roads are an utter and glorious mess, what with there being two snowploughs to serve between Horne Lake Road and Hamm Road (about 83 km of freeway) and none at all on the old highway along the shore. It is still snowing, and it is the sort of nasty gloppy stuff that freezes to the ground. There was a jack-knifed logging truck at the top of Fire Hall hill, here, outside the village council office, made for some interesting swearing going on as I went by, what with the firefighters cutting up the logs with their chain-saws, over the trucker's unheard protests. Gotta keep those fire trucks mobile, after all.

Have fun tomorrow. Me, I am staying home with the munchkin gang, and working on measured sections of coal pillars (of which I have literally hundreds to be typed-up and draughted).

Did talk on the phone with the folks down in Brier, though. Wet snow and sleet, but not sticking to anything yet. Still, would be a nice night for sitting in front the fireplace and getting some cat therapy. Dammit, now I'm feeling vaguely homesick -- this migratory life has its ups and downs, it do, it surely do.

Guess I need to make a snow-icon for this journal, or copy one over from my other one... got lots of ravens-in-the-snow icons there.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* Definitely easier from I-5 than from 405.

It's not gonna snow here; it was 38F earlier, and has warmed back to 39F, which wouldn't make much of a difference in C, but if it's getting even a little bit warmer after dark it's definitely not gonna snow.

It snowed in Brier? Weird. It's that Puget Sound Convergence Zone doing its freaky thing again...

While the fireplace sounds good, I think maybe the hot tub would be even better. Gonna go see about that.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Yahh, it was certainly trying to snow there, but by report it wasn't sticking. I'll probably ask again later this morning out of curiosity. I must confess as how I don't properly understand the dynamics of the convergence zones, even though we likely have one north of here, up at Merville - Black Creek. And of course I have to drive back and forth through the one that often forms in Skagit County...

It didn't get all that cold here, maybe minus 3; the snow froze on my back door-sill. It compacted down overnight: there's about 15 cm of fairly crusty stuff now. Not a good day for leaving the house, so I won't.

Damn -- if I could just figure out how to hoist a hot tub up on the back deck, that would be fun (and would give the neighbours a grand show, too...)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Getting a soft-sided tub up there should be no tribble atall... might take a few minions but it's just a matter of bulk, not weight. As for showing off, that could be fixed with a gazebo... (or not, depending on ones' preference :)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

That Stranger article was really good. It always helps a bit to read about someone else with depression who's managing to get by.

[lostkun.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I hate Saudi Arabia. It was a distaste that built up while I was deployed that I didn't really pay attention to, given the backdrop, but the more I think about it, the more I hate Saudi Arabia. At least its administration, but bordering dangerously close on the country in general.

[solarbird]

What, a hyperactively misogynist torture-wielding fundamentalist religious dictatorship with delusions of messianic destiny? What's not to love?

[lickingtoad.livejournal.com]

Wingsuits *are* awesome. Man, I want one. (I also want the courage to go base-jumping without pooping on everything two miles below me!)

That article in 'The Stranger' is excellent, as well. (I, too, take Celexa! IT KNOWS ALL! IT CURES ALL! IT IS YOUR NEW GOD!)