There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

=============================

This poem is one of my favorites. Mostly for the short story attached to it. And I hear it is referenced in Fallout 3

I got asked one to explain how I balance being Christian, yiffy, and bisexual/gay.

The short answer is: It's hard

...


Oh Oh I see, you want the LONG answer. Tough. But will give you a medium one:

I have to balance personal beliefs in God and Christ with the decidedly humanist bent I take the world in, and reconcile them.

I have distilled my view of Christian beliefs down to believing in God and Jesus, that I have been saved, and should try to lead a life of helping others as much as I can.

Just the other night Kahuki and I took someone into our house so they had a place to stay for the night. No payment expected. Just a good deed. Seems simple? Well it is. That's what i feel no Christian is doing anymore. They will try to attach strings to it.

*smirks* It is also probably why we have had people leech off us before, but hey, charity only goes so far.

Christianity shapes the compassion part of my morals.

As for the rest of them? well that is where the humanist bent comes in. ;-)

I think after the whole "Jesus on a cross" thing, God is leaving us the hell alone to do as we will. He gave us the out. He doesn't need Miracles or Prophets anymore. Which is why I despise televangelists.

Now notice I say humanist bent, not humanist. Becuase well...I am not really, per se, a humanist. But I take the view to heart when looking at things. I do believe in a higher power. Kinda excludes being a full on Humanist ;-)

But back to the rest of my morals.


Primarily: I see nothing wrong with sex. In a country that is so torn between trying to bat down sensuality/sexuality wherever it can and at the same time overselling it, it's amazing to me how often Christians are such the assholes about this.

Sex is not bad. Sex is not some "only for matrimony" thing. Sex CAN be overdone and you get burnt out on it, so sex carefully ^_^ But Two people wanting to have sex? Let them.

Ones 15 and ones 23? Big deal

Ones 13 and ones 18-19? Big whoop. I would have done it at 13 (and was looking for it at that age with older guys).

Ages 5 and ones 30? Umm HOLD THE TRAIN THERE. According to human sexuality studies, an interest in sex with others doesn't really start till the 10-13 age range. Something is amiss there.

See I DO have morals on this. It boils down to this: Everything must be consentual between two parties. And i don't mean "well if I gag her she can't say no" consent. I mean knowing, willing consent In anything that happens. Which could get pretty damned kinky and dangerous, but if they consent to it WILLINGLY, with FULL KNOWLEDGE, then it's two consenting people and the Morality Police butting their puritanistic (as in having puritanical traits) head into it.

the old Testament was about Control in a situation for survival. People were a small group, and in a hard desert environment. Don't be gay, because you can't have offspring. Makes LOGICAL sense. Food laws were the same: Don't eat pig, had parasites.


Nowdays we have overpopulation. Survival? Not so much an issue in that respect.

Food is safer nowadays.

And this is tangenting....dammit. *smacks head*


So yes, I balance them because I don't see a conflict. I know some of you will accuse me of pick-and-choosing Christianity. WELL DUUUUHHH!! Current Christianity is far worse at it than me, at least I admit I choose how to view my faith, instead of trying to lie about inconsistencies.


So there you have it, the Medium Reply. I may get to the long one at some point. It is just very difficult to get personal moral views written down while trying to explain EVERY nuance without it making you look like some wierdo... (oops, too late ;-))

My BF found out from his blood test that he has diabetes.

DOn't know how to take it, hes very depressed and I can't seem to comfort him, so i am receding into a shell.

From across the cluttered desk of the con-chair...

There have been a lot of rumors floating around about the convention. Rumors about debt, about the life and stability of RMFC. This will, I hope address those concerns and give people improved confidence in RMFC.




“The convention is drowning in debt” While it is true the convention is in debt, the situation is not bad and well under control. Thanks to some sizable donations by a few locals furs, the convention has paid off ALL of it's debts but one and made a sizable impact in the conventions one remaining debt.

“I don't want to register cause the convention will take my registration to pay off debts and close up” This is 100% not true, every penny we receive from registrations, dealers, and art show panels is going directly into the convention. NO EXCEPTIONS.

