Welcome to Mirvana

Attrition on the Radio

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:16:53 GMT

This looks yummy:

There is an ATTRITION radio special broadcast online tonight on Germany's Neurobeat radio!!!
Listen to between 40 - 50 songs from our entire career...

between 7.30pm - 10.30pm Central european time. (6.30pm - 9.30pm UK time and 1.30pm - 4.30pm east coast US...)

Streaming link:
http://85. 25. 150. 179:8000

and the Neurobeat website:
http://www. neurobeat-radio. de

talk to you later...

Martin & Sin

www. attrition. co. uk

GO PENS!

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:24:41 GMT

QotD

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:23:12 GMT

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
- Albert Schweitzer

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around...

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:19:30 GMT

Ok so I've been on Facebook for a while now and I haven't gotten all that much use out of it, save for finding a few long-lost friends and keeping in touch with others who aren't on livejournal...as much as I would like to Superpoke you all back, take the quizzes, accept your gifts, hugs, good karma, and so on, I just don't have the time to keep up with it all. Please don't be sad if I don't always reciprocate. I still love you:)

QotD

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:58:38 GMT

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
- Douglas Adams

Ok, so let me 'splain...

Tue, 13 May 2008 13:07:57 GMT

UNLoadOut 003
Originally uploaded by mirvana.

I wasn't initially planning on going with the boyfriend to the Ai500 Black Jack event at Fort Blanding in a couple weeks. However, I decided to combine the trip with a visit to my grandfather who lives in Florida and so...I did not have all the stuff to do the load-out for a combatant/player in the game, but I still wanted to participate in some active way. This is my attempt at an NPC "UN observer/reporter" costume. Notice the UN flash on the hat, and the robin egg blue vest. I also have a light blue baseball cap with the UN logo on it, and I applied a UN badge to the backpack that I'm going to carry. I made the vest, based on an existing bulletproof vest that Stef has. I bet that no one else has ever gone to such lengths for an NPC.

QotD

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:41:46 GMT

Tell me, and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand. ~Chinese proverb

WotD: Positivity

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:29:12 GMT

For some reason, I feel like I'm sending "positivity vibes" (that's a technical term) out to the universe today. Can you feel it?

no points left...

Sun, 11 May 2008 16:21:17 GMT

more cat pictures

On Vox: Travelog: Las Vegas, NV

Tue, 06 May 2008 20:57:52 GMT

It was late Sunday night when I checked into the Rio, and as luck would have it, they upgraded my suite. This place is friggin' huge! There's a huge living room, dining area, and the bathroom itself is bigger than some other hotel rooms I've been in. I also have panoramic views of the strip and beyond from the floor-ceiling windows that wrap completely around one end of the Masquerade Tower. That's what I'm talkin'bout:

Originally posted on mirvana.vox.com

I <3 fish tacos

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:56:00 GMT

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Buddha B-Day

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:49:21 GMT

Happy (belated) birthday Buddha!

QotD, 2

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:12:56 GMT

Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.
- Randy K. Milholland

QotD

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:11:36 GMT

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
- Robert Anton Wilson

Grumble

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:41:50 GMT

So I'll be in Las Vegas next week for the umpteenth time, and I am broke. I spent nearly $1k last month making some repairs to the car, and I've been throwing money at other problems lately. I'm not usually ever broke, ever. However, I always seem to be strapped when I'm due to go to LV for work. That way, I am totally stuck with the food and entertainment provided, and paid attractions are completely out of the question. The positive side: I will do alot of walking. I won't be able to spend a lot on an indulgent dinner. I will enjoy the spacious hotel suite.

Personal boundaries

Fri, 02 May 2008 23:43:39 GMT

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Since I started using Google Reader to aggregate my newsfeeds, I've been discovering some new and interesting blogs to read, such as UrbanMonk.net. This article is third in a series about personal boundaries---How to Deal with Critics.

Happy May Day!

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:11:11 GMT

Addendum: Der Erste Mai photo blog! http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/05/01/der-erste-mai-international/

Advice to new grads

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:26:26 GMT

After graduating from college umpteen years ago, I somehow managed to find a successful career. It's had itse ups and downs, but I can safely say that I'm happy with it now. I make enough money to keep a roof over my head and pay for my hobbies and indulgences. I get enough time off and flexibility with my schedule to have a life outside of work. How did I get there? Well, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was following the advice in this article, on Get Rich Slowly. Some Excerpts:

"Treat your time as an investment. It’s more important to invest your time wisely than to invest your money wisely."

"The people you work with are more important than the company. You want to work with people who have high integrity, people you can trust. It’s nice to work for a great company, but it’s better to work with great people."

