| Lest we Forget |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|02:13 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
At eleven o'clock in the morning — the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". Give them their due and observe the two minutes of silence. For my Great Uncle who served with the merchanct marines and died when his boat was torpedoed by a Russian Uboat east of Halifax Harbour.
And a tribute song to Ontario's Highway of Heroes.
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| oh hai I'm on ur twitter |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|04:57 pm] |
I should probably get around to announcing this ... A few weeks ago I finally joined the twenty-first century on Twitter.
One account, coonerArt, is strictly for art and convention announcements. It will be most active while I'm attending conventions, as I send updates on stuff going on at my table, where and when I'm hanging out, availability of sketches and other stuff, and so on ... so if you want, you can follow me during the length of a con you'll be at. However, outside of cons, I'll also send the occasional tweet when i make announcements for specialty badges or special commissions opening up, and stuff like that.
If you'd like to follow coonerArt: http://twitter.com/coonerArt
I'll be at Midwest Furfest next week, so if you'll be there with a Twitter client, now's a good time to follow.
- - - - -
My other account, WTFcooner, is my personal account that I use mostly to keep tabs on the local crowd and stuff. I'm not sure if you'd really want to follow my random tweets and half-baked conversations, but if you want to, you're welcome to. :) http://twitter.com/WTFcooner
And that's all I have to say about that!
Similar Twitter information on my web site |
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| Old Habbits Die Hard |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|04:25 pm] |
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I just got off the phone with my manager. He needed some assistance with a Power Point problem. After suggesting a fix there was about a minute long pause while he tried it. Finally after he said it fixed it I instinctively asked if there was anything else I could help him with today and when he said no I thanked him for calling. After hanging back up I sat there for a moment stunned that I'd went right back to my help desk routine after not doing it for 3 years. Wild. |
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| Prayers for a Friend: Update and Details |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|10:20 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  worried | ] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tashabear, the wife of my friend who has been hospitalized with H1N1 has given me permission to elaborate on the situation. Here is the summary, in her own words:
You can talk about it, Spunky. Maybe his story will get others to pay attention to their health and get vaccinated when it comes available. I can't even express how frightening this experience has been, and believe me, none of you want to go through it.
The quick and dirty: My husband, darkwolfie, got sick a few days after we returned from a long weekend at Disney. I did too, but I just had a lousy cold. He called it, he knew he had H1N1, and he just got progressively worse till he had to go to the hospital. He was admitted to our local hospital on October 28, which was a Wednesday.
By Friday morning, he was having such difficulty breathing that he had to be put under sedation and intubated, and his breathing assisted by a ventilator. He fought the vent the entire time. His blood oxygen levels (aka "O2 sats") were never that great, and he would occasionally spike fevers. They were never able to drop the oxygen level he was breathing below 90% for any decent length of time.
They made the decision to take him from out local hospital to Massachusetts General on Saturday November 7th, and of course, that was a bit of a rigmarole, because the ambulance didn't have the ventilation support that he needed, so he had to be transported via LifeFlight. (I told them that he'd be disappointed to miss a chopper ride -- he's a real aviation buff.) Ten minutes after he arrived at the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) at MGH, they administered paralytics and heavier sedation so he'd stop fighting the vent. In other words, they put him in a drug-induced coma.
Yesterday, they did an echocardiogram (ultrasound imaging of his heart) to make sure that his heart was not damaged due to the edema he's been experiencing and the stress of his illness. They didn't get an ideal picture, as he was not tolerating being turned on his side very well, but they think his heart is doing fine. They also administered nitric oxide to try to dilate his airways and improve his O2 sats, and that worked for a little while, and then... not so much.
At 9:00 this morning, they called me and said that they thought he should be placed on ECMO, and let the machine take over the job of oxygenating his blood, so that his lungs could rest and heal. (That article is sort of a downer; just read it for the technical bits.) They got me right out of bed, and I was there by 10:40. I got to visit with him for about an hour, and then they kicked me out so they could do the procedure. ECMO is often administered to neonates (preemies), so Wolfie's procedure was done by a pediatric surgeon -- I meant to ask him if it was a nice break for him to work on such large blood vessels after working on tiny babies all the time.