“Why should I attend, the convention might not be around next year” Also not true. We have been in negotiations with the hotel for convention dates in 2010 and 2011 and are confident that we will have these dates signed soon. The convention is going to be around for the future, all of my staff are dedicated to this fact.




While hesitance in these hard economic times is understandable I want to stress to every one that RMFC is here to stay, and we have some great plans for the future of our convention. The only thing we need now is your trust and support. We have some great guests of honor this year, Scribblefox and Terry Smith, and a wonderful events track. We are not going away, but we are going places, and we want you along for a great ride!




Thank you!




Sorin, the Excited RMFC Chairman

chairman@rockymountainfurcon.org

P.S.

My door is open to anyone with questions, concerns or comments about the convention. Don't hesitate to write me, I would love to hear from you.

=========================

Let me make this clear for you folks:

RMFC WILL ONLY FAIL is YOU DO NOT GO. So get yer butts goin and have some fun. we have the BEST con for Fursuiting (we have an entire pedestrian mall to run along).

Ok yes i know this is vanity.

Kahuki went to a cosmetic surgeon to get an evaluation done on getting liposuction to reduce his gut.

They told him they can't do it. He doesn't have the soft, fluffy fat you can suck out at essentially skin level(subcutaneous), his is the denser, thicker fat deeper in the cavity (visceral fat). The stuff they cannot remove. Not only that, it is the more dangerous fat.

He is very down about that, he has become more self conscious about his belly as of late, and dieting, while getting him down to 200lbs in weight, hasn't decreased the belly any.

Wish i had some way of cheering him up.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/16/apple-confirms-presence-of-proprietary-chip-in-shuffle-headphone/

So they design a new shuffle with no controls on the pod itself, but inline on the headphones (Sony has done the inline controls before, ne MiniDisc).

But then they make it so you can only buy THEIR headphones, so your nice, expensive cans you would use to listen to music you are unable to use.

They could have just make a short cable with control on it, but with a standard jack at the end so that. Nope.

So what prevents them from doing this for ALL the iPod line? (requiring proprietary headphones)?

A message I got in response to being polite and explaining why I deleted his comment.
=====================
--- ivanotter wrote:
> Your second comment, which was more inflammatory, has been deleted. I will leave the first one since it was not inflammatory. Any further inflammatory replies to my livejournal will be removed.
>
> I don't care what you may think is right or wrong, but being a blatantly disrespectful troll is not allowed on my journal.

Oh, I'm not a troll, I really did not like the guy. Inflamatory maybe, but its the goddamn truth. So fuck you, hope you die in a similar way.
=====================

So, Poll. Should I ban him?

Oh yes, and the Poll doesn't matter, I have already made up my mind. :)

I don't care if you disagree with me, even a bit on the asshole side when you do it.


Be a troll, like poly was on my journal, and I will delete your comments. Multiple times, And i will ban you from posting on it. By default, anon cannot post on my journal, so don't think that will get around it.

userid: ivanotter

http://englishrussia.com/?p=381

Luxury APC

I WANT ;-)

http://englishrussia.com/?p=330

And a copy of the Hummer I like (especially the military ones down near the bottom)

http://englishrussia.com/?p=392

I don't know what this is, but I want it ^_^

Ok, bitchy otter time!

Furp is dead. I never knew him, by the sound of it, we shared humor styles and he sounds like one of those rare, true "hero" types.

If you don't know who he is, well look at Kage's journal, @'s, or any major furry in the fandom. Ten to one, they knew him well. Me? I'm not a major fandom person, just a minor, opinionated,(currently very angry) tech otter with wings.

BUT....Oh boy.... he died by a drunk driver. Run over on his Motorbike.


