the (mostly true) adventures of

Wheee!

I rewatched my source material today and used it to add a few details here and there to my story. I've got 9028 words and expect to finish the first draft this weekend. I'm lucky I was able to use a story idea I already had and work it together with the request.

I know, I have this freakish love/hate relationship with deadlines. They make me crazy, but they make me write steadily, every day, and they also give me this great whooop of relief when I know I've succeeded ahead of time.

And I will get right back to work of GT&T once I've finished with the Yuletide story and get the next part out before New Year's. I swear. I can write on one thing and revise on another, I've discovered.

This entry was originally posted at http://auburn.dreamwidth.org/230328.html. where there are comments. Comments are enabled on all cross posted journals.

Could anyone remind me when the writers and artists are free to post their work outside the Big Bang site? I just noticed one of the stories reposted at the Pit of Voles.

ETA The release date was/is 11/27.

This entry was originally posted at http://auburn.dreamwidth.org/229963.html. where there are comments. Comments are enabled on all cross posted journals.

One of the discoveries I’ve made since becoming ill is that I’m strongly motivated by duty. My responsibilities to the muslings, for instance, kept me slogging through the days even when I was at my worst and would just as soon have not kept waking up in the mornings. Even now that I’m feeling somewhat better, my energy is still limited enough that I can’t do everything I used to, and what that means in practice is that I usually end up doing only the things I “have to” - where “have to” equals work and stuff for the muslings, but not reading and writing for fun. I’ve been leery of making any fandom commitments for fear of not being able to carry them off, but possibly a commitment is just what I need.

So... if any of you want to tell me why I indulged my not-so-secret love for geeky t-shirts by wearing the one shown in this icon while cooking for Thanksgiving yesterday, I will at least try to write something for you. (Or the first one or two of you, if this is more popular than I expect. No promises on the timetable, though I’d like to put the last two evenings of the holiday weekend to good use!)

ETA: A couple of people here and on LJ have already recognized tryptophan, an amino acid often blamed (not necessarily correctly) for making people sleepy after large Thanksgiving meals. If you didn't recognize the molecule or are arriving later and would still like to request a story you're welcome to, though I'm not making any promises about getting to later prompts.

xposted to IJ and LJ

Word count: 2,602.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091127.html

Enigmatic spiral galaxy NGC 1097 lies about

Here's a piece of advice for anyone who is participating in any kind of LJ/IJ/DW based fest at any time of the year: when you email the mods, include your journal user ID, especially if your user ID isn't the same as your email address.

If your email address is the same as your journal ID, it makes things a little easier, but it would still be nice to include your ID nonetheless.

Here's the thing. Unless you communicate via email with the mods outside of the fest enough that it's reasonable to assume they know to associate that email address with you, chances are the mods will have no clue who's emailing them and will have to take the extra step of consulting a spreadsheet in order to figure it out.

When a fest mod is juggling 30+, 40+, 50+, or more fest participants, they are not going to remember who everyone is. They might not know you, they might not interact with you outside of the fest, or they might not remember. There are people who have participated in Snupin Santa just about every year, and I still wouldn't know them from an email address alone, much less know all the new people who rotate in and out each year.

So if a fest mod asks you to include your user ID and/or the name of your recipient in your emails, please try to remember to do it. It's not just a busy-work request; it can save the mod a little extra time (and let's be honest: a little extra irritation) if they know who they're dealing with straight-away instead of having to look it up. Trust me, trawling through a spreadsheet and looking for one person's email address out of 50-60 (or more) names is a pain in the ass.

This entry was originally posted at http://scribbulus-ink.dreamwidth.org/518068.html. It's cross-posted to LJ and IJ, and comments are enabled at all three journals.

seen in cofax's linkspam roundup: Barbara Hambly is selling short stories connected to her older (Del Rey) fantasy series, direct from her website for $5 a pop. There are two Benjamin January stories, one Joanna Sheraton and Antryg Windrose, and one, um, wacky mashup. Buy them here! I will soon, but right now I have to go make the cranberry sauce (with orange zest, fresh ginger, cinnamon, and clove. Mmmmmmmmmmmm).

[a Dreamwidth post! | read comments at Dreamwidth | post a comment at Dreamwidth | How to use OpenID]

I spent yesterday driving to Massachusetts, along with Geoff and a friend; my folks are doing Thanksgiving on Saturday, because it fits everyone's schedules better. So actual turkey day was entirely sans turkey, but turkey prep has begun! (We just came back from going to pick it up at a local farm.)

I'm thankful for my friends, my health, my financial security, and my physical comfort. I'm thankful for modern medicine, which has kept my father (among others) alive, sustained him, and enabled him to reach this day. I'm thankful for fandom, for fannish friends, for fannish projects, for fannish squee and porn and gumption and collaborative effort. I'm thankful for my life, and the communities and the world I live it in.

I hope those of you who celebrated yesterday are still comfortably curled up around your distended bellies. (Unless you were crazed enough to go shopping today, in which case I hope you got whatever it was you were willing to brave the maddened crowds for. Better you than me.) If you're not the celebrating-U.S.-Thanksgiving type, I hope you're having a wonderful weekend of your own!

[a Dreamwidth post! | read comments at Dreamwidth | post a comment at Dreamwidth | How to use OpenID]

Title: The Needs of the Revolted
Pairing: Sarek/OFC
Rating: NC17
Words: ~800
Warning: dubious consent
Summary: The kink meme prompt was for Sarek to get tired of his people talking smack about Amanda and Vulcanishly telling them to stick it. However, as it was on the kink meme, there is sex.
A/N: I have fooled with this a bit more (largely for clarity) since posting it over there last night while I was taking a break from the more substantial fic that is currently taunting me.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091126.html

M78 Wide Field

xposted to IJ and LJ

Word count: 1,074.

