Metaplanar Babel

This Colorgenics thing looks somewhat interesting, but alas, it doesn’t seem to work anymore.

As Brendan notes, the site tweaking/redesign bug seems to be catching. Something he said that I thought was interesting:

That is one of the more odd blogisims I feel - it seems everyone tends to perform a code or ‘look’ update within days of each other, often not aware of the seemingly ‘hive mind’ appearance of half a dozen blogs changing the shop window at the same time.

I’ve pretty much redone a lot of babelv2, jumping it up to babelv2.5. Same general color and graphical scheme, but different layout. And contrary to appearances, not entirely stolen from Brendan, honest. I’d been mulling over putting the miniblog in the sidebar for a while, but I couldn’t quite figure out in my head how it would work. Then I ran into this nifty blog, and it finally sunk in. My version is fluid-ish, because I have this odd reluctance to make a fixed-width design. I suspect it’s because I don’t like having to full-screen my browser, which means if it’s designed for anything bigger than ~800×600, then it’s too big. I like having screen real estate outside of my browser (and was Firefox’s tabbed browsing ever a huge thing for me). Anyway, I realize that I could just design for that size, but I like the idea of a resize-able layout, so that’s what I tried to do. I like what I ended up with, but I’m obviously biased. There’s still one a few very minor glitches in IE that I’ll hopefully work out soonish, but we’ll see. I’m always curious to know what other folks think, so feel free to comment, even if it’s just to say you hate it.

Maybe you’ve seen the movie. I don’t usually get up in arms about political stuff, because so much of it is opinion that can’t really be resolved, but what’s happened to this guy and kids like him is inexcusable. The story is showing up all over the place.

Basically, this guy knows that he’s gay and, thinking he can trust them, tells his parents about it. Their response is to ignore the issue for a few weeks so he can finish up school, then plan to ship him off to the Refuge, a Christian “clinic” “…designed to minister to adolescents struggling with broken and addictive behaviors such as pornography, drugs and alcohol, sexual promescuity, and homosexuality.” That’s an interesting categorization.. broken and addictive. I have to wonder what percentage of the basic public would fall into that somewhere. Anyway, I’m not linking to the damn place. Maybe it truly has its clients’ best interests at heart, but I have my doubts.

I guess I was lucky. I can’t imagine my parents doing something like that to me. Oh, I feel certain there would have been some unhappiness all around, but .. sending me off to be brainwashed? No, I don’t see that happening. I can hardly imagine what it would feel like not to have that trust anymore. This is sad.

On the other hand, seeing the general response thus far has been somewhat heartening. Complete strangers from the internet have formed a protest and are trying to help this kid out. I hope somehow things will work out for him.. People deserve better than this. I’m sure the parents felt they were just doing the best thing, but still..

Anyway, Saved! is a good movie, despite the controversial topics. The parallels between the movie and this real life story are a bit scary, though. Sorry I don’t have anything more profound to say, but I really think most of the other stories sum it up pretty well.

I’ve been a little blah lately. My job’s been less than fun, thanks to problems with our book vendor, understaffing, and the entrenchment of certain individuals in their “kingdoms”. That doesn’t make sense to you guys, I’m sure, but it’s very frustrating how overly suspicious, resistant to change, and prone to bitching about the same old problems many of the people here are. Anyway, my blah-ness seems to be subsiding, somewhat, but, in typical Jena fashion, it’s leaving behind an urge to redo my site design yet again, despite never really finishing the most recent one. I am the queen of almost-but-never-quite-finishing-projects. It’s absurd, and I know it, but I never can seem to shed this tendency. I don’t really want to bore you with the details, but if you’re ecstactically waiting to be bored (why else would you still be reading my blog, ne? )..

Apparently the following sentence is worth at least $40 of education: “People would rather be right than happy.” Interesting thought, overall.. Can’t quite decide if I agree with it or not, though.

I know, it seems like I’ve vanished off the face of the earth, right? I just haven’t had much to say of late. I’ve been really busy at work with this book vendor RFP thing, plus a bunch of other stuff, so there hasn’t been much time to think.

I’ve been playing a lot of WoW lately. Jori’s so much fun that I can’t believe I didn’t make a warrior sooner. She looks badass, she is badass, and most importantly, she’s a lot of fun to play. Jon’s been playing up his priest and cruinh’s played his mage some, and let me tell you, that whole idea of the holy trinity? It’s true. Damn but we own as that trio. We’re all 40+ now, so hopefully we’ll be doing more instances and stuff with those 3. I just can’t believe how much fun it all is..nothing else I’ve ever played in an MMO has hit me like this. I guess I finally got the bug~

These MiniPosts are here for those little bits of thought that don’t require a full-length post. They could be simply an interesting link, a random observation, or whatever else. Nifty little plugin, I gotta admit.

…is that hardly anyone’s ever happy with what they’ve got. Everywhere you turn, internet or RL, people are complaining because reality doesn’t fulfil their expectations. Games are too hard, or too easy (often the same game), too much of a gankfest or boring, great story but shitty controls or graphics, etc etc. The political scene, well, we won’t even go there. Firefox has security holes (and improved market share), oh noes! *sigh* This expectation of perfection is so freakin absurd. Of course Firefox has security holes - it’s developed by a small team of human beings who aren’t perfect, and most users don’t pay a damn cent for it. Yet still people bitch and moan that their “perfect” Firefox has flaws. Guild Wars made getting some of the higher, more powerful skills difficult to get, and people bitch because they can’t play GodCharacter0351 out of the box. Boo freakin hoo.

Anyway, I’m just tired of reading complaints about everything under the sun everywhere I go. I could point to dozens of examples of why world peace will never come about. We, as a race, constantly shoot ourselves in the foot, bickering (rather heatedly, might I add) about the most pointless, trivial things, like who’s more important or who gets more hits or who killed more players or who’s a fanboi fanatic. It’s ridiculous. God is probably busting his ass in heaven, laughing at us all.

And yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy of complaining about all the complainers~ I’m as human as anyone else.

On a slightly different note, we have beautiful weather here today again, and I have nothing pressing to do this afternoon. Life is good.

Edit: and the hospital up the street had cookies right out of the oven. woot!

We went hiking on Skyline drive, in Shenandoah National Park yesterday, with Jon’s mother. Somewhat surprisingly, we had a gorgeous day for it. The wind up in the mountains was a little cool but very nice after a decent hike, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I wish I’d remembered to charge up my camera, so I’d have some photos to share.

I haven’t been up to the park much at all, so it was nice to drive through and see some of it, even though a lot of the trees hadn’t quite started budding, since it’s cooler up there (and we’ve had a very cool spring anyway). One of the trails we took led up to a cabin now owned by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Society that used to belong to .. someone in Jon’s family, though I can’t remember who. This place is on top of a mountain, miles from anything, surrounded by trees. Remember before, when I asked when the last time you’d stopped to listen and heard no cars, no music, nothing but wind and bird calls? Well that’s what we had here. Amazing, really. It was so peaceful up there; if my allergies hadn’t started acting up like crazy, I think I could’ve sat there all day, doing nothing. That had to have been the most relaxing place I’ve been in a long time. Again, I wish I had had my camera, so I could show you all what it was like. Jon’s stepdad took some pictures on his digital though, so maybe I can get him to send me some of them. Actually, here’s a picture of the cabin from the trail.

Anyway, I had a great time; I think we underestimate how good it is to get away from all the technology and general busy-ness of life sometimes. Hopefully Jon and I’ll go back up there to try out some of the other trails soon.

..but what’s up with all the flaming gravatars?