Listen, you dimwitted, thrice-imbred, brainess fuckwads out there, and listen well. If you contemplate, think, decide to, or even HINT in your brain you are going to try to drive even the tiniest bit intoxicated? Please, JUST KILL YOURSELF NOW!! Thats right, take whatever death implement of choice you want, be it a bat, shotgun, cyanide, pistol, The Almighty Thor(TM) shoved sideways up your ASS (courtesy of ZooFur.com) or hell, come my way, I'll do it for you, free of charge. You can take the .45 express straight into the great beyond. Becuase I would happily go to jail knowing I saved people lives by booting your pathetic ass OUT of the gene pool with much prejudice

It's better your loser ass dies than someone like Furp, or hell ANYONE other than you. Becuase you can't use the god given sense to go "Oh wait, I can barely walk, the world is spinning while i stand still, maybe I should call a cab" you cost people their lives!

That Marine that killed him (oh yeah, did I mention it was a drunk MARINE) should be dishonorably discharged, and becuase just throwing the book at him isn't enough, have the book launched at him with whatever secret, high speed mega-cannon rail gun the military is working on straight into his SKULL!!!. Maybe, just MAYBE then he will get the clue!

As you all know, I am a pretty live and let live kind of guy. Seriously, I think after a max of 3 or 4 years, a persons criminal record should not be brought up unless its job related SPECIFICALLY (as in, if you robbed a bank, no bank job for you, THAT kind of specific). This sword of Damacles effect we have over people is just NOT kosher.

But killing unwilling people through ignorance and malice? Oh That's the big exception.

Ranting otter OUT.

Lost my Job Tuesday before last. Not a good week. Damned Economy

Well....
I had a BLAST!!!!

Seriously I did. And it was very very weird running into artists that I had watched for years and finally meeting them.

and Jace the artist (Brian Harp) is actually a really neat guy. And I bought his art...prolly spent more than I should have LOL.

Only minor downsides: Ollie Canal wasn't there. Asked Jace about it, and he says he never gets a table. And when he comes he doesn't often socialise.
And somewhere along the line, I never did find K-9 (Scott Fabinek). I had wanted to meet him

Oh well.

And my mate kahukilairu had a birthday the 23rd, during the con. This trip was kind of his BD present ^_^.

probably more to come, but in an actual pretty snappy mood.

Oh yeah, and Selkit Diller is weird, but in a good way ^_^. He's definitely a little arrogant, but not near as much as rumors would like you to believe. And we had fun eating out with him and his wife/gf (I honestly didn't ask if they were married or not). Her brother though (the one who drove us) got on my nerves a little, but some do.

I am running across some really strange Linux issues as of late with my EeePC.


Ok first off, it is the UbuntuEEE distro (netbook remix ofUbuntu with drivers specifically for the EeePC and a snappy interface)

The minor problem I have is i cant find a "bump" setting for the touchpad (a bump guard, like you can find in Windows, that allows it to realise you are not actually meaning to touch it, and prevents accidental selection and such, which has happened several times this post by me seeming to just BREATHE on it)

the bigger one, and most goddamned frustrating though, is it randomly decides it will not mount any USB based volumes.

Let me explain:

I have a USB stick, a SD card reader built in, and a mSD card reader built into my 3gModem (which was a pain in the ass to set up, BTW, compared to windows).

The built in SD reader? Works every time. Flawlessly.

The other ones, which interface through the USB ports. half the time give me the message "you are not authorised to mount this device".

EVEN WHEN I LOG INTO ROOT. I mean how much more authorised do you get than Root?

Half the time, the mSD works fine. I can't get a USB stick to work with my netbook anymore.


The frustrations are starting to make me want to load XP on this netbook and say the hell with it.

And suggestions/Help?