He tolerated the procedure well, and was okay when I left. The next 24 hours will be rugged as they get all the settings figured out, but I have faith in his medical team, and all the faith in the world in him, and more gratitude than I can express for all the love and support and prayers and good thoughts that are flowing to us from people who only vaguely know who we are.
I can't be choosy. Disseminate this as widely as you like to get more prayers and more good thoughts for him. He is my whole world, and a good friend to so many, and we just want him well and home.
Please keep praying for them; she updates their journals regularly with information regarding his condition. I really just want to see him get better and come home to her. They are truly wonderful people, and some of the first people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing in this community. |
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| 365/90 Surgery |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|09:56 pm] |
 Had my wisdom teeth removed today. Thanks to the anesthesia, I don't even remember taking this photo.
Yikes, look at all those tools behind me...
This is the first time I've ever been prescribed a pain killer. Everyone online warned me that the pain would be unbearable and that I would probably need to take a week off from work.
Ha!
Perhaps my oral surgeon is just really skilled, but the pain isn't that bad! My swollen face is causing me much more trouble; my deep, sultry radio-voice has been reduced to a slurring, lisping whine; I can't chew anything thicker than yogurt; everything tastes like blood...AND I have to wear a towel-bib because I'm always dribbling ooze from my wisdom-teeth-holes. Gross!
I don't think the Vicodin is doing anything. It's really just giving me itches and nausea.
Can't wait till this is all over. Mr January has been the most perfect boyfriend, and even cut up my food (despite my aggressive independence). I look forward to being able to show him my appreciation. And kiss him. |
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| Prayers For a Friend |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|02:43 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  hopeful | ] |
A friend of mine has H1N1 and is currently hospitalized in critical condition. I don't wish to elaborate further as it isn't my place to do so, but to any of you who are the praying type... please, please put in a prayer for him. He's a fantastic person, and one Tough Cookie, as is his wife. They're weathering this best as they can right now and any prayers would be greatly appreciated. |
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| Super Mario Bros. Anime Movie |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|01:16 am] |
Yes, it is as awful as it sounds. Bowser has transformation powers and is voiced by a woman.
Peach: That's Bowser. He's a bad guy. |
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| Bangs - Take U To Da Movies |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|09:51 pm] |
This music video is HILARIOUSLY awful.
What makes it funny is I believe it's suppose to be serious... but it seems like a fobbish black guy who barely speaks English, saw a couple music videos on MTV, grabbed a camera, copied some of the clothes and dances and even poses and crap, and made some crappy rap with barely any knowledge of the English language. He even did the typical black-rapper laugh a couple times, as well as ending the video with a typical rapper hat tilt.
My favorite part is at the end when he says, "Yeah girl... you can go to the movie anytime you like, you know I mean? But guess who you gonna call? Your baby boy, Bangs...cause he still got chance... know what I mean?... *laugh*"
It's all just too cheesy and awful.... it's gold!
EDIT: So I went through his other videos... and yeah, this guy is totally serious.
This video is him with his friends, and my goodness, these are the wannabe gangster types I hated in high school.... except they're adults (I think).
They're all trying to act "gangsta" and what they're saying barely makes sense if it makes sense at all, and there's a filipino too.... Ugh. They're throwin up hand signs that don't even match what they're saying, they're saying things like "Keepin in gangsta" and tossing in a few "That's how we do" and "keepin it real"'s here and there.... then they censor the filipino guy cussing the first time, but then they DON'T censor him the second time... so they were censoring him the first time simply to make them look cool... to which the black guy replies with "Yeah that's right, we don't give a DAMN!" He also has a damn stupid artificial laugh that he's almost pulled right out of another (cr)rap song.
This video makes me cringe. I can't believe it. I really can't.
Taken from Twitch. |
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| Gloves and cartoon characters |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|08:25 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
I got another Cintiq. I sold my old one back in March when I thought I might end up leaving the US, and I just had to get another. Doodling and painting was getting kind of hard on my old 6x8 wireless Graphire.
But now I totally feel like out of a 40's short, cause I got some cotton gloves to use so i dont smudge and thumbprint all over the Cintiq screen. I was trying to find the ones specifically made by artists, but at $15 plus shipping, i thought just plain old white gloves with the fingertips cut off would work just fine for $5. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|06:30 pm] |
Not that anyone cares, but today I did manage to make the banner for my last ddr mix.
