• 15:01 At Loscon, room 1734. #

Last night we had one of the hardest conversations I have ever had, flat down period.

It wasn't a pretty conversation. It dealt straight on with things about each other that were making us unhappy and/or worried that we were making the other person unhappy. And yet at no point did we argue. At no point did voices raise. And we found our way through it just fine. Still talking well, still good friends and acting like it.

I love you, Krys. I'm really glad you are my friend and lover.

Current Mood: pleased

The last photos in this set were taken the morning I left. I went out in the early morning just after dawn and took these photos. They focus on London changing... the old with the new. The skyscrapers looming over the older brick buildings.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorhett/sets/72157622689731957/

Current Mood: amused

• 13:36 At the St. George open house. They've expanded the space a bit - nice! #

• 15:24 Back in San Francisco #

So it's been a while since I had time to consume fiction, sadly. I'm just starting to catch up. I'm about 400 pages in to Fortress in the Eye of Time and I've gotten to see two plays this week. And I'm seeing many things I never saw before, mostly about the structure and the pacing of delivery.

I've always loved good prose (written) and good delivery (a/v) but I never really thought about the framing that holds up the plot until I saw Jay Lake's post about framing for a story. (will link as soon as I can find that post) Somewhere between thinking a lot about that post (it inspires that) and working and reworking my stories, I've come to understand these issues a lot better.

Well, now I apparently can't read or watch anything without observing the framing and the pacing. saycestsay and jaylake both warned me this would happen, so I'll blame it all on them.

Current Mood: amused

I have gotten some much better pictures in London. It unfortunately got dark as I was taking pictures so again, there's about 30 useful pictures from 300 or so that I took. There are so many beautiful streets here, but it's very difficult to take a meaningful picture. I think I'm going to try to actually wake up early and get some stuff in empty street dawn.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorhett/sets/72157622689731957/

Current Mood: amused

It is an unfortunate fact that I got very few good pictures from Estonia. By the end of the working day it was already dark. I kept meaning to get up early and get pictures before going to work, but the extensive amounts of late night meetings, dinners and resultant drinking effectively ruled that out.

I did take hundreds of pictures, but most of them were far too blurry to bother keeping. You can see what is left here. Yeah, half of the pictures are of a nice Thai restaurant called Bangkok -- where a flash worked well enough to get pictures.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorhett/sets/72157622689710661/

Current Mood: amused

• 10:20 Going to see "Speaking in Tongues". Awesome cast. www.speakingintonguestheplay.com/ #
• 11:18 Excellent seats. 10 rows in front of me and stage is just below my knees. I'll be able to smell the cologne of The Master #
• 14:00 Wow. Intense. Not meant to be enjoyed at all. But the acting was superb. #

• 03:12 I luvs me Skype. They have an entire vegetarian option in the lunch line every day. In Tallin, Estonia no less. yay! #
• 03:13 @luckinspades Which ex? Is this the beast, or do you have a new ex? #

I didn't realize you can embed a link to directly call someone using Skype, like this: call me.

The html is easy: <a href="skype:skype-username">call me!</a>

You can also use <a href="callto:skype-username">call me!</a> but this may get picked up by a different application.

Current Mood: accomplished

Hi, peoples. Right now I'm in Tallin, Estonia for work. So I won't be answering my cell phone unless you text me that it's an emergency and you really really need me. Another way to reach me is my Skype phone, at Skype user jorhett or 650-681-9693. I'll be here through the end of the week and then off to London to meet with the operations team there.

Current Mood: amused

• 11:05 Hm. She can tell us the exact page number of the alien sex scene. #
• 11:06 The VanderMeers are totally dishing on each other. #

One year ago today (exactly as I write this message) a random contact began our first e-mail exchange with this comment:

I am not good at waiting - patience is a virtue I manufacture when I must, but always with a pout.

shodoshan

shodoshan

Current Mood: ecstatic

Postini, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, is a global leader in
on-demand communications security, policy, and productions solutions.

Heh. So after trying to use the postini service for a few weeks now I'm going to have to call them out for being None Of The Above.

#1: There is a FATAL flaw in Postini's Quarantine. When outbound messages are quarantined by the Content Manager, only one recipient per domain gets a copy of the message.

For example, if the recipients of my e-mail are a@postini.com, b@postini.com, c@postini.com, a@google.com, b@google.com... when the message is approved, only a@postini.com and a@google.com receive the message. All other recipients are silently discarded.

( Lots of other technical details on how badly Postini fails at policy enforcement. )

Conclusion: Postini might be useful for anti-spam, or attachment filtering, or something else we're not trying to do with them. But do not consider them a security company, or for use in policy compliance.

Current Mood: frustrated

• 09:44 I chased Obama out of town today. #

• 19:38 Wonka has serious doubts about my commitment to Sparkle Motion. #
• 20:04 I misread Furcon's theme for 2010. "Golden Rush" would be something entirely different. #

So I totally love my new job. Besides working with a tightly focused team that gets things done quickly, it's a whopping 5 minute commute now. Oh, woe is me ;-)

Did I mention no end users to support any more? Yeah, sucks to be me. Or not.

However, besides the whirlwind of getting used to the new job a bunch of projects got accelerated in the last 48 hours so I've got dozens of deliverables in my first couple of days. Busy! But fun. More when I've had a chance to relax/settle down after the crazy weeks of wrapping up my work at SVcolo.

SiliCon is going to be a relax-a-con for me. By which I mean my goal will be to shake the tension out of my shoulders and RELAX this weekend. Wine will be involved I'm sure.

Current Mood: pleased

Today is my last day at SVcolo. In fact, we're down to just over 2 hours left. It's hard work, and mentally I'm still not sure I've accepted it.

Current Mood: complacent

• 10:54 Feeling pretty good for only having 3.5 hours sleep. #