Digital Ecipse

11:27am: Icon Love Meme
Gotten from and tagged by mercurychaos. XD

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee. Whoo!
( Meme! )

10:50am: Lucky Star
Okay. Normally I'm not a YouTube poster. I have dial up at home. The very idea may bring my connection to its knees. But this is worth risking dial-up for. Even if you have nothing to do with KH... Watch this. XD

Warning: May cause convulsions, SPLORTs and high-pitched squeals of glee.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5FdTSZ2NlJA

12:52pm: Complaint letters
This made me crack up. I love spammail at work. XD So I thought I'd share the love. copied directly from my e-mail, so everything beyond the cut is not-me.
( Best Complaint Letter EVAR )

2:06pm: (tongue firmly in cheek)
Two posts in one day? Yipes! But it's particularly apt for what I want to share. =P For the record, my job involves sitting in front of a computer all day wishing someone would call and ask for help. If I didn't take advantage of the internet access, I'd be an idiot. (Or possibly someone with the latest Discworld novel.)

I'm Not Addicted to the Internet, I Just Need It Inside Me

Highlight quote:

Imagine having a conversation and being able to invisibly call up instant research. For all practical purposes, you'd be as smart as the Internet (or as dumb as the Internet, but still).

Basically, the article starts with Internet addiction (a very real thing, which is different from having too much free time and an ready connection) and ends with internet implants. Which I think would probably start with storage space - after all, you need a harddrive to download any information. Then it would be simple to rig a connection anywhere there's cellphone coverage. Which is a pretty cool thought. Imagine being stuck in traffic and able to IM a friend? Cell phone no longer needed! Or having exactly at that second updates on things like Shoebox Project? The race for "first!" gets ever tighter. And, as someone already mentioned, porn would probably bring the world to its knees. Over and over again.

BUT. Realistically speaking (am I going to address this seriously? I think I am!), think of how it would affect education? Let's say there's a visor, throat and earbone implant to take care of screen, microphone and earbuds. Teachers giving tests would either have to learn to adapt the test or somehow block the 'net. I'm thinking that there would have to be a removable outside component, just for things like this and airplanes. Also, if you think people who do their make-up while driving is bad, what about people surfing as they go? And how would it impact the economy? The people with connections would be incredibly valuable in a lot of positions — they could demand top-dollar. No one without an implant would have a chance at a job, regardless of their qualifications. A boss who's used to instantly asking for and getting her coffee is going to go for the girl with e-mail built in. The gap between the haves and have-nots is already wide enough, thank you. Tracking and stalking would be easier than ever.

On the other hand, law enforcement would have unparalleled access to lists of warrants and dangerous suspects. Assault victims could get help almost anywhere. Anything that can be done by an internet connection (coffee pot?) wouldn't even require you to get out of bed until it was ready. Writers could write anywhere, anytime, in complete and utter privacy. E-books would have a purpose, and cultural distinctions would blur into uselessness as world-wide conversations reduced bigotry to ashes. A constant connection to anything would result in unparalleled growth of ideas and creativity. (Or possibly a citizenry of mindless drones whose only concern is their own amusement. But we already did that last one when television was invented, so I'm thinking the unparalleled creativity would be next.)

Don't forget upgrades! Once you've got a direct plug-in to the brain, it might not be that long before the connection can stimulate us, rather than just vice-versa. Books translated into sensation? Porn brings the world to its knees again, and this time it might stay there, thx. Who needs the holodeck?

11:51am: Letter meme
Crossposted to IJ.

Yay! A letter meme. (Hush, I'm easily amused. Allow me this. I'm also thinking book review today. I can have something silly!) I got a C from mercurychaos! Squee!

Rules: Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter. Write ten words beginning with that letter in your IJ/LJ, including an explanation what the word means to you and why.
( Meme )

11:01am: On Strike
ETA: GRAAAAAHHHH. One of my fears came true! THIS just appeared in my Yahoo Inbox.

jasonshellen sent you a message on LiveJournal: Thank you.

AND I CAN'T REPLY. ASDF;LKJHG

Strike time! I'm pretty much only here because I'm on strike at LJ like so many other people, but I desperately need some way to scratch the itch. This is working fairly well. Word to the wise: part of the addiction is comment notification. Just posting Anon doesn't help, and constantly validating yourself will quickly chip away at whatever will you may have. Do yourself a favor and register.

Blogging about not blogging.... well, it's weird, in a hard-to-describe way. Beyond all the comms and friends and my own posts, I have this entirely insane urge to go see what the anti-strikers are up to. Apparently strikers are anti-semites, now. o.o;; How does that connection happen? Is it because Anton Nossik is Jewish? I can think he's an asshole without bringing religion into it, thank you very much. I'm also dying to drag these people into rational conversation, just to let them tie themselves into a knot, so to speak.

As far as the comms and friends go, I really really want to check on them. There's a ton of fanfic that you just can't find anywhere but LJ. I don't know what I'll do if I look in my inbox and see "theljstaff has posted in News!", or "The ShoeBox Project has been updated". I might hurt myself trying to keep away from the keyboard. Try explaining that injury to an insurance company. And what about my letter to Jason Shellen? Not to brag, but it's three pages (I know, I know but I couldn't shut up x.X), a "welcome to LJ" card and some banana nut bread (with chocolate chips). It arrived yesterday. Part of the letter was urging him to write in his LJ and become a real member. Admittedly, this was because I have a hard time believing that someone can be active on LJ and not understand the sense of community we all feel. If he could get it, maybe he could help swing decisions our way a little more. Did he post about it? (Getting baked goods from a user is worth writing about, right?) Is he looking at my comment-locked on-strike LJ right now and thinking I was full of hot air when I said I'm worried that LJ will lose business because of this? Has anything been posted about the strike that I'd want to see, or about any of the other issues we've been dealing with?

The urge to look once is just so incredibly overwhelming. But if you break your own rules once for a good reason, you'll break them again for a bad. (Okay, so that's an idea totally stolen from Discworld and is supposed to be about punctuality! Break me!) Right now, my rule is no LJ. Like someone who has decided "no sweets/fats/carbs" in a diet, it's hard not to cheat a little. But I won't, because I'd like to think my love of LJ is strong enough to keep me away from it.

I cheat on my diet, BTW. x.x

And now I'm facing a list of 26 online classes at work, all of which have had problems for two months which may have been fixed last night. I have to pound and twist and bang on the databases to make sure it's really fixed, which is going to take forever and is going to be incredibly frustrating. It will still end long before the strike, and no matter how it goes... I'll want to post. Because I know at least a few people have been following my work woes, and they'd like to know something this potentially major. x.x And now they won't until Monday.

I must love LJ to be doing this to myself. It's a tough love, but if it weren't necessary, I'd be writing over there right now.

/pity party