Brawl drew me a icon a while back, then it hit me it would look kick ass for the final banner. So a few moments later, done. Mostly been all I could do today. Been worried about Banin. I think he's getting better. No accidents or anything today *crosses fingers* God, if I'm like this when my dog is sick, I dunno what I'll be like when my kid is sick.
Off to bed and to start another wonderful work week...
And as much as I still kinda hate having to go in, I'm so happy I do get to go in. I have odd feelings. |
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| MiFur Website Status |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|05:22 pm] |
Hey all. I was just alerted that the MiFur website was unavailable. I'm currently attempting to fix things and am working with technicians from my hosting service. The outage is not a single website outage and is effecting all web sites currently hosted on my cluster including my personal web site. The issue seems to be related to a problem with the Apache web service. I am working diligently to repair this but at this time have no ETA. I'll send out an all clear message when it is completed.
EDIT: As of 5:30 PM Eastern the MiFur website is once again available. |
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| Casino |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|02:23 pm] |
I tried recording a vid from my laptop at the casino, but the voice was really out of sync with the vid so i didnt post it.
Anyways yesterday my dad and I went to Biloxi for the night. We got there at around 1pm. I had my first go in the poker room at the 4-8 hold em table. You can only bet in increments of 4 or 8 dollars and can only raise 3 times, so even if you have crappy cards it still may be worth the 4 dollars to see the flop, if no one raises. I put in a few tiems to see some flops off pretty crappy cards, but when all you get is crappy cards sometimes you feel desperate. Nothing came of them, and the good hands I did play I won, but after 4 hours I was down 30 bucks, got bored and decided to get raped at 3 card poker.
I played 3 card for a while. ITs a fun game where you are dealt 3 cards and the house is dealt 3 cards. There are 3 types of bet. The 'pair plus' is where you bet and if your hand has a pair or higher you get the bonus, pairs are 1:1, straights are like 5:1, trips are 30:1, straight flush 40:1.
The other bet is that your hand will beat the house hand, but the house hand will not play if they do not have a Q or higher. So if your hand has at least a Q you would want to put down 5 bucks to try to beat the house hand.
Your cards are dealt face down, and the fun comes in when you slowly peek at them. If I see a Q or higher I dont even look a the other 2 cards becasue I know im gonna play. So I let the dealer slowly turn them over. Its a lot of fun seein something like A-A...then the last card is shown and you either scream cuz you got trips or are happy you got a pair.
So as much "FUN" as this game is, I lost 150 bucks there, the first 50 i spent in about an hour. TOok a break, played roulette where I lost another 50, then ate buffet, then came back and lost another 100 at 3 card in like 10 minutes.
I called it quits for the night at that point.
This morning after wakin up dad wanted to teach me craps, so he gave me some money for my birthday and taught me. I really enjoyed it. It looks quite intimidating at first, but the main part of the game is so simple...you just pick a number. Of course the odds are different on each number, and depending on what the rollers 'point' is they have to hit can change your betting slightly, and on a good roll youll want to learn to push your bets to take advantage, or learn to pull your bets back etc etc.
All in all I ended up winning a little bit there, and with the lil bit of cash dad gave me ended up down 150 for the whole trip. Yeah I lost, and for a little bit it really sucked losing, but I had fun doing a few things I had never tried before.
Next time I sill make craps my main game. I just need to read up on it a bit to maybe find some better betting strategies. |
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| Facespace Invasion... |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|01:14 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  lethargic | ] |
My family has found my Facebook page. The experience has been interesting.
Nothing against my family, it's just that with their discovery comes a surge of people I have no idea who they are. Yet they know me because they're some half cousin-auntie-momma's best friend who used to wipe my butt when I was little or got a good laugh when I was shoving my hands in their cleavage cause they thought it was "so cute". Both of those examples are real btw.
Also with this comes the revision of my page and being super paranoid about what I put up, if anything. Seriously, I never used the damn thing until recently. Like MySpace and Twitter, Facebook is just another outlet people utilize to get other people to validate their own existence. I hop on initially, but after a few weeks I get tired of it, finding no personal value in them. Nevertheless I have them, and considering my family can now hop on I guess I'll be using it a bit more. Therein lies another problem, I don't have much of anything to say.