Ok my Point of View on immigration is:

1: learn the language of the country, de-facto or otherwise, no matter what country you hail from. We offer English for America, learn it (yes we do, BTW, because a good friend of mine here, Osiris moved here from Russian parts and managed to learn it. ESL classes)

2: Quit talking about how great your country is that you just left to move here. Accept that some of your cultural practices have to stay behind. America (in this case) is a melting pot, meaning some things go to the wayside (a soup with every ingredient in the world would taste horrible and be inedible). Does not mean you have to abandon your heritage completely, and anyone who tells you that should take a bullet up the ass sideways (don't ask how you do that...I have no clue)

3: both of these boil down to respecting the people and the country you moved to. don't expect them to learn your language to communicate with you. That is thoughtless and rude. These rules are fairly universal, not America specific.

now that out of the way, before you start posting comments of "racist"or something like that (I have gotten them)

I think you are taking what I say a little serious though. My opinion on immigration is partially from growing up in southern New Mexico, where there is a lot of immigrants, illegal and legal. And as someone trying to learn spanish in HS (and failing) and then having a whole bunch of people speaking a language I do not understand around me in, my OWN damned country makes ME feel like the immigrant and outsider. That and a good majority of signs having the spanish part in bigger font than the English on it. That gets to be frustrating after a while, and as I said, I take it from a respect point of view, which people miss entirely. It is respectful to learn the language (defacto or otherwise) of the country you are moving to and disrespectful to claim the country you just moved from is better than the one you just moved to. If it is better, WHY DID YOU MOVE!?!(yes, thats the Viva Mexico crowd,you ruin it for the quiet people who may have love for aspects of their old country, but don't go around putting mexican flag stickers on everything) I would have a lot less problems with illegal immigrants, actually, if they did. As long as I can communicate with them, and not get a crapload of bravado and boasting in my face, I really do not have much issue with any sort of immigrant.

But of course, people consider me unreasonable in that respect.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas. I won't be on tomorrow likely ^_^. I will be snuggling Kahuki and sippin' teh eggnoggs!!!!

So Merry Christmas to All, and to all a good Christmas!!!

Diskeeper Fires CIO and other employee for not taking Scientology courses.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/12/21/two-fired-for-not-becoming-scientologists
(link fixed)
Hell. Never again am I buying a Diskeeper product. I thought their product was good, but I refused to support a company that tries to push a cult (especially a phony, money-only cult like this one) onto it's employees.

I urge you to boycott them. Hell, I am urging you to pirate it ^_^. (dont razz me for being irresponsible or something like that)

I am glad that they are suing, and hope they succeed. This is fucking nuts!!!

Well as of 15th December,I am 29.

Don't know how i feel about it. I know 29 doesn't seem that old but... well it does to me. It's almost like I feel older than that.

*shrugs* Just getting to be codgedy, I guess Hasn't exactly been the greatest year for us.


But... happy birthday to the Tech Otter!!

*Demands arts*LOL

Ok, why Am i like this.

It isn't very powerful, it doesn't perform exceptionally well. Its older, rattles a little.


But DAMNED its fun ^_^


What am I talking about? my 1990 VW Cabriolet that is finally up and running again. I have be driving with the top down during most of the last couple days. Fan fucking TASTIC.

I drove to work with a huge grin on my face. Zipping along at 55-70 (depending on traffic) with the topdown, brisk hair.


Oh otter is grand with his little 1.8l vert ^_^.

Well first off,

KAHUKI HAS A JOB (tentatively)

He did his second interview at the National renewable Energy Labs and they are starting him Monday.

pending backgroundcheck, which they started today, and he didn't get disqualified so far, so guess its a go :-)

2: Am typing this on my new-ish Eee PC 900 running Ubuntu EEE edition (really nice OS for a netbook).
it is by no means a speed demon, but it's good for what it is designed to do. and i am loving it ^_^.

except the damed right shift key is so tiny and that is my primary shift key i use. oh well, will get used to it.

tooth still hurts, taking meds. got a hold of some clindamycin to try to kill the infection again. next month I qualify for insurance, then i will get it fixed.

At a cigar event. this rep doesn't give out free samples. therefore he doesn't get my money. Seriously, if you won't let me try your product first, and expect me to pay 8 bucks a stick, you are out of your blasted mind, adn beleive me, Kahuki and i often spend 50 bucks at a cigar event. :-)

so i bought a non-featured band, and am o so subtley smoking it in front of the rep. Smiling. and the manager agrees with me on it.

Overall, a great day :-)