I appreciate your industrious hacking away at the (somewhat-past-)due fic, but some of these errors of logic and departures from expectation as you go along are a bit ridiculous.

For instance, "building" and "bukkake" (of which there is none expected in this fic) are really quite not at all the same thing, and are not interchangeable.

Pls to type what (and only what) the brain says now.

Thx,
Me.

I originally posted this at http://florahart.dreamwidth.org/1005362.html. Comments may be left here or there; you can comment there with OpenID even if you don't have an account.

It's the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday in Azeroth, with food-related daily quests and themed garments offered as a reward for fulfilling the quests.

Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do bring my penchant for cross-dressing to Warcraft.

( My Blood Elf Death Knight in a dress: )

I did get a turkey caller as a quest reward, which I assume lets you summon a turkey to kill in order to help you make the required turkey meals for one of the quests. However, when you summon the turkey, it arrives with a great big heart over its head, which promptly shatters when it realizes you aren't a prospect turkey paramour, and it's labeled "lonely turkey". I couldn't kill a lonely turkey! I just let it wander free and haven't used the turkey caller again because I felt so guilty.

This entry was originally posted at http://scribbulus-ink.dreamwidth.org/517717.html. It's cross-posted to LJ and IJ, and comments are enabled at all three journals.

http://www.csifiles.com/content/2009/11/the-who-set-to-play-superbowl-halftime-show/

http://www.csifiles.com/content/?p=8394

The Who, which is the band responsible for all three CSI theme songs (”Who Are You”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Riley”), will perform at the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLIV Halftime Show on February 7, 2010.

http://www.csifiles.com/content/2009/11/giovinazzo-helps-feed-the-homeless/

http://www.csifiles.com/content/?p=8392

CSI: New York’s Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny Messer) was one of the hundreds of volunteers that showed up to work at the annual Thanksgiving event at the Los Angeles Mission on Wednesday, November 25. Thousands came for the meal, which included more than a ton of turkey, 800 pounds of mixed vegetables, 750 pounds of garlic mashed potatoes, 400 pounds of cranberry relish, 90 gallons of gravy and 3,500 dinner rolls—along with 440 pumpkin pies for dessert.

“We’ve served 580-thousand meals in the last 12 months, an increase of nearly 10 percent over the previous year,” said Herb Smith, President of the Los Angeles Mission. “Everyone knows the Los Angeles Mission has celebrities come down and serve meals for the holidays, but we are more than just meals. The Mission works daily to save the lives and then restore the dignity of hundreds of homeless and poor men, women and children.”

http://www.csifiles.com/content/2009/11/study-aims-to-debunk-the-csi-effect/

http://www.csifiles.com/content/?p=8388

A study that will be published next month in the Vanderbilt University Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law challenges the so-called “CSI Effect”, which suggests that jurors are influenced by what they see on shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoffs. The report uses information gathered in Washtenaw County, Michigan, and concludes that most jurors are knowledgeable about technology such as DNA, fingerprints and ballistic evidence regardless of which television series they watch.

The study also found that fans of shows like CSI were just as likely to return a guilty verdict in cases that rely on more traditional evidence like witness testimony. “Our conclusion was that there was no such thing as a ‘CSI Effect,’” said Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Donald Shelton. “We suggested it should be called the ‘tech-effect’ because it simply reflects the knowledge people have of the role of technology in our culture.”

Andy Rooney voice:

You know what annoys me?

A story with no email for feedback, just a journal to comment in.

I read a story I really very much liked, but I also wanted to discuss the ways it didn't work for me, and so I thought: I'll send the feedback in an email. Only there was no email addy. So I tried the writer's livejournal profile. No email. Tried her story site and the stories there. No email. A journalfen link for replying, but see, if I wanted this feedback public I'd have already left it at the feedback post.

And now I'm annoyed and not in the mood to feedback at all in any form.

Too bad, because there was a lot about the story I wanted to praise.

This entry was originally posted at http://auburn.dreamwidth.org/229741.html. where there are comments. Comments are enabled on all cross posted journals.

http://www.csifiles.com/content/2009/11/watch-manhattanhenge-on-csi-files/

http://www.csifiles.com/content/?p=8385

The most recent episode of CSI: New York, “Manhattanhenge”, is now available online. You can check out the full video on CBS.com, Fancast or TV.com—or you can watch the episode right here on CSI Files after the jump:

http://www.csifiles.com/content/2009/11/new-york-takes-the-top-spot-again/

http://www.csifiles.com/content/?p=8382

On the eve of Thanksgiving, CSI: New York’s latest episode, “Manhattanhenge”, earned the top spot for the last episode of the Compass Killer storyline on Wednesday, November 25. The episode pulled in 12.65 million viewers at 10:00pm, increasing to 12.68 million at the half hour. In the key 18-49 demographic prized by advertisers, New York was first with a 2.8 rating/8 share, rising to 2.9/9 at 10:30pm. The Jay Leno Show (5.11 million, 1.6/5) and Eastwick (3.65 million, 1.1/4) came in second and third, respectively.

For more detailed ratings information, including other Wednesday night programming, visit PI Feedback.

Everyone else have a terrific Thursday/Friday!!!