I guess I shouldn't sweat it. I just won't say anything or reply to their comments. I've always felt very far removed from them yet very close. I dunno. To be honest I don't like talking about anything relating to myself much at all so in fact it doesn't have very much to do with them really now does it?
Phew!
Glad I came to that conclusion! |
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| I feel I might just wither away... |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|02:10 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  silly | ] |
So, I noticed the forum was down at like... 2am today. Figured it was just a simple thing that would be fixed when the important people got up... but it's still down. This being the MIfur LJ group, I figured it would be a good place to go to find out what's up. I'm certainly not the only one wondering what's going on, and I know that the mystery it the hardest part. Some may be staring at the load error screen this very minute, crying and lost... with no place to go... wandering the internet in search of other survivors... asking " do YOU know what's wrong?"
So, what's going on? |
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| Доклад С. Глазова - "Project Management в кинопроизводстве" доступен для свободного просмотра! |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|05:52 pm] |
2 года назад, приехав из Германии в Москву, я встретился с супервайзером одной достаточно крупной и старой студии компьютерной графики. Мы долго говорили о том, как кино делается там и тут, о том с какими трудностями приходится сталкиваться человеку, который пытается огранизовать производство максимально эффективно. Этот разговор натолкнул меня на мысль о необходимости рассказать о проектному управлении киношной аудитории. В результате родился этот доклад.
На Cgevent он произвел фактически фурор, настолько это наболевшая тема.
Если Вам интересно, как можно сделать производство более эффективным, Вы можете посмотреть доклад и скачать презентацию доклад, зарегистрировавшись на сайте. Всего за 40 минут, в очень кратком виде выдается вся основная теоретическая база проектного управления, сопровождающаяся практическими примерами и адаптированная под отрасль кинопроизводства.
Короткая нарезка из доклада (3 минуты) - тут:
О чем идет речь в докладе:- Базовые знания о теории проектного управления
- Управление проектами
- Планирование
- Риск менеджмент
- Рассчет рентабельности
- Организация производства
- Нужен ли Project management?
- Time management - Как успеть сделать все, что хочется?
- Asset Management - Стурктурирование и контроль доступа к данным
- PM Software - Технические средства управления проектами
- Психологические аспекты - Как сделать, чтобы команда не разбегалась
Чтобы скачать слайды и посмотреть доклад онлайн – Вам нужно зарегистрироваться на сайте http://training.riskreductionmanagement.com/
И Вы получите доступ к видеозаписи и слайдам доклада в течении нескольких минут.
Почему скачать доклад можно только после регистрации?
Я хочу собрать на этом сайте всех, кому не безралична судьба российского кино. Ведь от уровня организации зависит и качество и реализуемость кинопроектов, а от этого зависит судьба всей отрасли, особенно когда она находится в кризисе.
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| Weekendish stuff and videos! |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|09:40 pm] |
Halloween was a blast! Kralle again rented a wonderful Mercedes E-Class sedan, which made the six hour trip so much more relaxed. We actually had enough time this year to arrive one day early and stay 'till Monday.
Despite the fact that there were easily twice as many people as there were last year, it all went so wonderfully smoothly and without any incidents. The park was so crowded we only got to do two rides and otherwise spent the night doing random suiting. No incidents, no scares! Well, except for that little issue at Disney Village, when the security seemed alerted because of "les cameras professionelles". At least, that's what I heard on one of my video tapes. :)
That little scare, however, was quickly forgotten as soon as we entered Disneyland, only to find out that the Disney employees wanted all the fursuiters for a group shot. Apparently, those photos may be used on some sort of info / promo flyer or leaflet.
Back home now, the Disneyland is roughly 75% finished, and I still owe you folks another video:
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| Zac Brown Band |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|10:52 am] |
| [ | music |
| | "Fox on the Run" - Zac Brown Band | ] |
So I've been listening to country radio a bit more lately, and been picking up some awesome songs by awesome bands like Montgomery Gentry, Love and Theft, and Zac Brown Band.
Zac Brown Band has some awesome songs, like "Toes" which I can't help but (attempt) to sing along with... (part of it is in spanish), "Whatever It Is", and "Chicken Fried Rice".
Also nice to see an attractive lead singer (the green jacket in front the front in the picture above)... You're probably rolling your eyes but it's weird because I use to ASSUME that country music would have a ton of big hefty hairy guys... but my personal observations have contradicted that thought. |
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