ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん: Solarbird Makes Noises

I've posted a Craigslist ad for an Atari 130xe and Percom Data disk drive I'm giving away. I got it free from somebody at Microsoft who used to collect 8-bit computers and got tired of it. You can see the ad here. Anybody want it, let me know. If you want it and you can't pick it up, I can ship it, but you need to pay the shipping costs. The keyboard does NOT completely work - it may just need to be disassembled and cleaned out - but, surprisingly, it boots and runs things like Strike Eagle. (4 meg avi here.) See the ad for details, and you can ask me questions here if you want. It's FREE, but you have to pick it up.

ETA: I have a possible Craigslist pickup. But the guy sounded like a total flake. I always seem to get flake responses off Craigslist. That's why I hate working with them.

ETA2: Yep. He flaked.

The worst part about eBay is the way that you want to keep hitting "refresh" on the browser as your fleet of auctions winds down, waiting to see if people start bidding late, and whether there're going to be any sniper wars. Occasionally they do. It's perfect training for "learn to hit refresh compulsively."

In other news, this is a real guitar:


Which of course requires a poll:

[Poll #481171]
And finally:
Miles (all walking) on Saturday: 2.85
Miles out of Hobbiton: 55.2
Miles to Rivendell: 402.80

( Quizzie )

I haven't updated in a while, mostly because I haven't done that much interesting lately. Today I planted a plum tree sapling that I rescued from a demolition site in the neighbourhood - another house is being torn down to replace it with a new house in the same location. Again, fortunately, it's a case where I don't hugely mind; there are a lot of nice houses here, but this wasn't particularly one of them. It had some slap-together funky charm, but it was a lot more "slapped together" than "funky" - you can kind of see what they were going for, but you can also see that they didn't make it.

It's a seriously fucked up February for gardening. It hasn't rained in days and there's no rain in the forecast. That's very bad. We're going to have a water shortage this summer. I was watering outdoor plants today - and not just the tree I was watering in, either. That's just broken. It should have been raining all month, and it just hasn't been. It's been sunny. And warm like you might expect in April. Everything's a good month ahead of schedule - plants and birds alike.

Still, it's pleasant, as long as you don't think about it too much. I guess my expectations of weather are so ingrained that it feels like we're in the calm before a storm... though I suppose the graduate school (big change) and political reality all fit in there a bit too! Still, the politics in particular are kind of a constant battle - cyclic, but not on the same sort of rhythms.

At the same sale, I got a great huge wooden chest I'll use to store garden tools in inside the garage. I like it, it's very rustic, which is to say, beaten up. It's wood, not plastic, and has large metal gate hinges. What more could you want? Maybe I'll build in a shelf or something. I could, since it's actually made of actual wood.

That's the kind of stuff I've been doing. I have had to cut the political survey to three times a week, and set it off-limits the rest of the time - it was just too brutal. I mean, seriously - I couldn't handle the stress, doing it daily. Fortunately, most action items are spread out over several days.

Though it's not like it's all that completely avoidable. Today was a no-politics day, but I couldn't not notice that the Pope declared that I'm part of an 'Ideology of Evil.' (And the church isn't even the most anti-queer player. Guh. Right. Later.)

I set up a free credit union account and got it confirmed and everything, so now it's time for "you don't take paypal and even though you said so in the auction I'm not paying" guy to pay up or get his ass smacked down. I'm expecting the latter, but I always hope to be pleasantly surprised. All the other eBay stuff is moving pretty well. This is handy, because yay walking-around money. Also, yay getting rid of stuff I don't actually want. A bit of a cleanout purge has been overdue, I think.

My stuff for Norwescon is mostly on track - I've got to come up with this year's daily newsletter, and I'll have to do a lot of printing stuff out to fill the racks - people just don't send in 'zines anymore. I'm handing that job off next year - I haven't had any new ideas for a while, and I'm just not really into it any longer. I hope someone takes it over. Know anybody who thinks fanzines are neat, and wants an easy way to volunteer for Norwescon in a way that doesn't take up much time at the convention itself? This is that job.

Also, I need reporters for the daily newsletter, whatever it ends up being called. I want people who can write up party reports, who will go to the P.K. Dick awards, stuff like that - people who will go dig up stuff to bring back and print. So if you're going to Norwescon and are interested, talk to me.

Hm. Sleepy. Also vaguely bored.

I miss fishiethegecko.

( Quiz time! )