"What you studied in school does not matter. Students should major in subjects they enjoy. They should pursue learning. One of Ron’s colleagues is a brilliant lawyer who has a degree in music. He knows a judge with a degree in pharmacology. Your degree does not matter."

"Self-discipline is the common denominator among the successful. In order to get into college and to earn a degree, one must exercise delayed gratification. This doesn’t end after school. Delayed gratification and self-discipline are necessary for continued success in life."

"Be willing to do grunt work. By doing the entry-level jobs, you’re building skills necessary to move up. As you progress in your career, find things in each job to be passionate about."

"It’s more important to be happy than it is to be rich."

An apple a day...

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:38:58 GMT

...Apples contain acetone, isopropanol and cyanide. It's the dose that counts. (Found on diet-blog.com)

Other interesting food facts here (link).

Organimization

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:29:37 GMT

...the ongoing saga continues...and I know I've been blathering on and on about Jott and Sandy and Google, but I just figured out how to add a feed directly from Sandy into Google Calendar (and Tripit also feeds in as well) and now all is right with the universe. It wasn't obvious because Firefox does not want to recognize the "subscribe" link in Sandy, but I just worked around that, and now it's all good.

Jott-->Sandy-->Google Calendar - I talk to my phone and it ends up in my calendar, and I get SMS reminders.
Tripit-->Google Calendar - I make travel arrangements and it ends up in my calendar.

I still haven't figured out how to sync Google Calendar with the Windows Mobile calendar on my phone, but I can access Google on my phone, so it doesn't matter much.

What's still broken is that I'm not getting SMS reminders directly from Google Calendar. I gave it my mobile info but I'm not getting the confirmation code.

In other news: I gots me a shredder. It does 20 pp. at a time, credit cards, and CDs. Bye-bye records from 2001 and older. And from now on, I will now be shredding all my junk mail. Anyone need compost?

I just consolidated three boxes of old photos into one. I ended up finding lots of old photos of my grandfather and his side of the family. Some of them are really old, like Victorian era. Amazingly I could identify a lot of the people in them. Funny how much a face can change in 80 years, but you still know who it is. I might bring some of these with me when I visit next month.

Yesterday, I started a major overhaul of my fabric stash. This is non-trivial. I was a pro seamstress for years, and I'm still an avid costumer. So far, I managed to sift through several years worth of scraps and start a big pile of stuff for the trash. The task continues tonight. My goal is to have everything contained in plastic bins, and to see the unobstructed surface of my 6' x 6' cutting table.

QotD

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:51:25 GMT

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
- Faith Whittlesey

OMG New York Dolls!

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:39:41 GMT

"The music lineup for the Three Rivers Arts Festival in June has been released, and the first name that jumps off the list is the New York Dolls, the legendary punk band which reunited in 2004, more than 25 years after splitting." Full article here - http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08119/877297-100.stm?cmpid=news.xml

tripit, tripit good

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:40:59 GMT

In addition to Google Calendar, Sandy, and Jott, I've also found tripit.com to be useful for organizing my itineraries for my trips. Basically all you do is email it your itinerary, and it accepts a lot of different formats, and then it parses it into a more readable format. The other cool thing is that it creates an iCal feed that you can import into Google Calendar. I can also access it from my mobile.

Another Web tool that I would add to the "useful" list is Google Notebook. If you do any kind of research, it let's you clip snippets of web pages and organize them into "notebooks." Kind of like virtual note cards.

Addendum: Blogit via Facebook is like the "firehose" of blog/update posting. However, you don't have many options as far as locking posts and so on. And it doesn't do myspace.

I <3 PW

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:39:00 GMT

You can't expect much of a turnout at 11am on a Sunday, but the people wandering around the Art All Night warehouse space seemed very appreciative of our set, and it was fun playing in the acoustics of such a cavernous venue. Can you hear the echo? echo? echo? echo?

Synchro-connectivity

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:44:43 GMT

The circuit is complete! I have figured out how to connect everything to everything! I call Jott to dictate a reminder to Sandy. Sandy sends me an email to confirm. With one click in Gmail, I can add the reminder to my Google Calendar. Sandy also sends me an SMS alert prior to the appointment. My phone vibrates, telling me "why am I not already on my way to the appointment..." I am almost completely satisfied with this sequence of operations.

Note:

*I wish that Sandy (or Google) could update my calendar in Windows Mobile, too.

*I do not and never will use Outlook, which seems to be the missing component in linking everything in the universe together, but this is a good workaround.

UPDATE: Oh snap! Jott will update my Google Calendar, and in theory, Google Calendar will send me SMS reminders. However, for some reason it's not working with my phone. So I still need Sandy to send me the reminders.

ADDENDUM: Ok so Jott will actually send me SMS reminders, too. I think the only difference with using Sandy is that I can "tag" items, whereas Jott uses lists.